Hard on the heels of the discovery of the largest known data breach in history, Cloudera and Intel on Wednesday announced that they've donated a new open source project to the Apache Software Foundation with a focus on using big data analytics and machine learning for cybersecurity.Originally created by Intel and launched as the Open Network Insight (ONI) project in February, the effort is now called Apache Spot and has been accepted into the ASF Incubator."The idea is, let's create a common data model that any application developer can take advantage of to bring new analytic capabilities to bear on cybersecurity problems," Mike Olson, Cloudera co-founder and chief strategy officer, told an audience at the Strata+Hadoop World show in New York. "This is a big deal, and could have a huge impact around the world."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I am currently embarking on a quest to make my entire life as private and secure as possible—while still having a good time and enjoying the fruits of the modern world. In this article, I won’t go into why I am doing this. For that, see my article introducing this endeavor.What I’d like to talk about right now are some pretty high-level things—laying out the ground rules, if you will, for what I’m trying to accomplish.First, let me start by saying none of this is about open source or free software. Licensing of software, while extremely important, is not the focus here. This is about privacy and security and absolutely nothing else.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you are going to be dressing up in a costume for Halloween, then you might want to avoid dressing like a creepy clown, considering the sinister clown hysteria sweeping the nation. You don’t want to wear a clown costume in Kentucky where a sheriff contacted the FBI and Homeland Security over the “creepy clown” threat. In fact, in Gallatin County, Kentucky, the sheriff warned that people behind “clown threats” might face charges of “inducing panic and terroristic threatening.”Pennywise from Stephen King’s It really ruined clowns for a lot of people, changing their opinion of clowns from funny or cute to scary and creepy as can be. When the evil clown craze first started cranking up, some people suggested the clown sightings were pranks tied to some sort of promotion for the upcoming film It. Others suggested the clown sightings were inspired by Rob Zombie’s film 31, which includes kidnapped hostages trying to survive a violent game against a gang of sadistic clowns.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You cannot say that Elon Musk doesn’t dream big. Today he outlined what would be his biggest aspiration ever – colonizing Mars.If you watched Musk, who is SpaceX Founder, CEO, and Lead Designer deliver the details today on his Mars colonizing mission to the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico you may have been struck by the matter-of-fact way he delivered the details of what even he calls a very complex and dangerous mission.“I think the first trips to Mars are going to be really, very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There is just no way around it," he said. "It would basically be, 'Are you prepared to die?' Then if that's ok, then you are a candidate for going."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marten Mickos, a veteran executive with companies from MySQL to Sun, Nokia and HP, was not particularly excited about his meeting to explore a leadership role with HackerOne, a fledgling security company. Security is hard, it’s unpleasant, it doesn’t work very well. But he perked up fast after learning about HackerOne’s crowdsourced model of finding and fixing security flaws – a model in which HackerOne plays a key matchmaking role between companies and ethical hackers in a rapidly growing marketplace of skills and needs. After all, Mickos – who joined as CEO in November, 2015 – knows well the power of crowdsourcing, having served as chief executive of open source companies Eucalyptus and MySQL. In this conversation with IDG Chief Content Officer John Gallant, Mickos explains how the HackerOne system works and how companies get started. He talks about the company’s bug bounty platform for private and public-facing projects, and discusses how it can be expanded to tackle other big security problems in the future. Mickos also explores what attitude adjustments are required from mainstream companies in order to embrace crowdsourced security. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Over the years I’ve done a number of—let’s just call them “experiments in computering”—where I attempt to use my computers in such a way that is outside of my comfort zone. Living entirely in a terminal. Getting rid of all Google software and services. Using nothing but a version of FreeDOS. That sort of thing. I typically give myself the simple goal of “do it for 30 days, and see how it goes.” In the process, I always learn something—about what I like, about what is possible. And even if I don’t learn a cotton-pickin’ thing of value, it’s still kinda fun—kinda. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Six U.S. senators have called Yahoo's massive data breach "unacceptable," and they're demanding that the company provide more details about the incident.In a letter addressed to Yahoo's CEO, the lawmakers said they were particularly "disturbed" that the breach occurred in 2014, but that Yahoo only publicized it last week."That means millions of Americans' data may have been compromised for two years," the letter said. "This is unacceptable."The hacking incident, which Yahoo said it only learned recently, affects at least 500 million user accounts, making it perhaps the largest known data breach in history. Account information, including email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords, may have been stolen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have discovered more ransomware under development, namely one paying homage to Voldemort and another featuring Donald Trump, as well as one variant currently targeting servers and yet a different ransomware hitting government agencies and education institutions.Let’s start with the ransomware that has moved past development into actively locking up computers.DXXD ransomware targeting serversOn Bleeping Computer forums, there were reports of servers being hit with DXXD ransomware. After a file has been encrypted, “dxxd” is added to the end of a filename such as myimportantfile.jpgdxxd.