Category: News

In a statement, Bank of America did not confirm it was working with TEKsystems, an IT consultancy that is part of the Allegis Group. “The source of this release has confirmed that the data was not acquired by a hack but because it was stored on a misconfigured server and basically open for grabs,” the group said.

HB Gary Federal, a California security consultancy, was compromised by Anonymous in 2011 after the company had researched the real identities of some Anonymous members.

Par:AnoIA’s data dump includes a batch of more than 500 emails with brief reports on the Occupy Wall Street movement and hacking groups such as TeaMp0isoN and UGNazi. The data also included a special file listing of four intelligence analysts who authored some of the emails, including three who work for TEKsystems and one who formerly worked for Bank of America. Par:AnoIA said its release also includes the application OneCalais, which collects unstructured information from news stories, blogs and research reports.

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2029981/bank-of-america-says-hackers-lifted-its-data-from-a-partner.html

“As soon as the ABC was made aware of this activity the site was shut down,” Cray said. “This breach originated at an overseas location and an activist has claimed responsibility for it.”

Random checks against user identities listed within the 10 page online database dump returned legitimate matches.

The hacker claiming responsibility said the attack was in response to an interview broadcast on the ABC’s Lateline program with the right-wing Wilders.

Link: http://www.crn.com.au/News/334708,hacker-raids-abc.aspx?utm_source=pcta&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=networkbar

“We’re pulling in cyber and physical folks to do joint assessments, looking at what are the cyber vulnerabilities, what are the physical vulnerabilities, how do they relate to each other, and importantly, what are the cascading effects?”

An alignment of policies and actions in cybersecurity is happening across the government, recently evidenced by mandates for cooperation and information-sharing rolled out in President Barack Obama’s executive order and accompanying presidential policy directive. On the military side, a parallel alignment is taking place as well, but it has required a careful consideration of core missions and how to meet their requirements, according to one Defense Department official.

“So one thing we needed to do in defining the missions…we needed to align forces, capability and capacity to each one of the missions.”

Those missions – defending national security against cyber threats, securing the DOD information network and supporting combatant commands – are still being tweaked at CyberCom, now in its third year of full operation.

Link: http://fcw.com/articles/2013/02/22/cyber-conventional-war.aspx

The patch also updates Apple’s provided version of Java to 1.6.0_41; the update is available by choosing Software Update from the Apple menu or visiting the Mac App Store and clicking on Updates.

In line with the company’s recent policy on Java, these downloads will disable Apple’s built-in Java plugin; users who try to run applets in their browser will instead be prompted to download the latest version of the Java plug-in from Oracle. One additional casualty this time around, for 10.7 and later, is the Java Preferences app that usually lives in OS X’s Utilities folder—Apple says it’s no longer necessary for configuration.

Apple is only the latest target in a recent spate of cyber attacks that have hit institutions like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal along with tech companies like Facebook and Twitter; most of those attacks have been traced back to China.

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2028740/apple-confirms-cyber-attack-will-release-security-tool.html

Some other areas include activities which will endanger the national security of the other party, transnational organised crimes, terrorism and any other crimes referred to in this agreement, human trafficking as well as illegal immigration, particularly abuse of women and children and also cyber crimes and other offences which take place by misuse of communication and telecommunication devices.

On a question about methods of co-operation, Rehman Malik said each country will adopt measures for implementation of this agreement which would identify group or persons involved in transnational organized crimes or who are wanted for such crimes and providing relevant information such as pictures, fingerprints.

The other areas are exchange of information on laws for prevention of crimes, which have been included in this agreement, exchange of information and experiences on strengthening the management and controlling of borders such as through equipping the border stations and regular meetings between border guards and exchange of information and experiences on new types of narcotics, psychotropic substances, basic and chemical substances and the routes used for drug trafficking.

As per agreement both the countries would also cooperate in exchange of experiences in organising, training, management and education of their own forces as well as exchange of experts in order to expand bilateral co-operation to prevent organised crimes, terrorist acts, drug trafficking.

The Minister said co-operation between the two countries to prevent and combat terrorism is an important element of this agreement and added both the countries have agreed to combat the activities of terrorists groups which are considered as an offence according to the internal laws and regulations of either of the two countries or against the international convention to which both the countries are signatories.

He said the two countries have agreed to establish a joint working group headed by the Deputy Interior Minister of Iran for Security and the Secretary, Ministry of Interior of Pakistan for monitoring the performance of this agreement, to offer solutions in respect of problems faced during the course of implementation of the agreement and for reviewing and updating of this agreement, if and when required.

Link: http://www.brecorder.com/general-news/172:pakistan/1155671:pakistan-and-iran-sign-security-cooperation-agreement/?date=2013-02-20