SecurityWeek

MOSCOW - Russia is considering measures to protect its cyberspace from the "unpredictable" West, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Friday after a newspaper said Moscow was contemplating unplugging the Internet during protests or war.

The recent expansion of generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) has attracted the attention of cybercriminals who have started abusing them for their malicious operations, researchers warned this week.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google said Thursday it would beef up encryption of its mobile operating system, so that it would not hold "keys" to devices even if it is served with a warrant.

Software vulnerabilities have continued to grow, so perhaps it was inevitable that one day The MITRE Corporation would have to make a change to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures Identifiers (CVE-IDs) they produce. Previously, the four-digit restriction on the CVE-IDs only allowed up to 9,999 a year - a number that could be eclipsed by the end of the year.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) announced on Wednesday the availability of version 4 of the OWASP Testing Guide.

WASHINGTON - Apple is rolling out new privacy protections for iPhones and iPads, with a new system that makes it impossible for the company to unlock a device even with a warrant. Apple's privacy terms updated late Wednesday indicate that under its new mobile operating system, iOS 8, the company will not have access to customer passwords.

 A new survey of IT pros and executives by consulting firm Protiviti shows many organizations are not preparing well for cyber-crisis scenarios. 

Palm reading, tarot cards, crystal balls, tea leaves. For thousands of years humans have tried to predict the future with various methods and little success. Today, the desire to predict the future remains strong but increasingly difficult to satisfy; the pace of change has accelerated exponentially and the notion of predicting the future is even more tenuous the further out in time we go.

WASHINGTON - Online piracy of music, films and other content has moved to the Internet cloud, reaping big profits for digital thieves, according to a study released Thursday. The study identified 30 cloud-based "cyberlockers" which operate globally and are hosted in various locations around the world, and which take in some $96 million in annual revenue.

A total of three security holes have been identified in Schneider Electric's StruxureWare SCADA Expert ClearSCADA products, ICS-CERT reported this week.

BEIJING - Beijing on Thursday strongly denied a US congressional panel's claim that Chinese government-linked hackers had launched dozens of cyberattacks on American defense contractors, saying the charges were "fabricated out of thin air".

Apple announced on Wednesday the availability of iOS 8, the eighth major release of iOS. The latest version of the mobile operating system comes with fixes for more than 50 security vulnerabilities.

DOHA - A media rights group on Thursday urged Qatar to revoke sections of a new cybercrime law, saying they threaten freedom of expression in the Gulf state. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned that the broad language of the new Anti-Cybercrime Law, which was passed this week, could be used to restrict press freedoms and jail journalists.

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks analyzed a piece of malware targeting owners of jailbroken iPhones that steals the vicitm's Apple ID and password information and makes purchases from the App Store.

Researchers from threat protection firm Bromium were alerted last week by a customer to an attack originating from the website of a high-profile technology startup in the oil and gas sector.

WASHINGTON - Chinese hackers believed to be linked to Beijing conducted dozens of cyberattacks on US defense contractors between 2012 and 2013, potentially compromising military operations, a congressional probe warned Wednesday.

The payment processor at the center of the data breach affecting Goodwill Industries International admitted that hackers held a foothold in their environment for more than year.

Amazon has addressed a security hole that enabled attackers to inject malicious code into the company's website and potentially compromise user accounts, a researcher reported on Tuesday.

Cyber risk intelligence company SurfWatch Labs this week announced the availability of a new application designed to provide C-level executives and board members with clear information on cyber risks faced by their company.