SecurityWeek

SINGAPORE - Activist group Anonymous hacked a Singapore newspaper website Friday over Internet freedom in the city-state, where government agencies are now reportedly on alert for wider cyber attacks.

WASHINGTON - The powerful Senate Intelligence Committee green-lighted a measure Thursday that maintains US spy agencies' controversial authority to conduct dragnet data collection, but critics said it fell well short of much-needed reforms.

Silent Circle and Lavabit are teaming up together to form a coalition of companies to create a more secure way to do email.

UNITED NATIONS  - The US government has guaranteed the United Nations that it is not intercepting its secret communications, a spokesman said Wednesday while not being drawn on reports of past spying.

A new study by researchers with Kaspersky Lab found that the number of attacks on their customers exploiting Java reached more than 14 million between September 2012 and August 2013.

How many times do we hear about people failing to heed warnings of potential danger from natural or man-made disasters only to be negatively affected? Researchers Robin Dillon-Merrill and Catherine Tinsley at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business took a look at this phenomenon in a paper entitled “How Near-Miss Events Amplify or Attenuate Risky Decision Making.” It all boils down to the fact that we tend to view the outcome as the indicator of success or failure.

WASHINGTON - The US National Security Agency has tapped into key communications links from Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

PARIS - France on Wednesday slammed as "unlikely" US allegations that European spy agencies shared phone call records with US intelligence, as a transatlantic surveillance row intensified.

Cigital on Wednesday announced the fifth major release of the of the Building Security In Maturity Model (BSIMM) study, which collected data from 67 security initiatives at organizations around the world.

BERLIN - The head of German foreign intelligence denied Wednesday that Berlin was carrying out bugging operations from its embassy in the United States in a deepening espionage row. "No telecommunication-intelligence is conducted from the German embassy in Washington," Gerhard Schindler, head of the BND agency, was quoted by Zeit online news site as saying.

WASHINGTON - The head of US intelligence said Tuesday the country's spy agencies have always tried to learn the intentions of foreign leaders, but stopped short of confirming reports of eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Cloud-based database service MongoHQ said on Tuesday that attackers had gained access to an internal, employee-facing support application resulting in customer accounts and database instances being exposed. According to the company, one tool accessed by the attacker(s) lets MongoHQ support staff "impersonate" to access to a web interface as if they were a logged in as a customer.

Anyone who does business in the cloud knows that compliance standards are a mandatory and often complicated part of the game. Yet getting and staying compliant can be especially tricky for finance and e-commerce organizations, which are bound by soon-to-be updated Payment Card industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) that demand especially tight controls. Creating a secure cloud environment is only the beginning for companies that handle sensitive credit card and finance data.

WASHINGTON - European spy services shared phone data with the US National Security Agency and media reports alleging otherwise are "completely false," the NSA's chief told lawmakers on Tuesday.

Researchers at mobile security vendor Skycure have discovered many iPhone apps are vulnerable to HTTP request hijacking attacks that could permit a hacker to use the app to load malicious content.

Sophos launched a cloud platform designed to ease and unify security management as part of a strategy the company hopes will appeal to the midmarket.

LockPath, a provider of governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) solutions, released a new cloud-based service that lets users securely and anonymously report incidents, complaints and violations.

SYDNEY - Australia's new government on Tuesday said Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will remain shut out of bidding to build Australia's national broadband network on advice from security agencies.

WASHINGTON - The head of the powerful US Senate intelligence committee said Monday she was "totally opposed" to spying on leaders of allied nations, and promised to review intelligence operations.

Attackers launching distributed denial-of-service attacks are increasingly turning to the user datagram protocol, according to security researchers.