SecurityWeek

Just yesterday, SecurityWeek reported on a recent incident where senior military and government officials were duped into “friending” someone on Facebook that was pretending to be U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. That fake profile was believed to be setup by Chinese hackers interested in gathering email addresses and other information from military and government officials.

An undercover operation by LegitScript, an online pharmacy verification service and anti-fraud company, has tied a single domain name registrar to roughly a third of all rogue pharmacy sites.In a report, LegitScript names Bahamas-based registrar Internet.bs as the metaphorical man-behind-the-curtain for a chunk of the pharmacy sites in the company’s database. A second registrar, ABSystems, is believed to be responsible for more than 17 percent.

It was not a particularly creative way to conduct espionage, but the world of cyber-spying isn’t a science fair.

We’ve all been warned, and for the most part are aware of the privacy and security risks associated social media when we share our personal information and whereabouts with the online world. But last week, the United States Army sent another message to troops, urging them to be cautious with their usage of social media and sharing their location, warning that it could cost them their life.

Information security services firm Mandiant, recently released its “M-Trends” report, offering insights and analysis based on hundreds of investigations conducted over the last year. The report highlights just how motivated attackers have become, and offers some suggestions for organizations looking to stay ahead of the game.

If we don’t have a solid notion of what is normal in our environments, it’s highly unlikely that we will notice the new threat once it arrives.

"Honey Stick Project" Exposes Risk from Lost SmartphonesIn order to get a look at what happens when a smartphone containing sensitive corporate information is lost, Symantec loaded 50 phones with tracking software and fake “sensitive” information, and then scattered the devices across multiple cities in North America.

Baltimore-based data protection vendor SafeNet, today said that is has acquired Cryptocard, a privately held provider of authentication solutions.

Apple Criticized Once Again for Its Silience and Uncooperative Ways When It Comes to Fixing Vulnerabilities in its Products

NATO said it has awarded a contract valued at approximately $76 million (58m Euro) to a group of private companies for the purpose of upgrading its cyber defense capabilities. Representing its largest investment to date in cyber defense, the organization said the initiative will enable the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC) to achieve full operational capability by the end of 2012.

If you’re being honest with yourself, major successful cyber attacks on companies in the past few years should convince you of the fact that your business could eventually fall victim to a cyber attack.Whether your company is big or small, whether you handle ‘protected’ data or not, whether you have a few customers or millions – a data breach could be a company crippling event.

Arbor Networks has been analyzing some of the malware used to launch DDoS attacks, in order to help educate organizations on the nature of code used to create and manage the DDoS botnets.In a series of blog posts, Arbor Networks examines the operational abilities and design of the Armageddon, Khan, and PonyDOS botnets, or rather the malware that establishes them.

It isn’t often that after a data breach involving credit cards, that the public is also given a marker on the exact amount money lost by consumers as a result. Thanks to the FBI however, we now have a better understanding of what 60,000 stolen credit cards translates to financially, as this data was included in their investigation notes while working the Stratfor case.

 USCC Releases Report on Chinese Capabilities for Cyber Operations and Cyber Espionage

Microsoft has a relatively quiet Patch Tuesday planned for this month, with just six bulletins on the way for next week.