The researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will later this month discuss a new software system that would let multiple levels of classified data traverse current commercial and military wireless networks while preserving the security of sensitive information.
+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016+
The agency’s Secure Handhelds on Assured Resilient networks at the tactical Edge (SHARE) program will “secure tactical mobile handheld devices to support distributed multilevel information sharing without the need for reaching back to large-scale fixed infrastructure, create new networks based on resilient and secure architectures that work in challenging environments, and develop software that rapidly configures security across the network,” DARPA says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Imagine you are the receptionist at the front desk of a bank around Valentine’s Day. There are countless bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate being dropped off for delivery to employees. You just set them aside and alert the employee upon arrival.But what about that one box with no name on it that just says “To my love.” Taped to the box is a DVD. The delivery person says he doesn’t know who it is for, he tells the receptionist that he just delivers the packages. The receptionist wants the romantic package to make it to the intended target, so she puts the DVD into her computer in hopes it can give her a clue.A video animation pops up on her screen of a bunny saying “I love you.” However behind the scenes an executable is placed on the computer. And now the criminal is inside the company’s network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
IBM's Watson Health artificial intelligence unit has signed a two-year joint-development agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to explore using blockchain technology to securely share patient data for medical research and other purposes.IBM Watson Health and the FDA will explore the exchange of patient-level data from several sources, including electronic medical records (EMRs), clinical trials, genomic data, and health data from mobile devices, wearables and the "Internet of Things." The initial focus will be on oncology-related information."The healthcare industry is undergoing significant changes due to the vast amounts of disparate data being generated. Blockchain technology provides a highly secure, decentralized framework for data sharing that will accelerate innovation throughout the industry," IBM Watson Health Chief Science Officer Shahram Ebadollahi said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A startup with a strong pedigree is trying to address the problem that businesses have keeping up with the ever-increasing options for authentication.Transmit Security is shipping a server platform that off-loads the authentication chores that would otherwise reside within applications, making it simpler to roll out authentication in the first place and to upgrade it later without ever touching the applications themselves. Rakesh Loonkar
Rakesh LoonkarTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It took less than a week for criminals to drain virtually all publicly exposed MongoDB servers of their data, and now a second tier of opportunistic thieves is trying to walk off with the ransom.When attackers initially deleted the data, sometimes terabytes at a time, they left ransom notes demanding payments in bitcoin.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Be careful not to fall for these ransomware situations +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and senior members of his campaign team allegedly knew and supported the leak of emails of the Democratic National Committee, according to unsubstantiated documents leaked by a news outlet on Tuesday.The dossier of memos, published by BuzzFeed, quotes an unnamed "Source E," described as an ethnic Russian and close associate of Trump, as acknowledging that the Russian regime had been behind the leak of e-mail messages originating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to the WikiLeaks whistleblowing site. The Trump team in return agreed to "sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue,” and raise certain issues that would deflect attention from Ukraine.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A classified intelligence report on the Kremlin’s suspected efforts to meddle with the U.S. election reportedly includes a bombshell allegation: that Russian operatives have compromising personal and financial information about President-elect Donald Trump.According to CNN, the allegation was presented to Trump last week in a meeting with U.S. intelligence chiefs to discuss claims of Russia’s role in sponsoring hacks that influenced last year’s election.Trump had questioned Russia's role in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee before the meeting, but afterwards changed his tune and conceded Russia could have played a role.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Adobe Systems released security updates for its Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat products fixing critical vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to install malware on computers.The Flash Player update fixes 13 vulnerabilities, 12 that can lead to remote code execution and one that allows attackers to bypass a security restriction and disclose information. Adobe is not aware of any exploit for these flaws existing in the wild.Users are advised to upgrade to Flash Player version 24.0.0.194 on Windows, Mac and Linux. The Flash Player plug-in bundled with Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer will be automatically upgraded through those browsers' respective update mechanisms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Democratic groups and figures weren't the only ones targeted in Russia’s suspected campaign to influence last year's U.S. election. Russian cyberspies also targeted computers from state-level Republican groups and stole information from local voter registration records, FBI director James Comey said."There were successful penetrations of some groups and campaigns, particularly at the state-level on the Republican side," Comey said during a senate committee hearing on Tuesday.He and three U.S. intelligence chiefs spoke at the hearing, following their Friday report accused the Kremlin of ordering a covert campaign that helped boost incoming President Donald Trump's election chances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has released its first batch of patches for this year, and it's one of the smallest ever for the company, with only three vulnerabilities fixed across its entire product portfolio.The patches are covered in four security bulletins, but one is dedicated to Flash Player, for which Microsoft distributed patches through Windows update.The only security bulletin rated as critical is the one for Microsoft Office and Office Services and Web Apps. It covers a memory corruption vulnerability that can be exploited by tricking users to open specially crafted files and can lead to remote code execution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the first Patch Tuesday of 2017, Microsoft is easing us into it by releasing only four security bulletins, half are of which are rated as critical for remote code execution flaws. In reality, only