My news stories on Infosecurity Magazine, 30 May 2012

My news stories today:

Flaming Hack: What does ‘Flame’ mean for the rest of us?
We’ve all heard about Flame, the ‘mother of all cyberweapons’, the attack tool that takes cyberwarfare to a new level. But what does it actually mean for the rest of us?
30 May 2012

Neelie Kroes Promises champagne connection – for the wealthy
Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, has promised a champagne connection for those who can afford it.
30 May 2012

Assange’s appeal fails: extradition lawful – everything left to play for
By a majority of 5 to 2 (Lord Mance and Lady Hale dissented) the UK supreme court has this morning ruled that Julian Assange’s extradition to Sweden is lawful, “and his appeal against extradition is accordingly dismissed.” Assange was not present in court.
30 May 2012

News stories on Infosecurity Magazine: 17, 18, 21 and 22 May, 2012

My recent news stories…

Security: do as I say, not as I do
While the role of the CISO is increasingly recognized – usually reporting directly to the board and sometimes sitting on the board – the problems it faces is highlighted by a new Cryptzone survey: security policy doesn’t apply to senior management.
25 May 2012

The rightsholders’ war of attrition against the internet
Google’s Transparency Report now provides a new section on copyright, “disclosing the number of requests… to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content.”
25 May 2012

TheWikiBoat’s OpNewSon fires today
TheWikiBoat, a new hacking group that uses techniques and tools similar to Anonymous, but for the lulz rather than the principle, plans to launch its first major operation, #OpNewSon, today.
25 May 2012

Google describes the winning hack at Pwnium
Each year the CanSecWest conference runs the pwn2own hacking contest against leading browsers: Chrome, Firefox, IE and Safari. This year Google withdrew its sponsorship and set up its own Chrome specific contest: Pwnium, an extension of the Chromium Security Rewards program.
24 May 2012

Clueful – an app to describe app behavior
Earlier this year social networking company Path was hauled over the coals by both users and Apple for automatically uploading users’ iPhone address books. This, says Apple, is “in violation of our guidelines.”
24 May 2012

FCC’s net neutrality rules may be tested by VoIP
Bad blood in a local dispute in Georgia leads to request for the FCC to proceed “with corrective action as required or as deemed necessary… to protect the national and global interest of the public and the internet application industry alike.”
24 May 2012

Long-standing secret meetings between Canadian telcos and government on C-30
Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in internet and e-commerce law, has discovered secret talks between Canadian telcos and the government on internet surveillance.
23 May 2012

McAfee Q1 Threats Report
The latest quarterly McAfee threats report shows cyber threats increasing across the board: PC, Mac, mobile malware; botnets and hacktivism are all on the rise.
23 May 2012

Monday Mail Mayhem: Anonymous dumps 1.7GB from the DoJ
Monday Mail Mayhem was this week launched by Anonymous starting with the Pirate Bay dump of a 1.7GB database stolen from the Department of Justice, and the release of the traditional Anonymous video announcement.
23 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