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Every day in the United States, professional cyber-spies are stealing tremendous amounts of information. Mainly from Russia and China, these spies target computer networks and increasingly seek entryways through mobile phones. Modern mobile phones -- Smartphones -- are powerful, networked computers, but they lack the firewalls and safeguards typically installed on PCs. What protection is commercially available is weak and unsatisfactory. America's cyber-systems are under attack because what they hold is extremely valuable. Everything from the design of a stealth fighter-bomber to the investment portfolio of a powerful entrepreneur is open to professional cyber-spies and, thus, to the governments that...

A campaign of cyber attacks has been targeting US natural gas pipeline operators, officials acknowledged, raising security concerns about vulnerabilities in key infrastructure.

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- A blackout of al-Qaida's main Web sites is in its 11th day, and officials think the forums may have been brought down in a cyberattack. While no one has claimed credit for disabling the sites..." SNIPPET: "The loss of information typically confuses and frustrates the readers of the Web sites. "It leaves the rank-and-file to guess which messages and which messengers are genuine al-Qaida, and provides undercover operators with new opportunities to disrupt the movement," said A. Aaron Weisburd, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute."

Richard Clarke says evidence 'pretty strong' that China is stealing commercial secrets March 27, 2012, 12:18 PM — Former White House cybersecurity advisor Richard Clarke has made a career out of issuing security warnings. His most famous, of course, was his alert to Bush Administration officials in July 2001 -- 10 weeks before 9/11 -- that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon." Clarke was talking about an attack on U.S. soil by Al-Qaida, the terrorist group he had been warning the new administration about -- to virtually complete indifference -- since that...

Emergency powers for president dropped from cybersecurity billBy Gautham Nagesh - 02/14/12 01:55 PM ET A comprehensive cybersecurity bill introduced Tuesday abandons proposals that would give the president emergency powers over the nation's networks. “The nation responded after 9/11 to improve its security. Now we must respond to this challenge so that a cyber 9/11 attack on America never happens,” said Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). Public apprehension about the possibility of handing the White House a "kill switch" for the Internet has dogged the cybersecurity debate, fueled by a proposal that would have codified emergency powers...

Members of the House Homeland Security Committee unveiled legislation Thursday that would authorize the cybersecurity functions of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and establish a quasi-governmental entity to coordinate cybersecurity information-sharing with the private sector. The bill, called the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act (PrECISE), would station a national clearinghouse for information relating to potential attacks on critical infrastructure, such as electric grid, water facilities, and financial service systems. ... Many civil liberties groups have expressed concern over cybersecurity legislation such as the PrECISE Act, as these policies could lead to severe privacy rights’ violations....

When the Conficker computer “worm” was unleashed on the world in November 2008, cyber-security experts didn’t know what to make of it. It infiltrated millions of computers around the globe. It constantly checks in with its unknown creators. It uses an encryption code so sophisticated that only a very few people could have deployed it. For the first time ever, the cyber-security elites of the world have joined forces in a high-tech game of cops and robbers, trying to find Conficker’s creators and defeat them. The cops are failing. And now the worm lies there, waiting … The first surprising...

An elite team of computer technicians assembled by the Obama administration to protect Pentagon networks from cyberattack shockingly includes a former Clinton official who "lost" thousands of archived emails under subpoena and who more recently left the Department of Homeland Security under an ethical cloud related to her qualifications, WND has learned. Read more: Look who Obama's hired for cybersecurity team http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=323373#ixzz1SZaXI9A7

WASHINGTON -- Arizona Sen. John McCain has called for a Senate Select Committee on Cyber Security and Electronic Intelligence Leaks to address the problem of computer hackers. The Arizona Republican made the request Wednesday in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Cyber security proposals have been put forth by numerous Senate committees, the White House and various government agencies, McCain said, however, the Senate has yet embrace one comprehensive proposal that adequately addresses the government-wide threats we face. "With so many agencies and the White House moving forward with cyber security proposals,...