three of those are for Windows systems!This is the lightest load I can recall Microsoft handing us. It almost feels like this surely can’t be right, but hey – you didn’t want to work hard today anyhow, did you?CriticalMS17-002 resolves a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word 2016 32-bit and 64-bit editions and Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016 are listed as the only affected software versions. The RCE bug is a result of Office software failing to properly handle objects in memory. If an attacker successfully exploited the flaw, and the user had admin rights, the attacker could take control of the box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A cybersabotage program that wiped data from 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia's national oil company in 2012 has returned and is able to target server-hosted virtual desktops.The malware, known as Shamoon or Disttrack, is part of a family of destructive programs known as disk wipers. Similar tools were used in 2014 against Sony Pictures Entertainment in the U.S. and in 2013 against several banks and broadcasting organizations in South Korea.Shamoon was first observed during the 2012 cyberattack against Saudi Aramco. It spreads to other computers on a local network by using stolen credentials and activates its disk-wiping functionality on a preconfigured date.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fortinet is adding Cisco, HPE and Nokia to its stable of partners whose security gear can share information with Fortinet products to improve overall security.The company is announcing at its Accelerate 2017 customer conference this week that equipment made by these new partners will integrate into the Fortinet Security Fabric via an API to tighten security in core networks, remote devices and the cloud.The amount of sharing that goes on depends on the individual third-parties’ APIs.Fortigate Security Fabric is woven from Fortinet products that can communicate among each other to find and analyze threats and let admins see their input in a single window. That’s an upgrade from the initial fabric in which IT teams had to switch among the dashboards for the Fortinet products involved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marissa Mayer is getting ready to say goodbye to Yahoo's board, but not necessarily to the Yahoo brand.The company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday that it will shed almost everything that makes it Yahoo, including its name, when its deal with Verizon closes. If you're a Yahoo shareholder, you might notice the difference, but for Yahoo users, the consequences of Monday's filing are minimal. Yahoo the company has two major assets: a worldwide network of internet portals, and a 15 percent stake in Chinese internet giant Alibaba worth many times that. When a plan to sell off the Alibaba stake ran into tax complications, the company pivoted, instead striking a deal to sell its portals, its brand -- almost everything but the Alibaba stake, in fact -- to Verizon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Best Buy has quite a support service in Geek Squad. It's the only national tech service center, and it makes house calls. I had a tech come to calibrate my HDTV set, and the difference was night and day. In 2014, Geek Squad brought in $1.8 billion in revenue, which was a drop from the previous year, but still accounted for 5 percent of Best Buy revenue. So, it's not insignificant. And it seems the geeks are making a few extra bucks. The Orange County Weekly reports that the company's repair technicians routinely search devices brought in for repair for files that could earn them $500 reward as FBI informants. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week's U.S. intelligence report tracing Russia's cyber-meddling with the 2016 presidential election is a timely reminder of the cybersecurity risks that the government and private companies face, said Tom Ridge, the nation's first secretary of Homeland Security."President-elect Trump is entering into a world fraught with hazards as never before," Ridge said in a telephone interview on Monday. "Russia is a reminder that cyberattacks are a permanent risk to individuals and countries and companies, and you must do all you can to understand the risk. It's a reminder of how serious and permanent the risk is. The risk continues to get deeper."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
By 2035, developers will have learned to automate many jobs. Investments in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and robotics will surge, displacing workers. And a more connected world will increase -- not reduce -- differences, increasing nationalism and populism, according to a new government intelligence assessment prepared just in time for President-elect Donald Trump's administration.The "Global Trends" report, unveiled Monday, is produced every four years by the National Intelligence Council. It is released just before the inauguration of a new or returning president. The council is tasked with helping to shape U.S. strategic thinking.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Let's say—for whatever reason—you're concerned about keeping your communications safe from government prying. Assuming you aren't a high-profile target to warrant direct hacking (the United Arab Emirates allegedly tried to breach the digital defenses of human-rights activist Ahmed Mansoor on three occasions, for example), there are reasonable measures you can take to live a normal life and continue to have private thoughts and private conversations.Note that I'm not singling out any government or administration. Politics aside, we should all think like dissidents, because the tide ebbs and flows from freedom to dictatorship and from left to right all around the world. The common thread is taking smart measures.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A bill has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would require that law enforcement agencies get a warrant before they poke around users’ emails and other communications in the cloud that are older than 180 days.
The Email Privacy Act, reintroduced on Monday, aims to fix a loophole in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that allows the government to search without warrant email and other electronic communications older than 180 days, stored on servers of third-party service providers such as Google and Yahoo.
“Thanks to the wording in a more than 30-year-old law, the papers in your desk are better protected than the emails in your inbox,” digital rights organization, Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For better or worse, a security firm’s attempt to cash in on software bugs -- by shorting a company’s stock and then publicizing the flaws -- might have pioneered a new approach to vulnerability disclosure.Last August, security company MedSec revealed it had found flaws in pacemakers and other healthcare products from St. Jude Medical, potentially putting patients at risk.However, the controversy came over how MedSec sought to cash in on those bugs: it did so, by partnering with an investment firm to bet against St. Jude’s stock. Since then, the two parties have been locked in a legal battle over the suspected vulnerabilities. But on Monday, MedSec claimed some vindication.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here