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Israel rattled as hackers hit bourse, banks, El Al | Reuters

January 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment

JERUSALEM, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Hackers disrupted online access to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, El Al Airlines and three banks on Monday in what the government described as a cyber-offensive against Israel.

The attacks came just days after an unidentified hacker, proclaiming Palestinian sympathies, posted the details of thousands of Israeli credit card holders and other personal information on the Internet in a mass theft.

Stock trading and El Al flights operated normally despite the disruption, which occurred as Israeli media reported that pro-Palestinian hackers had threatened at the weekend to shut down the TASE stock exchange and airline Web sites.

While apparently confined to areas causing only limited inconvenience, the attacks have caused particular alarm in a country that depends on high-tech systems for much of its defence against hostile neighbours. Officials insist, however, that they pose no immediate security threat.

via UPDATE 3-Israel rattled as hackers hit bourse, banks, El Al | Reuters.

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Ten years later, the lessons learned from the Enron emails – Houston Chronicle

November 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Ten years after Enron’s painfully spectacular collapse, anyone with Internet access and some serious time to burn can relive the company’s implosion in excruciating detail by exploring an online digital graveyard of more than a half-million email messages retrieved from Enron insiders.

Painstakingly indexed and organized during the criminal and congressional investigations, the myriad lawsuits and the bankruptcy proceedings, this publicly searchable trove of data represents one of the few silver linings that we can take away from Enron’s downfall. While Enron lives on as a painful memory, this unique body of digital communications has already proven to be a priceless collection for studying internal corporate messages from this once-high-flying, politically ambitious and powerfully diverse company. For years now it has offered researchers and academics of all stripes a rare glimpse into how we communicate in our evolving digital age.

Even after 10 years, perusing the Enron email corpus provides a fascinating voyeuristic thrill. Besides the sheer size of the bankruptcy, Enron was unique because perhaps like no corporate scandal before it, digital communications provided investigators with a real-time account of the events as Enron collapsed. After all, by the time the company faltered – gradually, then suddenly, to borrow from Hemingway – we had firmly entered a time in which electronic messages had widely replaced the old-fashioned phone call or office visit. At the same time, it had not yet dawned on most of us back in 2001 that data like this never really disappears – that the delete button merely creates the illusion of a blank screen.

Take a spin around this archive and you’ll stumble across all of the significant details of the Enron story: the internal whistleblower’s seemingly unheeded warnings, the cynical snipes of dollar-driven employees, the opulent lifestyles of Enron execs and their families, and the mundane details of the workaday world. And, sadly, like any email trove in existence, you’ll invariably come across the spam emails, the forwarded jokes and the adult-oriented content.

via Ten years later, the lessons learned from the Enron emails – Houston Chronicle.

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EMC Puts Documentum Mobile on iPad

September 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Think about all the things you can do with EMC’s Documentum, and then think about doing them mobile. According to EMC’s website, Documentum userscan do that now by taking their repositories out of the enterprise using the iPad.

That is to say,  users of Documentum can access their repositories from the iPad, and although there is no mention of Android access, EMC has already said previously that it will be enabling access from all mobile platforms

Earlier on in the year during EMC World the company had slotted a release date of “sometime in the third quarter,” and sure enough, it can now be downloaded for iPad, and probably a lot more besides quite soon.

With it, all content in Documentum is visible, including rich media such as videos and images. In addition, EMC says users can carry out common repository tasks such as search and preview, download content for offline access, collaborate with other users and participate in business processes.

via EMC Puts Documentum Mobile on iPad.

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Is your IT support making you vulnerable to hackers? – Computerworld

July 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Network World – Data breaches are more prevalent and more costly than ever. Smarter technologies seem to breed smarter hackers, making it difficult for IT to keep up. But sometimes IT unwittingly helps the bad guys by improperly using core tools, such as remote support mechanisms.

According to a Verizon report which examined more than 700 data breaches from 2010, a whopping 71% of all attacks were conducted through remote access and desktop services pathways.

IN THE NEWS: House panel approves data breach notification bill

Given the cost and efficiency benefits of fixing a system remotely versus dispatching a tech, remote support isn’t likely to lose favor anytime soon. So how can companies take advantage of remote support while maintaining security and keeping data safe?

via Is your IT support making you vulnerable to hackers? – Computerworld.

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Unstructured data compliance costs firms an average of $2.1 million annually | Infosecurity (USA)

July 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The average cost of compliance associated with storing unstructured data is $2.1 million per year, according to a report prepared by the Ponemon Institute for software firm Novell.

The average compliance cost of unstructured data varies with the size of the organization. Companies with fewer than 5,000 employees have an average compliance cost of $1.23 million, while companies with more than 75,000 employees have an average compliance cost of $2.71 million, indicating that smaller businesses pay six times more per employee than larger businesses, according to the report.

Heavily regulated industries, such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, communications, and healthcare, have higher average compliance cost, incurring an average of $2.5 million annually, according to a review of 94 large US firms.

Ponemon breaks down compliance costs into the following activities: access governance, configuration management, assessment and audit, policy management, e-discovery, monitoring and scanning, backup and disaster recovery, specialized equipment cost, and specialized software costs.

A number of these activities include implementation of information security policies and regulations. For example, “access governance” includes cost associated with identity, authentication, provisioning, and access rights, which all have an information security component.

