The Web site of Wikileaks was moving quickly to stay out of the way of large scale denial of service attacks on Sunday and Monday, following the release of a trove of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables. The controversial site, which has spent months trying to find a home secure from government seizure, now appears to be hosted on servers that are part of U.S. firm Amazon.com’s giant hosted Web Services infrastructure based in Seattle, Washington.
China has long used the Internet’s Domain Name Service (DNS) to censor Web sites and information that the ruling Communist Party deems threatening. But now security experts warn that the government’s censorship is in danger of spilling over China’s borders: suppressing the ability of those living outside of China to find information online.
By Dave Merkel
I’m a dirty vendor. That
may not be the best way to start a serious dialogue about security product
effectiveness, but I hate to read a post on security theory by some insincere
tie-wearing wonk only to discover afterwards that he or she is Lord High Poobah
of Marketing at “Scaring You For Profit, Inc.”
So I’ll just tell you who and what I am up front. I may have to wear the
tie, but I don’t have to be that guy.
Continue at your own risk.
Reports surfaced last week about an incident dating back to April, 2010 that involved the suspicious rerouting of Internet traffic through infrastructure belonging to a telecommunications carrier in China. Originally reported within technical circles in April, the incident simmered within the small community of network operators who debated the cause of what appeared to be a large scale hijacking of Internet traffic to infrastructure operated by China Telecommunications. But was it?
In this video of a speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs, Bruce Schneier discusses the current state of cyber war and whether the actual threat has been overhyped and distorted.
A German security researcher who used a new kind of hosted offering on Amazon’s EC2 to decipher password data encrypted using the SHA1 algorithm said that cloud computing is likely to upset long held assumptions about security: putting the tools required to crack encrypted passwords and data into the hands of the masses.
The latest in what has become a long line of legislation introduced in the House and the Senate in 2010 that attempts to address the country’s computer security shortcomings is a new measure brought forward by Rep. Bennie Thompson that would, among other things, allow the to force certain private network operators to adhere to some specific “performance-based standards” for securing their networks.
Symantec’s not saying that the Stuxnet worm was a state-sponsored creation designed to take out the centrifuges that power Iran’s controversial uranium enrichment program. The company’s just saying that if someone can come up with another explanation that pieces together the latest analysis of the worm, they’d love to hear it.
“The sad truth is that Shodan is just scratching the surface of unprotected or misconfigured SCADA devices… And, of course, the search engine merely finds systems. It doesn’t expose
the myriad of bad security practices that seem to be rampant amongst vendors and operators.“
Internet Eyes is a U.K. startup designed to crowdsource digital surveillance. People pay a small fee to become a “Viewer.” Once they do, they can log onto the site and view live anonymous feeds from surveillance cameras at retail stores. If they notice someone shoplifting, they can alert the store owner. Viewers get rated on their ability to differentiate real shoplifting from false alarms, can win 1000 pounds if they detect the most shoplifting in some time interval, and otherwise get paid a wage that most likely won’t cover their initial fee.
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