LulzSec the hacker group that has been a thorn in the side of major institutions ranging from Sony to the CIA, says it is going away -- but not quietly. The group said late Saturday it would disband. In what it says is its final act of mayhem, it publicly unloaded a trove of documents containing a significant amount of compressed data. "Our planned 50-day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance...our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011," LulzSec says in its final message. . The group says it chose to end its campaign...

(Reuters) - The public website of the Central Intelligence Agency went down on Wednesday evening as the hacker group Lulz Security said it had launched an attack. Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for recent attacks on the Senate, Sony Corp, News Corp and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System television network. The CIA site initially could not be accessed from New York to San Francisco, and Bangalore to London. Later in the evening service was sporadic. "We are looking into these reports," a CIA spokeswoman said. ... Security analysts have downplayed the significance of these attacks, saying the hackers are just...

Rep. Anthony Weiner, New York Democrat, has been embroiled in a scandal since a close-up photo of a man’s crotch was sent from his Twitter account... [Snip] Mr. Weiner has been careful to point out that his Twitter account is private, but his spokesman did not respond to questions from The Washington Times about whether the congressman was on his government-issued BlackBerry when the photo was sent via Twitter. [Snip] If he was using his work BlackBerry, the normal protocol for a security breach would be to report it immediately to the House Information Resources (HIR) division for an investigation....

So the man who would be mayor "can't say with certitude" whether or not the world's most famous Twitter crotch shot is of him? Could Tony Weiner's contempt for the people of New York City be any more, well, certain? Actually, it looks like this wiener is fully cooked. Which is fine, because it's now clear that Rep. Anthony Weiner isn't remotely up to the ethical demands of the office he now holds -- let alone those of the New York City mayoralty. The embattled Brooklyn Democrat wasn't in a deep enough hole yesterday; he had to keep digging --...

WASHINGTON — Publicly silent, fellow Democrats privately seethed Thursday over the distraction and furor surrounding the lewd photo sent from Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account, even as he declared he was finished talking about it and wanted to move on. Weiner’s one-day, pun-laden media blitz a day earlier had only raised more questions about the embarrassing flap when he conceded he wasn’t sure whether the waist-down photo of a man’s bulging underpants was of him or not. His refusal to involve law enforcement because he said as a member of Congress he shouldn’t get special treatment — instead turning the...

Does the Anthony Weiner affair mean anything? Some married congressman may or may not have sent a Twitter crouch shot of himself to a college girl on the other side of the country. Snore. So what else is new? We all know that our male politicians – left, right, gay, straight, or whatever – suffer from overdoses of testosterone. It’s almost the sole distinguishing characteristic of a profession that otherwise has no specific qualifications. Weiner himself had the reputation of being quite the playboy before he married the half-Indian, half-Pakistani Huma Abedin in 2008. So what if it hasn’t really...

MANHATTAN — Rep. Anthony Weiner continues to insist that it must have been a hacker who sent a lewd crotch shot of a bulge in boxer shorts from the congressman's Twitter account. "Anthony's accounts were obviously hacked," the Queens and Brooklyn congressman's spokesman told the Associated Press. "He doesn't know the person named by the hacker, and we will be consulting on what steps to take next." The photo went viral after being posted on Saturday night by BigGovernment.com, a site run by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, which said the image was tweeted to a Seattle woman. The college student...

<p>Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns is demanding an investigation into cybersecurity issues raised by #Weinergate, saying it is vital to "ensure our national security."</p>

[Snip] By now, you’ve heard about the Tweet picture sent from Weiner’s account to a young lady named Gennette Nicole Cordova. [Snip] ... those on the left trying to paint this as a conspiracy must deal with an array of odd elements that an increasingly tech-savvy public may find suspicious: * Not just the offending picture but most of the congressman’s pictures were removed from the site. * Not only did the young lady’s Facebook and Twitter accounts disappear from the ’Net (she’s apparently since started a new Twitter account, and may go back on Facebook), but also her bylines...

Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns is demanding an investigation into cybersecurity issues raised by #Weinergate, saying it is vital to "ensure our national security." Though New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner remains silent on whether or not he'll be seeking an investigation into his claims that his Twitter and Facebook accounts were hacked, leading to his Twitter account's posting of a picture of a man's erect penis underneath gray boxer-briefs, Stearns told The Daily Caller that the imbroglio raises troubling questions that should be looked into by Congress. Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/31/congressman-wants-weiner-probe#ixzz1Nyk3nlwH

The White House on Thursday is expected to unveil its proposal to enhance the nation's cybersecurity, laying out plans to require industry to better protect systems that run critical infrastructure like the electrical grid, financial systems and nuclear power plants. The Obama administration also is insisting that companies tell consumers when their personal information has been compromised. According to cybersecurity experts familiar with the plan, the administration's proposed legislation also would instruct federal agencies to more closely monitor their computer networks. Several House and Senate committees have been working on cybersecurity legislation for the past two years, while waiting for...

Under a White House plan, the Homeland Security Department will have far-reaching oversight over all civilian agency computer networks. The proposal would codify much of the administration's memo from July 2010 expanding DHS's cyber responsibilities for civilian networks. The White House, however, is taking those responsibilities further, according to a source familiar with the document. The administration drafted a legislative proposal to give DHS many, if not all, of the same authorities for the .gov networks that the Defense Department has for the .mil networks. ... DHS oversees all civilian cybersecurity. Google provision around data centers?

STANFORD, Calif.--President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said. That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates, including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil-liberties...

STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today. It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said. That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.

WASHINGTON – A malicious computer attack that appears to target Iran's nuclear plants can be modified to wreak havoc on industrial control systems around the world, and represents the most dire cyberthreat known to industry, government officials and experts said Wednesday.

Chances are you don't leave your front door unlocked. And you shouldn't leave your Wi-Fi network unsecured either. Many of you may have heard this before, but many still seem to not be doing anything about it. You should. Here's why. With a $50 wireless antenna and the right software a criminal hacker located outside your building as far as a mile away can capture passwords, e-mail messages, and any other data being transmitted over your network, and even decrypt data that is supposedly protected.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil. Related * Times Topic: Computer Security (Cybersecurity) The system would mirror that used when the military is called on in natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires. A presidential order dispatches the military forces, working under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Under the new rules, the president would approve the use of the military’s expertise...

In this seventh article in a series focusing on the need for improved information assurance and cyber situational awareness in the electric power industry, we continue a survey of government and industry consensus about the need for increased security of SCADA systems in the power industry. Cyberterror Impact, Defense Under Scrutiny The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report for Aug. 4, 2004 included the following item summarizing work by Jon Swartz of USA TODAY: A coordinated cyberattack against the U.S. could topple parts of the Internet, silence communications and commerce, and paralyze federal agencies and businesses, government officials and security...

<p>The outage was due to "technical problems," said Chase spokesman Tom Kelly, who added that the problem was "not related to hackers or fraud."</p> <p>Kelly said the company was "working to fix the problem as soon as possible."</p> <p>"Rather then give a prediction about when it will be fixed, we're just going to tell people when it goes back up," Kelly said about 6:00pm ET. "But we are talking hours not days."</p>

For years after 9/11, the U.S. did little to fight cyber-attacks by Islamic terrorists and others. For eight years, George “Faux-Counterterrorism” Bush and for nearly two years of Obama, we went through useless, incompetent cyber-terrorism officials who did nothing. For most of the last nine years after the attacks, the FBI didn’t even have e-mail, despite a bloated budget for computers and other cyber-activity. And, as I told you in March, a TSA employee was allowed to remain at his computer–and inserted a virus–after he knew his TSA employment was terminated. We simply do not take cyber-security seriously. Last week,...

A foreign spy agency pulled off the most serious breach of Pentagon computer networks ever by inserting a flash drive into a U.S. military laptop, a top defense official said Wednesday.

