Legal, Privacy & Security
22 February 2013
U.S. Ups Ante for Spying on Firms - China, Others Are Threatened With New Penalties Wall Street Journal
The White House threatened China and other countries with trade and diplomatic action over corporate espionage as it cataloged more than a dozen cases of cyberattacks and commercial thefts at some of the U.S.'s biggest companies.
Some Victims of Online Hacking Edge Into the Light New York Times
Hackers have hit thousands of American corporations in the last few years, but few companies ever publicly admit it. Most treat online attacks as a dirty secret best kept from customers, shareholders and competitors, lest the disclosure sink their stock price and tarnish them as hapless.
21 February 2013
Online Profiling and Invasion of Privacy: The Myth of Anonymization by Eric K. Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School Huffington Post
We have been conditioned to accept that privacy is dead. We have been conditioned to accept privacy abuses as the price of using the Internet. These abuses generally involve having our search engine send us "better" ads, which most of us believe cannot be too dangerous. They are "only" ads, and they are "anonymous."
20 February 2013
China Won't Cut Its Cyberspying New York Times
President Obama registered his serious concern in the State of the Union address over cyberespionage by what he called "our enemies." His remarks on Feb. 12 came two days after leaks from a U.S. intelligence estimate named China -- again -- as the most serious menace in the cyberdomain.
19 February 2013
Report ties 100-plus cyber attacks on U.S. computers to Chinese military Washington Post
A U.S. security firm has tied more than a hundred cyber attacks on U.S. corporations to China's military, according to a report released Tuesday.
How America and Europe are trying to bolster their cyber-defences The Economist
Within a week of each other, both the European Commission and the White House have set out a series of new rules designed to stem the rising tide of cyber-attacks against public and private victims. The most dangerous of these are aimed at what is termed critical national infrastructure. The targets may be physical (such as electricity grids) or virtual, such as the computer networks used by the financial system.
Cyber attacks on Australian business more targeted and coordinated Attorney-General
New national survey results from more than 250 major businesses shows cyber attacks are becoming increasingly targeted and coordinated, with one in five experiencing an electronic attack in the last year.
18 February 2013
Facebook was targeted by 'sophisticated' hackers BBC News
Facebook has revealed it was the target of a "sophisticated attack" by hackers last month, but found no evidence any user data had been compromised.
If You're Collecting Our Data, You Ought to Protect It New York Times
... By now, reports of lost or stolen business devices are so common that many people open data-breach notices from their banks, insurers, medical institutions, schools and state agencies with something like resignation. In fact, negligence by employees and contractors has been a more common cause of corporate data breaches in the United States than malicious attacks, according to a study of 2011 done by the Ponemon Institute, a research center on data security, and financed by Symantec, a data security company. Institutions, companies and government agencies often devote more resources to collecting information about employees and consumers than to protecting it, security specialists say.
16 February 2013
Why Obama's Cyber Defense Order Won't Amount to Much MIT Technology Review
There's been a lot of rhetoric recently about the threat that cyberattacks pose to national infrastructure, but President Obama's new executive order -- with its focus on voluntary standards and information sharing -- is unlikely to provide much protection. The executive order requires that new information-sharing, standards-setting, and R&D plans get up and running over the next few months to two years.
15 February 2013
Google countersues BT over patents The Guardian
BT's plan to make millions of dollars from licensing its patent portfolio by suing web giants including Google has run into a problem: Google and its phone subsidiary Motorola Mobility are countersuing it for patent infringement, calling the lawsuit filed in 2011 by BT "meritless" and accusing it of using shell companies to file other suits.
Google must act quickly on libellous Blogger posts, says UK appeal court The Guardian
Google may have to act quicker to remove potentially libellous posts from its Blogger platform following a court of appeal ruling in London.
Jon Venables Twitter 'photographs' investigated The Guardian
The attorney general has launched an investigation after photographs purporting to show killer Jon Venables were allegedly posted on the internet.
Symantec Intelligence Report: January 2013 Symantec
In this month's report, we find that the email malware rate has dropped significantly since December, where only one in 400 emails containing a virus in January. This is the lowest virus rate we've seen since 2009. It could indicate that email virus distributors took a break after the holiday season, or that they have continued to migrate away from email as a choice for malicious payload delivery. We'll watch this trend carefully to see if it continues to drop off.
Cyber attacks against media on the rise, rights group says Reuters
Cyber attacks against journalists and media organizations around the world have increased over the past few years as criminal hackers provide a cheap and easy way of censoring the press, a media rights group said on Thursday.
14 February 2013
Cybercrime Network Based in Spain Is Broken Up New York Times
Europol, the European police agency, said Wednesday that it had dismantled one of the most efficient cybercrime organizations to date, led by Russians who had managed to extort millions of euros from online users across more than 30 countries -- mostly European -- by persuading them to pay spurious police fines for abusive use of the Internet.
Obama cybersecurity order welcomed as step forward by internet activists The Guardian
President Barack Obama introduced a cybersecurity executive order in his state of the union address that offered a broad outline of how the government plans to deal with cyber threats.
13 February 2013
President Obama cracks whip on cybercrime CNN
Having run out of patience for Congress to act on a cybersecurity bill, President Obama has decided to take matters into his own hands.
12 February 2013
National Audit Office warns UK needs more cyber skills BBC News
A lack of skilled workers is hampering the UK's fight against cyber crime, the National Audit Office has warned.
Emails of Reporters in Burma Are Hacked New York Times
Several journalists who cover Myanmar said Sunday that they had received warnings from Google that their e-mail accounts might have been hacked by "state-sponsored attackers."
11 February 2013
Court to Consider When Software Can Be Patented Wall Street Journal
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments Friday over a fundamental question that has vexed the technology industry for nearly two decades: When is a piece of software patentable?
07 February 2013
'Trial by Google' a risk to jury system, says UK attorney general The Guardian
"Trial by Google" threatens to undermine the integrity of the British jury system and "offends the principle of open justice", according to the attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC.
EU to order banks, energy firms to report cyber attacks Reuters
Around 42,000 firms in the European Union, including airports, banks and hospitals, would have to inform regulators whenever their computers are hacked, under a proposed EU law to be published on Thursday.
Microsoft, Symantec Join Forces to Take Down Bamital Click-Fraud Botnet Threat Post
Microsoft and Symantec have shut down a massive click fraud botnet known as Bamital, numerous variants of which have been in circulation since 2009 amassing several million dollars in fraudulent profit for the attackers as well as spreading more malware including scareware.
Rupert Murdoch tweets Chinese 'still hacking' WSJ BBC News
Rupert Murdoch has said that the Wall Street Journal newspaper remains under attack from Chinese hackers.