“Assessment and audit” includes compliance cost associated with review, evaluation, and verification of data storage based on the organization’s data security requirements, including regulatory compliance audits. “Policy management” includes cost associated with development, implementation, and enforcement of a company’s data storage policies, including those specified by laws and regulations. E-discovery involves the cost associated with discovery of electronic documents for litigation, data breach investigation, and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act privacy rules.

The most expensive compliance cost associated with the storage of unstructured data are e-discovery, access governance, and internal auditing activities. Together, these activities cost businesses over $1.9 million on average annually.

via Infosecurity (USA) – Unstructured data compliance costs firms an average of $2.1 million annually.

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Sony apologizes, says 10 million credit card accounts may have been exposed in network attack | Technology | Los Angeles Times

May 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Sony has revealed that 10 million credit card accounts may have been exposed two weeks ago when a hacker broke into the company’s computers in San Diego and stole data from 77 million PlayStation Network accounts.

During a news conference in Tokyo on Saturday, Kaz Hirai, Sony’s executive deputy president, offered the company’s first public apology by an executive and promised to compensate customers.

“We offer our sincerest apologies,” Hirai said, then bowed deeply in a Japanese custom showing regret, at the news conference, a recording of which can be viewed here.

Hirai said Sony would give affected customers 30 days of free access to its Qriocity music-streaming service as well as 30 days of access to its PlayStation Plus online game service. In addition, Sony said it will provide credit card protection services for the 10 million customers whose data were compromised.

Sony last week said it had encrypted credit card data, but not other account information, including names, addresses, email addresses and birth dates.

The break-in, which occurred between April 17 and April 19 but was not disclosed until April 25, drew furor from U.S. lawmakers, who last week demanded more information from Sony about the intrusion and why the company took a week before notifying its customers.

via Sony apologizes, says 10 million credit card accounts may have been exposed in network attack | Technology | Los Angeles Times.

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Technology News: Malware: FBI May Hunt Down and Destroy Botnets in Zombie PCs

April 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The FBI has requested and received a preliminary injunction from a U.S. district judge to continuing issuing “stop” commands to the zombie machines infected with the Coreflood botnet. It is an essential step that is part of the agency’s dramatic takedown of the botnet’s command-and-control system earlier this month, an agent said in written testimony.

In mid-April, the FBI seized five command-and-control servers and 29 domain names registered in the United States and then obtained a temporary restraining order to intercept signals — that is, issue stop commands — from any other C&C servers handling the botnet. It was the first time the agency took such steps against a botnet.

That was only meant to be a temporary measure to keep Coreflood from reconstituting itself elsewhere. Toward that end, the FBI proposed another radical move in its court plea: tracking down the individual owners of the zombie PCs that have been hijacked by Coreflood and uninstalling the malware, with their permission.

“Removing Coreflood in this manner could be used to delete Coreflood from infected computers and to ‘undo’ certain changes made by Coreflood to the Windows operating system when Coreflood was first installed,” special agent Briana Neumiller wrote. “The process does not affect any user files on an infected computer, nor does it require physical access to the infected computer or access to any data on the infected computer.”

via Technology News: Malware: FBI May Hunt Down and Destroy Botnets in Zombie PCs.

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Epsilon pledges to build ‘Fort Knox’ around breached system – Computerworld

April 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

E-mail marketing giant Epsilon will build an industry-leading security system in response to a March 30 breach in which thieves gained access to the e-mail addresses and names of partner’s customers, the CEO of Epsilon’s parent company said Thursday.

Epsilon had “very strong” security measures in place before the breach, but additional improvements are coming, said Ed Heffernan, president and CEO of Alliance Data Systems.

“Bottom line, we will emerge not just with strong security protocols, but industry-leading,” he said. “We’re essentially going to build Fort Knox around this thing. We’ve taken the position now that it’s not good enough to be at or above the industry [standard], we need to be the absolute leader in the industry because we are the largest player.”

Epsilon’s e-mail marketing technologies will sacrifice some flexibility and user-friendliness for security, Heffernan said during a conference call about his company’s quarterly profits. Heffernan didn’t disclose what new security measures the company planned to take.

via Epsilon pledges to build ‘Fort Knox’ around breached system – Computerworld.

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Fired Gucci Employee Indicted for Hacking Company’s Computer Network | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

April 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A former employee for Gucci America was indicted this week for tampering with and remotely accessing the company’s computer system.

Sam Chihlung Yin, 34, was a network engineer with the fashion company until May 2010, when he was fired for unrelated reasons. Prior to his dimissal, he used his technical know-how to create a fake virtual private network (VPN) token. He took it with him after he was fired and tricked the Gucci IT department into activating it.

Over the next several months, Yin used his knowledge of Gucci’s network and administrator-level passwords to “gain nearly unfettered access to Gucci’s network,” according to the New York County District Attorney’s Office.

Yin shut down several servers and networks and deleted data. Gucci lost access to documents and email for nearly 24 hours, while other documents and emails were deleted permanently. This affected Gucci retail stores and online sales, resulting in $200,000 worth of damage.

via Fired Gucci Employee Indicted for Hacking Company’s Computer Network | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

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Google chooses Kansas City for ultra-fast Internet service – Mar. 30, 2011

March 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

he year-long wait is over: Google announced Wednesday that it has chosen to deploy its ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas City, Kansas.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) will provide broadband Internet access to the city with speeds of about 1 gigabit per second. That’s around 100 times faster than what most Americans have available to them today. Google said that the network’s speed would be fast enough to download a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes.

via Google chooses Kansas City for ultra-fast Internet service – Mar. 30, 2011.

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