By Tom Kellerman (Core Security)
This week’s news that former National Cyber Security Center Director Rod Beckstrom was named as the newest president of ICANN – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Net’s most influential governing body – is a very encouraging sign that we’re living in an era when issues of cyber-security are being given greater consideration than ever before, and with good reason, of course.
From The New York Times (Thom Shanker)
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Tuesday ordered the creation of the military’s first headquarters designed to coordinate Pentagon efforts in the emerging battlefield of cyberspace and computer-network security, officials said. Read the full story [NYTimes.com].
From The Baltimore Sun (Gus G. Sentementes)
The Web site for the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which works closely with the military and NASA on research projects, was hit with a cyber attack that officials discovered Sunday and which led them to take down the site until they analyze their computer systems, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday. Read the full report [Baltimoresun.com].
The first reports of the short list for the job of federal cybersecurity coordinator are beginning to trickle out, and while some of the names are all too familiar, many others are quite new to the national scene.
A rogue Internet Service Provider that recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content has been shut down by a district court judge at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. The ISP’s upstream providers and data centers have disconnected its servers from the Internet. Read the full FTC announcement [ftc.gov]
Dennis Fisher talks with Securosis founder Rich Mogull about Mac security, Obama’s cybersecurity plan and his Project Quantpatch-management work with Microsoft.
While much of the reaction to President Obama’s speech on Internet security last week has centered on who Obama will name to the newly created cybersecurity coordinator position, that may be a moot point unless there is a dramatic change in the way that security is handled at the highest levels in Washington, experts say.
By Eugene Spafford, Purdue University
On July 17, 2008, (then) Senator Barack Obama held a town hall meeting on national security at Purdue University. He and his panel covered issues of nuclear, biological and cyber security.
In the first episode of the Threatpost Daily News Wrap podcast, Threatpost editors Ryan Naraine and Dennis Fisher discuss President Obama’s cybersecurity plan and the Microsoft DirectShow vulnerability.
President Obama on Friday presented his long-awaited cybersecurity plan, which included the establishment of a new White House office headed by a cybersecurity “coordinator” who would oversee and advise Obama on this issue. He also proposed hiring a separate official dedicated to privacy and civil liberties concerns. The proposal, which bears a striking resemblance to the six-year-old National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, is ambitious in its scope and scale and it likely will face many of the same roadblocks that previous efforts in this area have faced.
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