Category: News

“Really in the cyber world, myself, Bob Mueller — the head of the FBI, and Keith Alexander — General Alexander — the head of the NSA, have worked very closely together to develop playbooks and to really ascertain who has what roles and what responsibilities in different types of scenarios,” Napolitano said.

In “civilian space” — described as the dot-coms and dot-orgs of the internet — she said “our ability to detect, prevent, and mitigate is materially based on whether we know something has occurred.”

According to the Associated Press, President Obama wrote an executive order that would allow DHS to share cyber-threat information, gathered by the government, with businesses involved in critical infrastructure.

NBC News reported that President Obama is expected to sign the order and that it “would set up a voluntary system to help protect some critical infrastructure and offer incentives to companies that participate. But without a new law, companies cannot be granted any kind of legal immunity for sharing information with the government and within the industry about potential threats.”

Link:http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attack-is-imminent-says-dhs-secretary-napolitano

Paunescu, a Romanian national based in Bucharest, operated a so-called “bullet-proof” hosting service using computers housed in Romania, the United States and other countries. The complaint says Paunescu provided Kuzmin and others with servers and IP addresses that allowed them to use and distribute Gozi and other banking Trojans such, as Zeus and SpyEye, with relative anonymity.

The court papers also allege Paunescu’s rented servers hosted the tools used to launch distributed denial of service attacks, including several that took advantage of the infamous Black Energy botnet. The server were often used as command and control servers for botnets and as proxy systems that let attackers to hide their identities, the complaint said.

Calovskis, a Latvian national, was indicted on charges of developing a web injection code that was used to alter how banking websites appeared on infected computers. The software fooled victims into providing key security information such as their mother’s social security number and mother’s maiden name when they attempted to log into their bank’s website.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9236055/Three_indicted_for_making_spreading_Gozi_Trojan?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2013-01-23

Paunescu, a Romanian national based in Bucharest, operated a so-called “bullet-proof” hosting service using computers housed in Romania, the United States and other countries. The complaint says Paunescu provided Kuzmin and others with servers and IP addresses that allowed them to use and distribute Gozi and other banking Trojans such, as Zeus and SpyEye, with relative anonymity.

The court papers also allege Paunescu’s rented servers hosted the tools used to launch distributed denial of service attacks, including several that took advantage of the infamous Black Energy botnet. The server were often used as command and control servers for botnets and as proxy systems that let attackers to hide their identities, the complaint said.

Calovskis, a Latvian national, was indicted on charges of developing a web injection code that was used to alter how banking websites appeared on infected computers. The software fooled victims into providing key security information such as their mother’s social security number and mother’s maiden name when they attempted to log into their bank’s website.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9236055/Three_indicted_for_making_spreading_Gozi_Trojan?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2013-01-23

“Given the responses highlighting the need for better data access, and revealing inconsistent measurement and process improvements, this year’s respondents appear to be much more honest, realistic and self-aware. This is a significant change compared to previous years, as professionals are becoming more vocal about their dissatisfaction with traditional security practices’ inability to provide the intelligence necessary to counter evolving threats and address organizations’ changing requirements.”

When studying responses stating that professionals had “inconsistent” and “consistent” measurements and comparing them year over year, Sensage discovered that, while slightly more than 50% of the respondents felt they were inconsistently measuring in 2010 and 2011, 61% shared that challenge in 2012.

While responses in 2010 and 2011 reflected a close split between those who consider their processes coordinated and those that don’t, that was not the case in 2012, where 66% of respondents felt that they were resorting to reactive triage or had no coordination at all.

The bad news: A massive drop — from 18% in 2010 to 5% in 2012 — of those who felt they had a consistent and adequately staffed process improvement program.

More bad news: When comparing respondents who maintain consistent process improvement, there was a significant drop, from 65% in 2011 to 40% in 2012.

The bad news: A massive drop — from 18% in 2010 to 5% in 2012 — of those who felt they had a consistent and adequately staffed process improvement program.

More bad news: When comparing respondents who maintain consistent process improvement, there was a significant drop, from 65% in 2011 to 40% in 2012.

Worse news: 96% of 2012 respondents had no process, inconsistent process or consistent process that was understaffed.

For more information: http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=13499

The acquisition of Fidelis Security Systems allows General Dynamics to continue to deliver relevant and innovative cybersecurity solutions that help customers maintain the edge to successfully address and respond to dynamic cyber-threats,” said Lou Von Thaer, president of General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems.

Fidelis Security Systems has offices in Maryland and Massachusetts. Its network security solutions help stop advanced threats and prevent data breaches by exposing malicious content in network layers in real-time.

“The combination of Fidelis Security Systems’ products and General Dynamics’ cyber services and incident response capabilities will strengthen our customers’ ability to achieve situational awareness to protect and defend their networks.”

No 1 – Android malware, everyone seems to bring it up and everyone else seems to beam with excitement
No 2 – Malware feeds, and the challenge of how existing investments and security awareness needs to be improved
No 3 – Cloud, no longer the threat of the unknown but now something that is accepted and even leveraged to provide better security

Overall the security conference seems to be more mature, and people are more interested in networking, talking and sharing.
This might be one of the better years for the RSA security conferences.