SecurityWeek

Rumors circulated early on Monday that Anonymous has kicked off their OpVendetta campaign with a hack on PayPal. While this hasn’t been confirmed, other related defacements and server compromises have been linked to the operation, as the faceless legion aims to make people remember the 5th of November. [Updated With Additonal Statements from PayPal Below]

With Halloween past us, there’s an excess of sugar in our blood, and remnant imaginings of monsters under the bed. So perhaps that’s why when the topic of “silver bullet security” recently came up, my mind immediately went to Werewolves. The term was used, as it often is, in a discussion about Application Whitelisting—the industrial automation industry’s rightful poster child for endpoint security.

Malware protection firm FireEye has teamed up with EMC’s RSA Security division through a new interoperability agreement that will leverage threat information from FireEye’s Malware Protection System (MPS) and feed that data into RSA’s NetWitness network monitoring platform.

Hundreds of webpages maintained by NBC Universal were defaced over the weekend, by a hacker going by the name of “pyknik.” In addition to NBC, this attacker also targeted a Lady Gaga fan site. Web software used by both domains is speculated to be the primary source of access used in the attack.

A hacker zine has posted details that expose some questionable security practices maintained by image hosting service ImageShack, in addition to source code used by the service. The zine also singled out Symantec and exposed the personal details (dox) for several Anonymous supporters.

WASHINGTON - Few want to even think about it, but the 2012 US election result could be clouded by problems with voting machines ... again. Twelve years after the Florida punch card debacle in which thousands of votes went uncounted in the crucial state, some experts cite similar concerns about voting technology.

Security software firm Quarri Technologies has extended its hardened Web browser technology to iOS devices to protect against various Web attacks, including session hijacking and data theft. Quarri Protect on Q Mobile for iOS prevents Web browsers from copying and saving data onto iOS devices, Quarri Technologies told SecurityWeek. POQ Mobile for iOS will be part of Quarri's Protect On Q security suite, which already protects Windows systems and Android devices.

According to a recent report from AVG Technologies, many SMBs in the US and UK are missing out on the benefits of cloud technologies due to basic confusion. The organizations that particpated in the study were unsure of cloud services or felt they were only for large organizations.

Researchers at VUPEN Security say they have uncovered multiple vulnerabilities in Windows and Internet Explorer 10 that can be combined to bypass security features in Windows 8. According to VUPEN CEO Chaouki Bekrar, exploiting the vulnerabilities result in remote code execution without any user interaction beyond visiting a webpage.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will no longer retain an exclusive contract with Blackberry maker Research in Motion and has invited companies such as Apple to offer smart phones to its vast work force. The move, announced Thursday, comes only days after another government agency, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said it was dropping the Blackberry device altogether in favor of Apple's iPhone.

GlobalSign, an SSL Certificate provider, and CloudFlare, a company that helps accelerate Web site performance and improve site security, have teamed up to help GlobalSign customers improve the load time of SSL-secured web content.

Privacy on mobile devices is rapidly disappearing as mobile applications (apps) increasingly request more and more permissions, even if their feature set does not seem to require it, according to a pair of recent research reports.

When Dealing With Advanced Malware and Targeted Attacks, Enterprises Must Expand Their Approach To Address the Entire Lifecycle of Modern Threats

Cyber criminals rarely waste time when it comes to taking advantage of news items that could be used for attacks. The recent launch of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system is no exception.

Russia Puts First Sites on New Internet BlacklistMOSCOW - Russia on Thursday put into force a new law on the Internet that allows the government to block websites with banned content, prompting fears that it will be used to suppress free speech.

DigiNotar, the now defunct Netherlands-based Certificate Authority (CA) that suffered a breach resulting in fraud

The FBI has arrested 14 people after an investigation concluded that they managed to scam more than $1 million dollars from Citibank by exploiting a security protocol used by the financial firm. The crafty scam was best described as Gone in 60 seconds – after the heist film, according to the feds.

Scouts have been a part of military operations since the dawn of time. There is a great deal of romanticism around the image of the cavalry scouts of the Wild West, Jeb Stuart during the Civil War or images of Long Range Recon Patrols of Vietnam. Why were these groups of soldiers the elite military of their time? Because commanders needed their best to be their eyes and ears. They needed troops they could depend on implicitly and without question...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Electronic Frontier Foundation said Wednesday it has sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain details about Predator drones on loan to domestic police departments. EFF Internet freedom and privacy champions contended that they filed suit in federal court in San Francisco because the DHS failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for the information.

In two decades practicing law – with a majority focus in the information security industry – I’ve had a front row seat to the meteoric rise in the public discourse on privacy and data loss. Now as a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) and General Counsel of a company that navigates state breach notice laws, a plethora of sector based federal breach notice laws, and a host of international breach notice laws, I’ve moved in many ways from the front...