SecurityWeek

WASHINGTON – The former head of the National Security Agency painted a stark picture of government cyber-defenders unable to deal with the current wave of adversaries, not because of a lack of talent, but because legal frameworks defining their roles are not yet in place.

Juniper Networks this week announced the availability of Junos DDoS Secure, a new offering designed to protect data centers against increasingly complex Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

It seems that nearly every five years we’re faced with a new cycle of threats – from viruses to worms to spyware and rootkits. Today we find ourselves combatting the latest wave – advanced malware, targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats (APTs). While these threats have demonstrated themselves to be more damaging than any in their wake, technologies are available to deal with them. We just need to select the right ones and apply them correctly.

Apple addressed over thirty serious vulnerabilities in OS X and Safari Web browser in a hefty update this week. The updates address vulnerabilities in Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), Lion (10.7), and Snow Leopard (10.6), Apple said in its advisory Tuesay. The update for Mountain Lion, OS X 10.8.4, includes the update to Safari 6.0.5. Lion and Snow Leopard users will need to apply Security Update 2013-002.

In an interview for the June issue of SIGNAL Magazine, General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, says he wanted to combine forces from various military and intelligence communities in order to take on the cyber threats facing the nation.

On Tuesday, Jerry Davis, the VA’s former CISO, told members of the House Veterans' Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee the sensitive personal information the department is charged with protecting remains at risk due to flawed processes and procedures, and inadequate protection.

One year ago this month, 6.5 million passwords were taken from LinkedIn. Last week, the company proved they are still fine-tuning their security posture by introducing two-factor authentication to the mix.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will name UN ambassador Susan Rice as his new national security advisor Wednesday, months after her hopes of becoming the top US diplomat were scuppered by the Bengazi affair.

Organizations Should Look for Ways to Involve Employees in Mitigating and Eliminating Threats Before they Happen...

I love how Europeans pronounce my name. Gant sounds like Gawnt and rhymes with jaunt. In America, people say Gant, like Ant. Not so dashing.

FORT MEADE - The computer hacker who turned in Bradley Manning said Tuesday the tormented US soldier had never talked about helping Al-Qaeda after he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will tell Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that he must deal with cyber spying and hacking of US targets that originate inside his country when they meet for talks this week.

WASHINGTON, DC – Kaspersky Lab researchers have uncovered yet another cyber-espionage campaign targeting unnamed “high profile” businesses and government agencies around the world, and are laying the blame at the door of a Chinese-based hacking crew.

BRUSSELS - NATO defence ministers agreed Tuesday to set up rapid reaction teams to help defend the military alliance against a growing number of cyber-attacks, many of them blamed on China. "In the progress report we have adopted today, we agreed to establish rapid reaction teams that can help protect NATO's own systems," alliance head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. This "cyber-defence capability should be fully operational by the autumn," Rasmussen told a press conference.

A cyber-espionage campaign discovered by Kaspersky Lab has hit more than 350 businesses and government agencies throughout the world. According to Kaspersky Lab, the main tool used in the attacks is known as 'NetTraveler,' named after an internal string present in early versions of the malware. The group behind the attack is believed to have been active as early as 2004 – though the highest volume of activity occurred during the past three years.

UPDATE: McAfee said on June 7 its figures on Koobface were incorrect, and that the Koobface malware has actually declined. An old face has been appearing on social networking more than usual – and it is not a friendly one.

Oracle has faced an uphill battle when it comes to Java and security. As soon as a series of fixes are released, someone somewhere (usually a researcher) discovers another flaw, and the cycle begins anew – and it’s painful. Now, Oracle plans to fix that by heavily investing in Java’s security.

WASHINGTON - The US manufacturing lobby on Monday said President Barack Obama should get tough with President Xi Jinping on alleged  Chinese cyber spying and what it sees as predatory economic policies.

Robert Kugler, a 17-year-old German student submitted a bug report to PayPal’s bounty program earlier this month, and was told he was too young to receive payment. Since reporting it offered no results, Kugler decided to go public – a move that would touch off another discussion about how vendors should treat researchers who find bugs in their products.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) say they’ve uncovered a new set of hard-to-detect methods that could be used to trigger malware on mobile devices and lead to highly focused, targeted attacks. According to a paper published by the UAB researchers, it is possible to use music, lighting, magnets or vibration to initiate an attack. Further, the attacks are low bandwidth, amounting to only five-bits per second.