Archive
China to Require Microblog Users to Register Using Real Names
China’s top Internet regulator says Beijing will soon require all users of microblogs to register under their real names to post comments online.
Wang Chen, who heads China’s State Council Information Office, said Wednesday increased Internet monitoring is necessary in order to prevent the spread of harmful information.
“We must impose control and management measures on some phenomena on the Internet, such as inventing rumors, damaging social stability, delivering bad information such as pornography, and even conducting illegal commercial activity,” said Wang.
Last month, Beijing and several other major Chinese cities began a trial program requiring all new microblogs users to disclose their identities to the government. Wang said the program will be expanded to Read more…
New Cyber Attacks Will Target Power Grids And Major Public Works
Russian turbine before the accident
Image: wikipedia commons
Commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command General Keith Alexander said Tuesday that he’s most concerned about attacks targeting America’s electrical grid, and destroying large public machinery.
Gen. Alexander says cyber-attacks over the Internet are shifting from data theft to physical assaults.
To illustrate his point the General used two examples.
First, he pointed to the 2003 Northeast power outage started by a downed tree branch. Following the initial accident at the pole, the utility company’s Read more…
Did China Tip Cyber War Hand?
A programme broadcast on the military channel of China’s state TV raises new questions about Beijing’s support for cyber attacks.
Amid growing US concerns over ongoing Chinese cyber attacks, attribution remains the most complex issue. At the open source level at least, it has been hard to find a ‘smoking cursor.’ That is, until the broadcast of a recent cyber warfare programme on the military channel of China’s state TV network.
The programme appeared to show dated computer screenshots of a Chinese military institute conducting a rudimentary type of cyber attack against a US-based dissident entity. However modest, ambiguous—and, from China’s perspective, defensive—this is possibly the first direct piece of visual evidence from an official Chinese government source to undermine Beijing’s official claims that it never engages in overseas hacking of any kind for government purposes. Clearly, Washington and Beijing have Read more…
New digital wiretap Bill – why you should be worried
Australia is one step closer to passing the controversial Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011. Picture: Thinkstock Source: Supplied
A NEW “digital wiretap” law that would let police force companies like Telstra to store copies of emails and text messages has come under fire from civil rights advocates.
The Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill was passed in the House of Representatives this week after being introduced in June. It will now be debated in the Senate.
The Bill would let authorities issue a “preservation notice” to telco companies forcing them to keep copies of a suspect’s digital communications for up to 90 days while police applied for a warrant to access the data.
It would also extend the scope of existing cyber offences and allow for increased information-sharing between Read more…
Hackers target 72 organisations in ‘biggest cyber attack in history’
Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organisations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.
Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one “state actor” behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.
The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defence contractors to high-tech enterprises.
In the case of the United Nations, the hackers broke into the computer system of the UN Secretariat in Geneva in 2008, hid there unnoticed for nearly two years, and quietly combed through reams of secret data, according to McAfee.
“Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators,” McAfee’s vice president of threat research, Dmitri Alperovitch, wrote in a 14-page report.
“What is happening to all this data Read more…
Cybercrime Fight Costing Companies More This Year
Cybercrime cost corporations 56 percent more this year than last, according to an annual study from the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by ArcSight, an HP company.
“Cybercrimes can do serious harm to an organization’s bottom line,” said the study, which found that the median cost related to cybercrime to the 50 companies in the survey was $5.9 million.
Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Traverse, Mich., company that bears his name, told PCWorld there have been several root causes for the bump up in the cost of cyber crime. “Sophisticated stealthy types of cyber crime are happening more frequently,” he said.
When the study was done last year, he explained, more visible forms of cybercrime dominated the Read more…
Anonymous Fires Back at NATO with FBI Hack, Releases 400MB of Their Data
Despite the recent spate of arrests on their side, Anon released 400MB of NATO data courtesy of big-time cybersecurity firm ManTech last night. This is their way of making good on a promise and reiterating that they “aren’t scared anymore”.
You’ll recall that NATO officially condemned Anonymous early last month. Well, as part of their long attack on ManTech, you’ll find a bevy of stolen NATO reports from the past several years, financial charts, and pictures of personnel both on duty and at rest. Pretty big, and this is only a portion of the gig of data they say they’re sitting on.
Anonymous effectively called ManTech’s $100 million contract with the FBI into very loud question. Indeed, ManTech also have contracts with the likes of the DOJ, NSA, and and NASA. All of whom are at risk now that Anon has gotten inside. They end their release with this:
Dear Government and Law Enforcement, we are repeating this message as we have the suspicion you still do not take us seriously: We are not scared anymore and your threats to arrest us are meaningless. We will continue to demonstrate how you fail at about every aspect of cybersecurity while burning hundreds of millions of dollars that you do not even have.
In Secret, Senate Panel May Re-Up Vast Surveillance Dragnet
Most of Congress is busy debating whether to raise the debt ceiling. But starting Thursday, Danger Room is hearing, a group of Senators meeting behind closed doors may consider renewing a controversial law permitting widespread government surveillance of Americans’ communications.
That law would be the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gave the cover of law to President George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance program. Beloved by the Obama administration, the law is set to expire — not this year, but in 2012.
But the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence may not be so keen on waiting, Congressional sources say. When the committee meets to finalize the fiscal 2012 intelligence authorization bill to the full Senate floor — the bill that approves the activities of the 16 U.S. spy agencies – some senators will push to include a measure re-authorizing the surveillance act.
The so-called “mark-up” process begins on Read more…
Internet takeover: New legislation would allow state to arbitrarily shut down, seize websites
Freedom of speech is under attack once again as the bloated US federal government continues its quest to destroy the last bastion of free and open communication — the internet.
Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property” bill, also known as the Protect IP Act, is more oppressive and restrictive to free speech than even communist China’s internet censorship protocols, and a group of law professors recently wrote an open letter warning that the bill would allow the government to freely pull websites without any proper legal restrictions.
Last November, NaturalNews reported that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had already begun seizing website domains and ordering that they be shut down permanently for supposed copyright infringement — and the agency did this apart from due process or a proper trial (http://www.naturalnews.com/030542_c…).
No law or legal precedent permitted this rogue agency — which is a tyrannical spawn of post-9/11 hysteria that is not even constitutionally legitimate to begin with, by the way — to undergo its website seizing operation. The agency simply decided to break the law and do as it pleased.
Now, certain members of Congress are pushing to turn this oppressive, illegal tyranny into law through the Protect IP Act, which by all appearances is even more severe than Read more…
Big gaps in Australia’s cyber defences
Australia has not plugged all the gaps in its online defences despite the threats posed by the rapid rise of cyber espionage and “hacktivism”, a government-commissioned report has found.
The report discusses the results of cyber war games called Cyber Storm, involving Australia and 12 other countries last year, which simulated a large-scale international cyber security incident.
Citing “gaps” in the cyber security procedures of both government and Australian industry, the report’s author, former army intelligence officer Miles Jakeman, noted that there were areas where “communications and planning could be further developed”.
The gaps were acknowledged by the federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, during a speech at a cyber security conference in Canberra yesterday.
“[The report] did highlight gaps within existing government and business cyber incident processes … this feedback allows both government and businesses to take steps to improve our cyber security,” he said.
The report is further evidence that the Read more…
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