SNIPPET: "Oops, Microsoft did it again. Part of the company’s Government Security Program (GSP), Microsoft has offered the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) a peek inside the source code of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server. This is the second time that the company has (publicly) shared source code with the FSB, following a similar deal which took place in 2002, this time involving source code for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2000. Microsoft has done similar deals with China in 2003, and most recently in 2010. However, in the light of...

SNIPPET: "But Robin Sage did not exist. Her profile was a ruse set up by security consultant Thomas Ryan as part of an effort to expose weaknesses in the nation's defense and intelligence communities - what Mr. Ryan calls "an independent 'red team' exercise."" SNIPPET: "Another person involved at a senior level in the U.S. military's cybersecurity efforts, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the case, called it "an object lesson in the dangers of social networking." "People feel they are safe" on the Internet, he said, but in reality, "it is a perfect...

The U.S. Congress is considering legislation entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010. There is a version in the House and Senate. The Senate’s is moving along, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and is cosponsored by Republican Susan Collins (R-ME). This proposed bill is intended to protect U.S. citizens from cyber attacks, but I argue that is intended to partially scare citizens and is littered with flaws. Largely, I find Jeffrey Carr’s summary of Forbes.com to be accurate. The bill creates the “White House Office for Cyberspace Policy” and a “National Center for Cyber-security and Communications.” These...

The U.S. Congress is considering legislation entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010. There is a version in the House and Senate. The Senate’s is moving along, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and is cosponsored by Republican Susan Collins (R-ME). This proposed bill is intended to protect U.S. citizens from cyber attacks, but I argue that is intended to partially scare citizens and is littered with flaws. Largely, I find Jeffrey Carr’s summary of Forbes.com to be accurate. The bill creates the “White House Office for Cyberspace Policy” and a “National Center for Cyber-security and Communications.” These...

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack. Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a...

New legislation expected to be introduced today would give the Homeland Security Department broad new authorities and powers over federal civilian networks. The bill, however, does not include a “kill switch” for private sector networks, as widely reported previously. The legislation, Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, sponsored by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), would move the responsibility of civilian agency cybersecurity to DHS from the Office of Management and Budget, according to a summary of the bill obtained by Federal News Radio. The responsibility to develop, oversee and enforce IT...

He speaks nine languages, taught himself Icelandic in a week and invented his own language he calls Manti. The 31-year-old autistic savant does complex celestial computations in seconds, sees hundreds of numbers on a blackboard once and can recite them in the correct sequence minutes later. Daniel Tammet possesses synesthesia. Not only does he see numbers but also feels them. He is one in hundreds of millions, as he demonstrated on ABC's "20/20" this week. But when the "singularity" arrives — that moment in history when the supercomputer capable of trillions of moves per second will have reached parity with...

That's the warning from federal lawmakers who today introduced a bill to prevent a catastrophic cyber attack upon a power grid or the banking system from ever happening, and to defend against a multitude of other, perhaps less devastating cyber assaults against the government, the businesses and the people of the United States. "The threat of a cyber attack is very real," said Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), at a press conference introducing the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, a bill she co-sponsored with Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Thomas Carper (D-DE). "We cannot wait for a...

Government officials and business leaders from around the world will discuss the growing threat to cybersecurity, at a three-day meeting in Texas. The Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit, hosted by the EastWest Institute (EWI), opens in Dallas on Monday and will feature discussions on ways to protect the world's digital infrastructure from electronic threats. The summit is being held following sophisticated cyberattacks on Google which the internet giant said originated in China. US President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones and White House cybersecurity co-ordinator Howard Schmidt are expected to address the summit. The EWI, a non-partisan think tank, is bringing...

Sarah Palin testified Friday against a 22-year-old man accused of hacking into her e-mail account, saying later it's up to the judge to decide whether he should serve prison time if convicted. Palin testified that the hacking compromised one of the main ways she communicated with her family back in Alaska as she campaigned in 2008 as the Republican vice presidential candidate. Outside the courthouse, when asked whether she thought community service was punishment enough rather than prison, she said, "That's up to the judge." Former University of Tennessee student David Kernell faces up to 50 years in federal prison...

