Tag: software

Big GOV Shift To Secure Cloud?

For those of us covering the cyber security beat, there haven’t been many feel-good stories coming out of the federal government in – well – forever. Even before the advent of nation state sponsored hacking, the news was mostly of the federal government’s bloated and unwieldy IT infrastructure, byzantine procurement systems and the difficulty of attracting top talent away from private sector employers who could offer more pay, more autonomy and a better working environment.   Then came the gut wrenching display of offensive prowess by the U.S.’s main enemies – nations like China, Russia and Iran. Those stories started, in earnest, with news about operations like Titan Rain (in 2003) and continue to the present day. The problem has gotten so bad that the military’s preferred euphemism for Chinese hackers – “advanced persistent threat,” or “APT” has become part of the nomenclature of the IT security world far beyond […]

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Podcast: Is Defense-In-Depth The Only Real Heartbleed Fix?

Like everyone else, we wrote extensively in the last month about the serious security vulnerability in OpenSSL dubbed “Heartbleed,” which affected many of the world’s leading web sites and services, including Facebook and Google. The large-type headlines about Heartbleed have passed. But that doesn’t mean that the danger has. As we have noted,  we are entering a phase that might be considered Heartbleed’s ‘long tail.’ Most of the well-trafficked websites that were vulnerable to Heartbleed have gotten around to fixing the vulnerability. But public-facing web servers are only the beginning of the story for OpenSSL. Chasing down the vulnerability’s long tail in third-party applications and on internal web sites and applications is a much larger task. As I’ve noted: open source components make their way into all manner of applications and bespoke products these days, often without any effort to assess the security of the borrowed code. For companies that need to protect critical IT […]

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Video: The Internet of Things and Enterprise Risk

The Security Ledger recently hosted our inaugural event: The Security of Things Forum (SECOT). This was a high-energy, day long conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that brought together subject experts, executives and thought leaders from disparate areas like high tech, finance and industrial systems to talk about the tsunami of change that is the Internet of Things. One of the big questions hovering over the event: how will IoT technologies and services change the security paradigm that we’ve all be operating under- but especially in enterprises. In fact, IoT and enterprise was the topic of our very first discussion of the day: a panel chaired by Chris Rezendes of INEX Advisors, a leading consultancy focusing on IoT. SECoT Forum 2014 – Democratized Data, IOT and Enterprise Risk from Exhibitor Media Group on Vimeo It’s a really big and messy problem. As panelist Ken Pfeil of Pioneer Investments pointed out: the hack of […]

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Bad Actor: With Update, LG Says No Monitoring, No Smart TV!

Customers of consumer electronics giant LG are raising alarm about a recent software update that asks owners to agree to have their viewing behavior tracked and monitored, or see their ‘smart’ TVs made dumb: with access to features like YouTube and Netflix disabled. Owners of some models of LG brand SmartTVs who have applied a recent firmware have taken to blogs to complain about a firmware update for their TVs that prompt them to agree to lengthy new Terms of Service and Privacy Agreements. The revised documents grant LG permission to monitor and record their viewing habits and their interactions with the device, including voice commands. Users who do not agree to the new terms find many of their smart TV features disabled, according to customer testimony and an analysis by one independent IT researcher. The prompt to read and accept a new “Legal Notice,” “Terms of Use” and “Privacy Policy” appears when SmartTV users first […]

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China Hacking Indictments Day 2: Now For The Blowback

The big news yesterday was about the U.S. Justice Department announcing the first-ever criminal charges against a foreign country for cyberspying. The news today may well be about China (and other countries) taking retaliatory actions, including similar legal steps against individuals in this country, working on behalf of the NSA, CIA or other government agencies. The Justice Department on Monday announced that a grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania indicted five Chinese citizens (PDF) for charges that include computer hacking and economic espionage directed at six American companies in the nuclear power, metals and solar products industries. The indictment alleges that the five defendants conspired to hack into American companies on behalf of competitors in China, including state-owned enterprises.  The stolen information included intellectual property that would allow the Chinese firms to better compete with their American competitors. The hackers also stole confidential information regarding business negotiations and other deals that would aid the Chinese […]

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