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Banks stopped three new attempts to abuse the Swift financial transfer network this summer, its CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said Monday, as he announced Swift's plan to impose tighter security controls on its customers.Swift provides the network that banks use to exchange funds internationally, and hit the headlines in February when attackers almost got away with a billion-dollar heist at Bangladesh Bank. In the end, they only succeeded in stealing US$81 million after hacking bank systems connected to the Swift network.That prompted Swift to ratchet up security around its systems, which weren't themselves breached, updating the software it provides banks and adding new audit and verification tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security blogger Brian Krebs says a massive distributed denial-of-service attack that took down his Web site last week was likely the consequences for his outing of two Israelis who ran a DDoS-for-hire business.+More on Network World: The IoT is uranium+The pair, whom he identifies as Itay Huri and Yarden Bidani, both 18, were arrested in Israel at the request of the FBI six days after Krebs posted his blog and are now under house arrest.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Super mobile workerImage by ThinkstockWe are entering the age of “supermobility,” in which mobile devices will provide all of the tools and technology that employees need to be productive on the go. And while workplace flexibility and convenience are at an all-time high, super-mobile employees are actually putting enormous amounts of company data at risk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nation-states and savvy criminal hackers don’t pull uninformed, spur-of-the-moment smash-and-grab jobs on data networks. They reconnoiter and position themselves to slowly implement precise surgical maneuvers to exfiltrate your information treasures. Most of these attackers are capable of ensuring you remain unaware of their movements until it is to their benefit for you to know.High-profile attacks that leveraged extended dwell time inside the networks of large retail chains such as Target are examples of how hackers farm or manage victim organizations in this manner.Hackers farm their targets by maintaining a veiled presence in sensitive places in and around government and enterprise networks, revealing their position in a calculated way at an optimal time to achieve some strategic goal, says Danny Rogers, CEO at Terbium Labs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This is the final entry in our series on the 20 Critical Security Controls devised by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) as best practices to help the public and private sectors tighten their cybersecurity.We started down the path of building a solid security foundation by taking inventory of hardware and software, we looked at vulnerability assessment and administrative privileges, and we discussed how to build malware defenses. We also explored how to create a data recovery plan, how to protect your data, and the importance of monitoring and training employees.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Yahoo has blamed its massive data breach on a "state-sponsored actor." But the company isn't saying why it arrived at that conclusion. Nor has it provided any evidence.The lingering questions are causing some security experts to wonder why Yahoo isn't offering more details on a hack that stole account information from 500 million users."I think there's a lot of fishiness going on here," said Michael Lipinski, the chief security strategist at Securonix.Yahoo didn't respond to a request for comment. The company has protocols in place that can detect state-sponsored hacking into user accounts. In a December 2015 blog post, the company outlined its policy, saying it will warn users when this is suspected. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Use your smartphone to open this padlock from Master Lock. Share access, monitor access history and receive alerts if someone is tampering. Designed for outdoor use, its shackle offers 2 inch vertical clearance and is made of boron for maximum resistance to cutting and sawing. The lock features alternate methods of access for when Bluetooth isn't available or the replaceable battery dies. Its typical list price of $89 has been reduced 34% to $59 (see on Amazon). An indoor version is available, also at a discount (28% off, $50 -- See on Amazon).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have found a new Mac OS X malware that appears to be targeting the aerospace industry.The Trojan, called Komplex, can download, execute, and delete files from an infected Mac, according to security firm Palo Alto Networks. Interestingly, the Trojan will also save a PDF document to the infected system concerning the Russian space program.The PDF document details planned Russian space projects from 2016 to 2025, but it acts as a decoy, Palo Alto Networks said in Monday blog post.In reality, the Trojan is a package of tools that will attempt to secretly communicate with its creators' command-and-control servers. This includes sending back data on the version, username, and process list running on the infected system. The Trojan can also receive instructions, and it will forward the results to the control servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Akamai deserves credit for the way it disclosed why it stopped protecting the Krebs on Security Web site last week after defending it for three days from the largest botnet it had ever encountered.It must have been embarrassing for the company to acknowledge that it was a business decision it was forced to make because of the expense and consumption of resources to keep the site up was too great.But the company did so and addressed a more important issue, namely that the attack was generated by a botnet of Internet of Things devices, mainly cameras, routers and DVRs, according to Krebs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Does the thought of 600 Gbps-plus of traffic hitting your URLs excite you? Do you get tingles up and down your spine thinking about watching your line of business apps frying? Perhaps that wonderful text, where an alert from you financial processor says “We’ve gone black, again, and expect to be back online perhaps maybe possibly tonight” thrills you.The Internet of Thingies (IoT) is actually nuclear, and we’ve witnessed the first use of a nuclear internet weapon. Brian Krebs’ Krebs on Security site was smashed. It could happen to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researchers have been warning for years that poor security for internet of things devices could have serious consequences. We're now seeing those warnings come true, with botnets made up of compromised IoT devices capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale.
Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, sounded the alarm on Twitter last week when his company was hit with two concurrent DDoS attacks whose combined bandwidth reached almost 1 terabit per second. One of the two attacks peaked at 799Gbps alone, making it the largest ever reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here