Many nations are taking advantage of the Internet to encourage, or even organize, patriotic Internet users to obtain hacking skills. This enables the government to use (often informally) these thousands of hackers to attack enemies (foreign or domestic.) These organizations arrange training and mentoring to improve the skills of group members. Turkey has over 44,000 of these hackers, Saudi Arabia has over 100,000, Iraq has over 40,000, Russia over 100,000 and China, over 400,000. While many of these Cyber Warriors are rank amateurs, even the least skilled can be given simple tasks. And out of their ranks will emerge more...

Last April, Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D, WV] (pictured at right), the Chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 to his committee. The goal of the bill was to develop a public-private plan for strengthening national security in the case of internet-based attacks. But it stalled almost immediately because of a controversial provision that would have give the President unilateral authority to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then shut down or limit access to parts of the internet without any oversight or explanation. A couple weeks ago, Sen. Rockefeller partnered with Sen. Olympia Snowe...

By some estimates we will need nearly 60,000 newly trained cyber defense warriors (as they are called), just in the next 3 years to help stop the threats to U.S. interests, companies and friends around the globe. That number is staggering when you realize that much of the hacking that exists today is unknown. For example, for every hacker like Francois who clearly wants to be known, there are hundreds who want to do just the opposite....they just want to sneak in, get the info and then sneak out......never detected.

Internet crime’s always been a problem, of course, but the magnitude of the problem has taken a big leap. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership of the National While Collar Crime Center and the FBI, today presented its annual report, and it’s a doozy. The dollar loss associated with Internet crime complaints received by IC3 last year jumped to $559.7 million from $264.6 million in 2008. That’s a 112% increase.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A message that North Korea had conducted a nuclear attack on the Japanese island of Okinawa turned out to be false, but the fact it was delivered via U.S. military communications has prompted a high alert, according to U.S. officials who asked to remain anonymous. U.S. military channels were hacked either by the Chinese or North Koreans, the source said. Access to such communications – even unclassified military systems – suggests a serious breach of technology security. "Today, March 06, 2010 at 11.46 AM local time (UTC/GMT -5 hours),US seismographic stations recorded seismic activity in the area...

Note: This is a SNIPPET only. Quote: GAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE http://gao.gov/products/GAO-10-338 "Cybersecurity: Progress Made but Challenges Remain in Defining and Coordinating the Comprehensive National Initiative" GAO-10-338 March 5, 2010 SNIPPET: "Summary In response to the ongoing threats to federal systems and operations posed by cyber attacks, President Bush established the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) in 2008. This initiative consists of a set of projects aimed at reducing vulnerabilities, protecting against intrusions, and anticipating future threats. GAO was asked to determine (1) what actions have been taken to develop interagency mechanisms to plan and coordinate CNCI activities and...

Security experts often stress the urgency and importance of stronger collaboration between the private and public sectors if we hope to turn the tide against the growing number of cyber-threats on the nation's economy and security. So many were happy to hear the Obama administration's top cyber-security official, Howard Schmidt, say in one of his first public addresses since he took the job last year that improving these partnerships will be a priority of his office. And to that effect, Schmidt's office declassified today some of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative documents, a secretive plan drafted by the Bush administration...

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. "We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks...

On Tuesday, the White House declassified cybersecurity somewhat when cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt pulled back the curtain, at least a bit, on the Bush administration’s secretive plan to defend the nation’s computer networks. At the RSA Conference, a security industry event, in San Francisco Tuesday, Mr. Schmidt announced that the Obama administration was partially declassifying the 2008 Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) in the name of transparency. “Transparency is particularly vital in areas, such as the CNCI, where there have been legitimate questions about sensitive topics like the role of the intelligence community in cybersecurity,” said Schmidt in a statement...

The White House on Tuesday made public excerpts of a previously classified report on cybersecurity prepared by the Bush adminisration. The report prescribes that the president "establish a front line of defense" and better address emerging cybersecurity threats. It also calls on both White House officials and lawmakers to boost domestic Web security programs, especially with respect to the federal government's classified networks, while expanding cybersecurity research and education programs.