SecurityWeek

WASHINGTON - The investigation that toppled CIA chief David Petraeus has sparked fresh debate over online privacy and the government's ability to snoop into private email accounts. "When the CIA director cannot hide his activities online, what hope is there for the rest of us?" said Chris Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union's Privacy and Technology Project

Just when you start getting comfortable thinking that DDoS or SQL injections are the attack methods that deserve your heavyweight protective measures, another type of vulnerability rears its ugly head larger and louder. Recently it's been cross-site attacks that are on the rise and warrant close scrutiny.

Vormetric, a provider of enterprise encryption and key management solutions, today announced that Alan Kessler has been appointed as the company’s new President and CEO. Kessler comes to Vormetric from HP where he was VP of Worldwide Sales and Service for Enterprise Security Products, and responsible for HP ArcSight, HP TippingPoint, HP Fortify, HP Application Security Center and HP Atalla product lines.

OpenDNS, the company best known for its DNS service that adds a level of security by monitoring domain name requests, has now launched a cloud-based security service to help protect users on iOS devices or Windows or Mac OS-based systems in any location.

Official Requests Up for Web data: In First half of 2012, Google Received 20,938 Requests for Data from Government EntitiesSAN FRANCISCO - Google said Tuesday the number of government requests to hand over data from users or to take down Web content rose in the first six months of 2012, extending a trend of recent years.

Palo Alto Networks is focusing on the virtualized data center to help IT administrators fight off threats targeting virtual environments.

Study Finds That While Application Security Testing Is Expanding to New Industries, The Software Supply Chain Is Still Vulnerable

Alexander Pope’s famous quote “To err is human; to forgive, divine” highlights the common flaw found within all of us – that we make mistakes. While insider risks are a real problem in organizations (whether copying data off unto unencrypted USB drives, clicking on malicious sites/links, etc.), the insiders carrying the greatest risk are the ones with all of the access - administrators. One set of risks is posed by a malicious and/or disgruntled administrator, or compromised administrator accounts.

Employees are becoming more aware of the risks of using personal devices to access corporate resources and are somewhat willing to grant IT some control over their personal devices, according to a recent mobility survey from Blue Coat Systems.

Risk I/O, a vulnerability intelligence platform, announced on Tuesday that it has secured $5.25 million in Series A funding. The money was raised from U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from Tugboat Ventures and Costanoa Venture Capital.

Return Path, an email intelligence and protection firm, announced two new additions to its Fraud Protection Services offerings on Tuesday.

DUBAI - The United Arab Emirates issued a new law toughening penalties for cyber crimes to include jail terms for anyone who calls for regime change or mocks its rulers, newspapers reported on Tuesday. Under the new law, which annuls one issued in 2006, the spreading of any material that calls for "toppling, changing the regime or seizing power" is punishable by a prison sentence, Emarat Alyoum reported, citing the text.

BELIZE CITY - John McAfee, founder of the eponymous anti-virus company, is on the run for killing another US citizen in a resort town, Belizean police said Monday. Police raided McAfee's mansion on the island of Ambergris Caye, in northeastern Belize, late Sunday to question him about the murder of American Gregory Faull. But McAfee was nowhere to be found, said the head of the country's anti-organized crime brigade, Marco Vidal.

Supporters of Anonymous have raided the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), accusing them of failing to hold up their end of a promise to keep an eye on the Ukrainian elections. The raid resulted in several hundred documents being leaked, most marked as classified or confidential, and covering everything from political memos and internal communications to phone records.

A cyber-espionage campaign at the center of recent reports about attacks targeting Israel has been underway for the past year, according to security vendor Norman ASA.