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FBI seeks social media monitoring tool – Computerworld

February 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Computerworld – In a move that’s unlikely to sit well with privacy advocates, the FBI has begun scouting for a tool that will allow it to gather and mine data from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

The goal is to use the tool to keep on top of breaking events, incidents and emerging threats, the agency said in a recent Request for Information (RFI) from IT vendors.

The FBI said it’s seeking a “secure, lightweight web application portal using mashup technology.”

According to the RFI document, “The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow [the FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center] to quickly vet, identity and geo-locate” potential threats to the U.S.

The FBI said the tool must have the ability to automatically search and scrape data off social networking and news sites based on specific queries. It must also be able to display alerts on geo-spatial maps and give users the ability to quickly summarize the “who, what, when, where and why” of specific threats and incidents.

via FBI seeks social media monitoring tool – Computerworld.

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Obama Directive Alters Federal Record Management And E-Discovery Landscape | AOL Government (Rob Hellewell)

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

With the stroke of a pen, the Obama administration has ushered the federal government into the Digital Age. On November 28, the President issued a memorandum mandating new rules, procedures, and deadlines for overhauling the government’s record management system, kick-starting the federal government’s transition to a digitized recordkeeping environment.

In what the memorandum describes as “a 21st-century framework for the management of Government records,” 480 federal agencies will be required to begin the migration to electronic recordkeeping, creating better management systems for emails, social media, and cloud-based information.

President Obama expects the effort to start immediately. The memorandum gives agency heads 120 days to submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) detailing their plan to improve records management. The OMB will then have 120 days to review the plans and issue specific steps that each agency must take to reform recordkeeping.

via Obama Directive Alters Federal Record Management And E-Discovery Landscape.

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FBI rejects FOIA request for Carrier IQ info – Computerworld

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The FBI has denied a request for the release of information regarding its use of Carrier IQ’s software, saying that releasing the information could interfere with ongoing law enforcement operations.

The response does not make it clear whether the agency is using Carrier IQ for investigative purposes, or whether the documents it has, are related to an investigation of the controversial software.

The request under the Freedom of Information Act was filed Dec. 1 by Michael Morisy, co-founder of MuckRock, a website that helps people file FOIA requests with the government. Morisy asked the FBI for any manuals, documents or other written material it might have related to the FBI’s use of data gathered by Carrier IQ.

In response, David Hardy, the section manager of the FBI’s Records Management Group said the FBI has in its possession “responsive documents” pertaining to Carrier IQ. However, Hardy said the FBI would not release the documents as requested because doing so would compromise ongoing investigations.

via FBI rejects FOIA request for Carrier IQ info – Computerworld.

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BBC News – United Nations agency ‘hacking attack’ investigated

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A group of hackers has posted more than 100 email addresses and login details which it claimed to have extracted from the United Nations.

Many of the emails involved appear to belong to members of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The group, which identified itself as Teampoison, attacked the UN’s behaviour and called it a “fraud”.

A spokeswoman for the UNDP said the agency believed “an old server which contains old data” had been targeted.

“The UNDP found [the] compromised server and took it offline,” said Sausan Ghosheh.

via BBC News – United Nations agency ‘hacking attack’ investigated.

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Facebook may track users who leave service, data agency says | The Detroit News

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Facebook Inc. may be tracking users’ Internet activity even after they cancel their accounts with the social-networking site, a German privacy watchdog said.

An in-depth probe of the way cookies are installed after a user opens and then closes their Facebook account has made the Hamburg Data Protection agency “suspicious” the company is unlawfully tracking users, the watchdog said on its website today. While rejecting Facebook’s justifications for the use of cookies, the agency welcomed the company’s offer to explain the technical processes.

“Arguments that all users have to remain recognizable after they leave Facebook to guarantee the service’s security can’t stand up,” Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection representative, said on his agency’s website. “The probe raises the suspicion that Facebook is creating user tracking profiles,” which would be unlawful if users aren’t alerted.

The German regulator’s action adds to probes of Facebook by the Irish data-protection agency and Norway’s privacy watchdog. A group of EU regulators has said they will look for possible privacy violations in Facebook’s facial-recognition feature.

The social network “does not track users across the Web,” and instead uses cookies to personalize content or for safety and security reasons, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said in an e-mailed statement. The company said it deletes account-specific cookies when a user leaves Facebook and doesn’t receive personally identifiable data when logged-out users browse the Web.

Remaining cookies are used in “identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorized is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked,” and blocking underage users from re-registering with a different birth date, Facebook said.

The German privacy regulator said that, while Facebook gave detailed explanations of how it uses cookies — small data files that track browsing habits — the company’s arguments don’t justify its practices.

via Technology | Facebook may track users who leave service, data agency says | The Detroit News.

