SecurityWeek

Cyber-attack headlines in the last couple of months read like a summer blockbuster novel filled with espionage, international hackers and advanced weapons systems. In fact, cyber-attacks against financial organizations, government sites and critical infrastructure have escalated in the past six months.

WASHINGTON - The FBI is stepping up its effort to get broader authority to put "wiretaps" on the Internet to catch criminals and terrorists.

BRUSSELS - Defence ministers from NATO's 28 member states meet on Tuesday with cyber-defence top of the agenda, amid concerns about the threat posed by increasing cyber-attacks, many blamed on China."The challenge evolves all the time, probably (much faster) than any other type of threat we face at the moment," said one senior NATO official who asked not to be named."We have to make certain that NATO keeps pace with the threat," the official added, looking ahead to the meeting Tuesday and Wednesday.

A former campaign manager for New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of computer intrusion and making a false statement. Jamie Estrada, 40, of Los Lunas, New Mexico, is accused of using his access to the campaign’s domain to intercept communications and lying to federal agents when questioned about the incident.

Next week in Washington, DC, top U.S. and international government officials, policy makers, and executives will gather for the 2013 Government Cybersecurity Forumpresented by Kaspersky Lab.

I just finished two weeks of travel – part in Washington DC, part at a Wall Street conference. In both arenas, continuous monitoring is a hot topic. But, as so often happens, the two communities don’t seem to agree on what the words mean. Disconnects on this point aren’t just a semantic detail – in a world of FISMA reform and increasing pressure for federal oversight of “critical infrastructure,” misunderstandings can cause major problems.

ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT - The United States must develop "rules of the road" with China and other countries to mitigate cyberthreats, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday lifted a ban on sales of communications equipment to Iranians and opened access to Internet services and social media, aiming to help the Iranian people circumvent tough government controls.

Seven days – that is how long Google believes security researchers should have to give vendors to provide mitigations or a patch before disclosing information about zero-day bugs under attack in the wild.

BEIJING - A Pentagon report accusing Chinese hackers of accessing US weapons designs contained "misjudgements", a spokesman for Beijing's defence ministry said Thursday, adding China could build weapons on its own.

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian police have been cooperating with authorities abroad to stem a global online currency operator that is being probed in the US on allegations of massive money laundering, a report said Thursday.

ThreatMetrix, a provider of technologies to help organizations thwart cybercrime, announced a new intelligence network containing threat data and information that can be used to identify transactions and Website visitors as potentially malicious.

Information sharing is one of the key buzzwords in information security today, but there hasn't been a lot of movement towards formalizing public/private partnerships to share vulnerability and threat information.

Drupal.org, home to one of the Web’s most popular Content Management System (CMS) platforms, has issued an alert to community members and reset all account passwords after their infrastructure and security teams discovered malicious files on a server.

An Ohio man was sentenced to one year and a day in prison this week, plus two years of supervised release, after he attempted to extort the University of Pittsburgh. Adding a unique twist to this story, according to court documents, is the fact the man used the moniker of Anonymous in order to make his threats seem more credible.

TAIPEI - Taiwan is preparing to launch a fourth cyberwar unit, a local newspaper reported Wednesday, in response to what it claims is a growing security threat from Chinese hackers. The new unit is scheduled to open on July 1 and will work to counter cyber attacks on government websites, said the Taipei-based newspaper United Evening News.

The problem of tackling Unknown Threats at Scale and the Gulf Between the Proof of Concept and the Real World are Not Unsolvable Problems...

SYDNEY - Using the Internet to spy and steal sensitive data is standard practice by all countries, according to the security chief of controversial Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

BEIJING - President Barack Obama appears to be a regular customer of a Chinese Internet cafe, reports said, after the manager forged an identity card in the US leader's name to help surfers avoid China's web rules.

SecurityWeek has learned that Secunia, a Danish vulnerability management firm, disclosed an unpatched vulnerability within an image viewing application used by organizations in both the private and the defense sectors to a public mailing list. Now, thanks to an email error, a vulnerability once sheltered by a coordinated disclosure program has been exposed.