Happy Halloween! Here’s a quick survey of some recent cyber news . . .
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Tim Smith, for GreenvilleOnline.com, on that breach of South Carolina’s Department of Revenue. According to Smith, that breach saw “3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 mostly encrypted credit or debit card numbers” compromised. Moreover, it appears that the hacker broke into the system via employee credentials. SC contracted with Experian to provide credit monitoring and identity theft protection for affected citizens.
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Via NetworkWorld, Antone Gonsalves wrote for CSO on how the FBI’s recent attribution emphasis is drawing skepticism from experts. According to this blog post, the FBI is pushing its Next Generation Cyber Initiative “to expand our ability to quickly define ‘the attribution piece’ of a cyber attack to help determine an appropriate response.” However, the article cites one critic who thinks the FBI should “focus on taking down such botnets” and “stop[ping] the attacks first,” then “concentrat[ing] on putting the person who did it behind bars.”
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Here’s a link to The Washington Post’s cybersecurity event. Looks like Sec. Napolitano and Gen. Hayden spoke.
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Jeffrey Carr wrote for the Digital Dao blog on how the Chinese have already made active defense a part of their cyber doctrine.
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According to Nextgov’s Josh Smith, the healthcare industry is “urging Congress and federal officials to consider existing cybersecurity efforts before enacting new measures . . ..”
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Martha Brannigan, for the Miami Herald, on the “Hackers Halted” conference. Sounds like a whitehat conference.
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This one caught my eye. Reuter’s Joseph Menn wrote about how the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has “hired the former commanding officer of a top U.S. information-warfare until to spearhead the most direct counter-attacks.” Is private sector counterstriking taking another step forward? Crowdstrike “has pledged to respond to hackers with unusual aggression” on behalf of private companies “to disrupt the infrastructure of their attackers.” That sounds like hackback, and even though private companies are engaging in it, hackback is probably illegal under the CFAA. Crowdstrike’s CTO said that the company isn’t going that far, but let’s be real here. If so many companies engage in hackback, perhaps its time to clarify their rights under the CFAA?
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Finally, InformationWeek Security’s Mathew J. Schwartz on what hackers are talking about. According to a report released by the data security firm Imperva, “the chatter on 18 underground [hacker] forums” revealed that 19% of all discussions revolve around DDOS and SQL injection attacks.
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