SecurityWeek

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano met with the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s (HSAC) Task Force on CyberSkills this week, where they discussed the latest developments in improving the agency’s cybersecurity initiatives. In July, Secretary Napolitano directed the HSAC to form the task force due to the increasing demand to fill staffing gaps, by seeking experts from the cybersecurity field across industry, academia and government.

Two lawmakers are asking the United States Food and Drug Administration to start thinking more about how to secure medical devices from cyber-attacks.

Network security firm Fortinet has introduced three two-factor authentication (TFA) products, and four new wireless access points, just in time for the next release of its FortiOS operating system later this month.

In May, Nielsen released a study that found more the number of apps per smartphone in the U.S. jumped 28 percent between 2011 and 2012. Assuming this trend does not suddenly end, mobile app developers should expect to be busy.  

While it may be years before Keccak (pronounced “catch-ack”) is adopted for wide use, that doesn’t take away from the new cryptographic hash algorithm’s promise, or the effort spent in developing it. The NIST launched the search for SHA-3 five years ago, as a way to prepare for the loss of SHA-2 should it be broken.

WASHINGTON - US officials said Wednesday they shut down a series of so-called tech support scams, mostly operating from India, which duped consumers into paying to clean their computers of bogus virus infections. The Federal Trade Commission said a US judge has ordered a halt to six "scareware" operations and has frozen their assets following an investigation in cooperation with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

A group of Republican Senators warned President Obama against proceeding with an executive order to establish cyber-security protections for critical infrastructure.

Google: "Tens of Thousands of Users" Will See New State-sponsored Attack Warnings

New Cloud Solution Helps Deliver “Holistic, Risk-based Information Security Programs” To Improve Security and Compliance

Researchers have discovered a new type of Man-in-the-Browser (MItB) attack that is Website independent, and does not target specific Websites, but instead collects data submitted to all sites. This “universal” MitB attack, discovered by researchers at Trusteer, is different from traditional attacks, as it speeds up how data is stolen and may be used in automated campaigns.

MANILA - The Philippine government faced a barrage of Internet protests on Wednesday as a cybercrime law went into effect that could see people given long jail terms for posting defamatory comments online.

Back in June 2011, McAfee proudly announced that it had assembled a team of cyber experts, including Barnaby Jack, the well known white hat hacker, to help combat cybercrime and “think like the cybercriminals” and conduct threat research into areas such as embedded devices.

Network security firm Sourcefire, Inc. today said that its Chief Executive Officer, John Burris, who has been on medical leave since early summer, has now retired, effective immediately. Sourcefire announced in early July that Burris had taken a medical leave of absence to undergo a series of treatments for colon cancer.

A series of unusually large and highly sophisticated DDoS attacks that hit various organizations last month appear to have used a highly sophisticated toolkit, Prolexic Technologies said.

Sandia's David Fritz holds two Android smartphones, representing the virtual network of 300,000 such devices that he and other researchers are using to advance understanding of malicious computer networks on the Internet. (Photo by Dino Vournas)