My stories today on Infosecurity Magazine…

My stories today on Infosecurity Magazine…

…including, what price privacy (answer: a BlackBerry); the danger in automated filtering (anti-censor political party gets censored); and Mozilla’s semi-hidden warning to Microsoft (watch out for anti-trust suits).

The Blackberry Project: how easily do we sell our privacy?

The Singularity Hub, ‘a community for those excited about the future’, has taken another look at the Blackberry Project and concludes that the younger generation is embracing a new view of privacy.
14 May 2012

The German Pirate Party fights censorship, but is it being censored?

While the Pirate Party wins seats in the German North Rhine-Westphalia state elections, a “shitstorm” about automated filtering starts to brew.
14 May 2012

Mozilla’s objection to IE-only Windows on ARM: a major row in the making

Windows is not Apple’s iOS, says Mozilla’s top lawyer after the organization complained that Firefox and other browsers would be excluded from Windows RT running on ARM systems.
14 May 2012

My stories for Infosecurity Magazine, 07 May to 11 May

Pirate Bay defends Virgin Media while founder Peter Sunde faces jail

It is with some irony that The Pirate Bay (TPB) came to the defense of Virgin Media (TalkTalk was also disrupted) after the ISP’s website was taken down by Anonymous.
11 May 2012

BeyondTrust acquires vulnerability management company eEye Digital Security
BeyondTrust, a company that provides privilege delegation and authorization systems with its PowerBroker suite of products, has acquired eEye Digital Security, developer of the Blink and Retina vulnerability management tools.
11 May 2012

Member and spokesperson for TeaMp0isoN arrested in Newcastle
A 17-year old has been arrested in Newcastle by the Police Central eCrime Unit (PCeU) and local Northumbrian Police officers for alleged offenses under the Computer Misuse Act.
11 May 2012

Winners and losers in European card fraud
FICO has produced an interactive map of Europe, showing the evolving European fraud landscape between 2006 and 2011.
10 May 2012

DigiNinja analyzes the Twitter hack, and offers password advice to web services
Yesterday we reported that 55,000 Twitter accounts have been leaked on Pastebin. Security researchers Anders Nilsson and Robin Wood have separately analyzed the dump.
10 May 2012

Queen’s Speech announces ‘measures… to access vital communications data’
As expected, the Queen’s Speech yesterday announced the intention of the UK Government to bring forward (during the current parliamentary session) measures to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to ‘vital communications data’.
10 May 2012

Net neutrality becomes law in The Netherlands
The net neutrality provisions approved by the Dutch Parliament last June as part of its implementation of the European telecommunications package became law yesterday.
09 May 2012

False Facebook account leads to Principal’s resignation
Louise Losos, principal of Clayton High School, Missouri, has resigned following accusations that she created a false persona on Facebook and befriended hundreds of her own students.
09 May 2012

Twitter fights two information security battles
Twitter is in the unenviable position of being ‘attacked’ on all sides: while it tries to fight a subpoena demanding the account details of Occupy protestor Malcolm Harris, hackers release thousands of user logon details on Pastebin.
09 May 2012

Analysis shows social networks increasingly used to spread malware
In its latest monthly analysis of the most prevalent malware, GFI describes how social networks remain the most popular breeding ground for infections.
08 May 2012

“Good on ya’ Mozilla”, says Sophos about Firefox
Firefox is developing a new feature called ‘click-to-play’ designed to provide additional protection for web browsing – but not everyone thinks this is necessarily useful.
08 May 2012

Syrian activists targeted with RATs
There have been several recent examples of Syrian activists being tricked into downloading and installing remote access tools (RATs) that secretly hand control of their computers to a third party.
08 May 2012

PandaLabs malware report – and the balance between law enforcement and user
Almost one-in-four computers in the UK is infected – and the UK is one of the least infected countries in the world, says the new PandaLabs report released today.
07 May 2012

Infosecurity Magazine news stories for 22-28 March 2012

My news stories on Infosecurity Magazine from Thursday 22 March until Wednesday 28 March…

Digital Crime: Fourth great era of organized crime
Organized digital crime is growing – but we still know little about the structure of organized digital crime groups. A new report from BAE Detica Systems and the John Grieve Centre for Policing and Security at London Metropolitan University seeks to change this.
28 March 2012

2600 to broadcast interview with Richard O’Dwyer’s mother
2600 is one of the world’s longest running ‘hacker’ publications. Richard O’Dwyer is a UK citizen likely to be deported to the US for operating the website TVShack.net and providing links to ‘copyright infringing’ material.
28 March 2012

Legislation to enforce Google filtering proposed by MPs’ committee
Parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions has reported: “This could involve giving Ofcom or another body overall statutory responsibility for press regulation.”
28 March 2012

PwC report highlights senior management complacency about security
Financial services are, not surprisingly, increasingly subject to economic cybercrime. According to a report from PwC, cybercrime is now second only to asset misappropriation as the most popular way of defrauding an organization in the financial services (FS) sector.
27 March 2012

Security concerns delay deployment of NGDCs
A survey from Crossbeam Systems shows that 94% of IT personnel identify network security as the main cause for stalled next generation data center (NGDC) deployments.
27 March 2012

The new Oxford Cyber Security Centre
Final proof of the extent to which information security has become embedded within society comes from Oxford university, Home of the Humanities. The university has announced a new Oxford Cyber Security Centre.
27 March 2012

Strong showing for the Pirate Party in German elections
Saarland is the smallest (apart from the city-states) of 16 states within Germany, with a population of just over 1 million inhabitants. Politically it is generally considered to be a conservative area.
26 March 2012

Anonymous launches Operation Imperva
Anonymous has declared a new target: Imperva Inc, a security firm, is now the subject of Operation Imperva.
26 March 2012

Microsoft takes control of 800 domains associated with Zeus botnets
In a major action against the banking trojan Zeus, Microsoft with FS-ISAC and NACHA and research from Kyrus Tech and F-Secure have succeeded in disrupting a number of the most harmful Zeus botnets in “in an unprecedented, proactive cross-industry action.”
26 March 2012

Europe’s first information risk maturity index developed
PwC and Iron Mountain have joined together to develop a risk maturity index for European SMEs; and finds them generally lacking.
23 March 2012

Firefox will use HTTPS by default
Encrypted searching should become available by default for all Firefox users within a few months – a big win for privacy.
23 March 2012

Indian call centers sell UK financial data and DVLA gives access to Indian workers
On the same day that the Sunday Times reported Indian workers offering UK finance details for sale at as little as 0.02p, the Observer reported that IBM contractors in India will have access to the data of 43 million UK drivers held by the DVLA.
23 March 2012

Privacy: the great EU/US debate
The two great western trading blocs are taking personal privacy very seriously. In January the EU published a draft proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation, and in February the White House released its privacy blueprint, including the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
22 March 2012

Almost half of UK educational establishments have had mobile devices stolen
A new survey from LapSafe Products has revealed that that 45% of education establishments have had mobile devices – such as laptops, netbooks, MP3 players, tablets and gaming devices – stolen between 2009 and 2011.
22 March 2012

Dame Fiona Caldicott to review patient data confidentiality
The people currently responsible for protecting the confidentiality of patient information in the UK are known as the Caldicott Guardians, so named after Dame Fiona Caldicott. Dame Fiona will now lead a new independent review into patient privacy.
22 March 2012