Government

During the Reagan Administration, the ‘government waste’ meme was all about $600 toilet seats and $300 hammers. Those looking for a more contemporary example of how government procurement gets it wrong might point, instead, to Project 25 (P25), a decade old effort to provide first responders and federal officials with a reliable and secure emergency radio system.

Spear phishing attacks against U.S. government officials, politicians and public policy wonks are using a D.C. think tank favored by the Obama Administration as bait, according to a report from researcher Mila Parkour. 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge will present evidence of what they say is wide spread manipulation of search results that direct unwitting Web surfers to dodgy and illicit online pharmacy sites. 

Reports about the potential for biometric scanning to usher in a new age of super snooping have prompted a retort from the industry itself, as one CEO used an interview with InfoSecurity.com this week to throw cold water on research from Carnegie Mellon University and argue that people – not face scanners – are the source of privacy breaches. 

DEFCON, the cash-only, aliases-welcome hacker conference took place in the moral vacuum of Las Vegas, Nevada this weekend, as it has every Summer since 1993. This year there was no shortage of controversial presentations and panel discussions. If you were short the airfare, the $150 entrance fee, gave up on the three hour line-ageddon to pick up your badge or – admit it – your boss (or spouse) just wouldn’t let you go, have no fear. The show was crawling with media, including computer security reporters and even the mainstream media (CBS and NPR were there). Here’s our round up of some of the major stories to come out of this year’s DEFCON conference. 

Hacker collectives, LulzSec and Anonymous claim to have compromised the servers of the Missouri Sheriff’s Association, posting some 10GB of sensitive data online.

By B.K. DeLongWith alleged Anonymous leadership such as Sabu and opponents such as th3j35t3r tweeting about their supposed shenanigans in Las Vegas, the question on everyone’s mind this week is whether Anonymous is truly walking the halls of this week’s Black Hat and DEFCON hacker conferences.  Some believe the answer to that question is almost certainly ‘yes’ but not for the reasons you might think – here’s my opinion based on several discussions I’ve had throughout the week.