The Security Game Needs to Change
SAN FRANCISCO–You don’t need to look too hard or talk to too many people at the RSA Conference here this week to realize that there is one subtle but persistent signal amid all of the noise: security is failing.
Hacks
UPDATE: Interpol Operation Leads to Arrest of 25 Suspected Anons
Interpol announced yesterday that they had taken part in an international operation that led to the arrests of 25 alleged members of the Anonymous hacker collective. The not-arrested members of Anonymous reportedly lashed back with a stinging DDoS attack on Interpol’s website.
Debate Over Active Defense and Hacking Back Crops Up at RSA
SAN FRANCISCO–The growing stream of attacks in recent years against government agencies, critical infrastructure, utilities and other vital networks has led to an increasingly heated debate around the concept of active defense and targeting the people and groups behind those attacks. That debate has been going on behind closed doors in Washington for years, but it spilled out into the public during a forum on the ethics and legality of active defense at the RSA Conference here Tuesday.
Google threw down the gloves on their Chromium Blog yesterday with an announcement that they would pay out up to $1 million in prize money for Chrome exploits at CanSecWest this year.
Right on cue this week, the anarchic hacking collective Anonymous stepped up and grabbed the story line away from the lions of the IT security industry.With the annual RSA Conference set to begin, the whistle blowing site Wikileaks released the first of some five million e-mail messages stolen from the security intelligence firm Stratfor. Ever sensitive to the fickle attention of the media, Anonymous inserted itself into the story, claiming responsibility for leaking the data and pointing a finger of blame at Stratfor and its media, private and public sector customers, which Anonymous accuses of spying and other dark offenses.
The whistle-blower Web site Wikileaks has published what it claims are the first of millions of internal e-mails taken from the Texas based strategic intelligence firm Stratfor.
Security researchers will be demonstrating an end-to-end phishing attack on Google Android phones that utilizes a zero-day vulnerability in Apple’s WebKit technology at the upcoming RSA Conference.
A 26-year-old Briton was sentenced to eight months for hacking Facebook in 2011.
The Anonymous hacker collective lashed out against two companies it accuses of selling crowd control technologies to repressive regimes and to law enforcement, the Associated Press reports.
The anarchic hacking collective Anonymous took credit for a successful attack on Web sites belonging to the FTC. The attack, on Friday, was in protest for the U.S. Government’s support of ACTA, the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.[Story updated to include comment from the FTC.]