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Anonymous claims release of BART police officers’ data – Computerworld

August 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Hackers claiming to belong to the Anonymous hacking collective this morning publicly posted the names, home addresses, email addresses and passwords of 102 police officers belonging to San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency.

The move was in apparent retaliation for BARTs decision to temporarily cut off underground cell phone service to commuters last Thursday in response to a planned protest against the shooting of a homeless man by BART police in March.

News of the attack was released via a Twitter account associated with Anonymous’ attacks on BART. However, another Twitter account used by Anonymous noted that “no one claimed responsibility” for this morning’s incident.

“Some random Joe joined a channel and released the data to the press,” the tweet noted. Another tweet noted that the leak of BART police data “could be the work sanctioned by those who truly support anonymous, or agent provocateurs. Stay skeptical.”

via Anonymous claims release of BART police officers’ data – Computerworld.

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GSA moves all 17,000 employee email accounts to the cloud – Nextgov

July 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Contractors say all 17,000 General Services Administration employees have successfully signed on to a professional version of Gmail. The milestone makes GSA the first of roughly 15 agencies to move to cloud-based email.

GSA completed its conversion from IBM’s Lotus Notes software to Google Apps for Government, an online tool that employees can access anywhere on any device. Previously, employees needed to log on to the agency network to read email, share documents and chat.

In announcing the $6.7 million project last December, GSA officials said the shift would cut costs in half over a five-year contract period, partly by reducing equipment and staffing needs. With Web-based services, or “cloud computing,” third parties manage information technology hardware and software on behalf of multiple clients at their own server farms.

Officials at Unisys, which led the project, said the Google deployment exceeds data protection requirements instituted by the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act by providing two-factor authentication, a sign-on process that typically requires a password and a second piece of identifying information. The verification technology is from SecureAuth, a rival of the widely-used RSA SecurID system that suffered brand damage when hackers earlier this year stole sensitive information related to the product.

During the six-month transition period at GSA, Unisys officials came to realize that the size of an agency’s userbase is not necessarily indicative of the amount of work required to complete a job.

“Just because you might have 17,000 users, it doesn’t tell you how much data there is to migrate,” said Steve Kousen, a Unisys vice president and partner who leads the firm’s cloud services group. At GSA, contractors were dealing with 60 terabytes of data, or the equivalent of 30,000 million typewritten pages, that they had to transfer without disrupting productivity at the agency.

via GSA moves all 17,000 employee email accounts to the cloud – Nextgov.

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SEC’s FCPA Chief Leaves For Simpson Thacher – Corruption Currents – WSJ

June 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Cheryl Scarboro, who leads the Securities and Exchange Commission’s anti-foreign bribery unit, is leaving the agency for Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, the law firm announced Wednesday.

After 19 years with the SEC, she will join the firm’s government and internal investigation’s practice, it said in the statement. Scarboro led the SEC investigation of Siemens AG, which ended with an $800 million settlement with U.S. regulators, the largest in the history of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribery of foreign officials for business purposes.

She contributed to the rapid rise of enforcing the FCPA, and has worked closely with the Justice Department in doing so, the WSJ Law blog said.

Scarboro also handled or supervised the first-ever use of a deferred-prosecution agreement by the SEC in the Tenaris case, led the civil action for FCPA violations by 15 companies and three individuals in the United Nations oil-for-food kickback scandal in Iraq, and several high-profile insider trading cases, the SEC said in an emailed statement.

via SEC’s FCPA Chief Leaves For Simpson Thacher – Corruption Currents – WSJ.

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U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen – NYTimes.com

May 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Government regulators on the Wall Street beat have long been outnumbered and outspent by the companies they are supposed to police. But even after receiving budget increases from Congress last month, regulators are still falling behind.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are struggling to fill crucial jobs, enforce new rules, upgrade market surveillance technology and pay for travel.

On a recent trip to New York to tour a trading floor, a group of employees from the commodities watchdog rode Mega Bus both ways, arriving late to their meeting despite a 5:30 a.m. departure. The bus, which cost $30 a person round trip, saved the agency roughly $1,000 over Amtrak.

“We spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a hideous bailout, and now we’re not going to fund reforms to prevent another one,” said Bart Chilton, a commissioner with the agency.

The money squeeze comes as Wall Street regulators take on added responsibilities in the wake of the financial crisis, including monitoring hedge funds, overseeing the $600 trillion derivatives market and other tasks mandated by the Dodd-Frank law.

via U.S. Regulators Face Budget Pinch as Mandates Widen – NYTimes.com.

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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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