Infosecurity News
Stalk a Democrat today: Obama for America app
Obama’s election campaign has developed and publicly released an app called ‘Obama for America’. Its purpose is to help campaign volunteers shore up votes – and tout for donations – by locating local Democrats.
South Korea leads nations in PC infections
South Korea surged to first place, vaulting past China and Taiwan, in PandaLabs’ quarterly ranking of countries with the highest percentage of infected PCs.
Reuters got caught up in a Syrian war of disinformation
Reuters has finally come clean on its hack – “a now closed vulnerability in the WordPress software” – but indicates that it is a small part of a widespread war of disinformation being waged between the two sides in Syria.
Microsoft releases internal attack surface analyzer tool
Microsoft has released to the public its internal attack surface analyzer tool, which catalogs changes made to an operating system attack surface by the installation of new software.
ISACA uncovers hidden security costs of cloud migration
In a recent white paper, global IT association ISACA identified five hidden costs of cloud migration, including a number of security-related costs.
Yahoo faces class action lawsuit over password data breach
Yahoo is facing a class action lawsuit over last month’s data breach that resulted in around 450,000 unencrypted usernames and passwords being exposed online.
ICO fines health trust in Torquay £175,000 data breach
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has levied a fine of £175,000 on a health trust in Torquay, England, for publishing sensitive data on over 1,000 employees on its website.
National concerns over the proposed EU Data Protection Regulation
Statewatch, an independent organization that keeps an eye on civil liberties in the EU, has released a leaked copy of European nations’ initial response to the proposed new Data Protection Regulation.
The Anonymous logo is not for sale
A French T-shirt company that trademarked the Anonymous headless man logo and ‘expect us’ wording has closed shop in fear of reprisals.
Red Sky hacker revealed by Anonymous
There are two main factions within Anonymous: the anarchist and the hacktivist. One believes in no rules; the other takes a moral view of its responsibility to society. One of them handed over the Red Sky hacker.
Cybersecurity Act goes down to defeat in Senate
The Senate failed on Thursday to pass the Cybersecurity Act (S 3414) despite months of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans and significant modifications of the legislation.
Agency drags feet on removing social security numbers from Medicare cards
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is delaying the removal of social security numbers (SSNs) from Medicare cards, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told a House panel this week.
Sensitive court documents ‘recycled’ in public bin
Hundreds of Madison County (Illinois) court documents containing personal information on victims involved in protection order cases were recently left in a public recycling bin behind the county’s Wood River facilities.
Chrome 21 fixes 15 security holes
Google has shipped version 21 of its Chrome browser, fixing 15 bugs in the process.
US federal cybersecurity incidents jumped 20% last year
Cybersecurity incidents involving US federal computer systems increased 20% last year, according to statistics released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
California prison workers settle data breach lawsuit
Employees at the Pelican Bay State Prison in California have reached a settlement with the state over allegations that their personnel information was exposed to prison inmates.
16 code defects uncovered for open source code bases
Software testing firm Coverity has uncovered 16 code defects, similar to a defect recently found in the MySQL database server, in nine different open source code bases, including Nmap, OpenBabble, and Ncbi-tools.
PPTP traffic should be considered unencrypted
This is the view of Moxie Marlinspike, who along with David Hulton first presented his method for cracking Microsoft’s CHAPv2 at Defcon, and has now described the process on CloudCracker.
Bachmann aide accuses candidate, senior staff of data theft
A campaign aide to former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is suing Bachmann and her senior campaign staff for allegedly stealing her private email list to promote the candidate among Christian home-school advocates in Iowa.
Better late than never: Wells Fargo appoints first CISO
In an announcement that boggles the infosec-savvy mind, global financial firm Wells Fargo has only just appointed its first chief information security officer (CISO).
