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Computer Worm Has Infected over 7 million computers
11/02/2009
The Conficker has now infected more than 7 million computers, security experts estimate. One of the keys to controling the worm is a set of clear, concise, implemented, and followed security policies and procedures.
Researchers at the volunteer-run Shadowserver Foundation logged computers from more than 7 million unique IP addresses, all infected by the known variants of Conficker.
They have been able to keep track of Conficker infections by cracking the algorithm the worm uses to look for instructions on the Internet and placing their own "sinkhole" servers on the Internet domains it is programmed to visit. Conficker has several ways of receiving instructions, so the bad guys have still been able to control PCs, but the sinkhole servers give researchers a good idea how many machines are infected.
Although Conficker is probably the computer worm most known about, PCs continue to get infected by it, said a co-founder of The Shadowserver Foundation. "The trend is definitely increasing and breaking 7 million is pretty much of a landmark event," he said.
Conficker first caught the attention of security experts in November 2008 and received widespread media attention in early 2009. It has proved remarkably resilient and adept at re-infecting systems even after being removed.
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Government Web Site Fails to Shows if IT Jobs Created
10/23/2009
WASHINGTON -- One of the primary reasons for the stimulus money is to create jobs and one of the primary things CIOs would like to know from this data is what kinds of jobs were created. There is no information at Recovery.gov concerning the types of jobs either saved or created from the $16 billion in contracts awarded so far, representing 2% of the $787 billion stimulus. One obvious follow-up question to the U.S. government's announcement that the federal stimulus has created or saved 30,000 jobs so far is this: How many were IT and engineering jobs?
The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that provides Recovery.gov, designed to allow citizens to track funding, is posting only what it gets in reports from recipients. A spokesman said theat they are not analyzing the data in terms of types of jobs but would do it "later". The lack of detailed information, the absence of data, the lack of consistency to the data collected, and insufficient rules governing how that data is supposed to be collected and displayed makes the site useless.
The Recovery.gov site includes interactive maps and spreadsheets showing companies that have received the data, the number of jobs created or saved, and a description of some of the work. This barebones information makes a rough guess possible about the quality of jobs based on description of the work.
Recovery.gov falls short in a number of respects in helping users understanding spending. Among the problems is site navigation difficulty and an inability to search by recipient. This prompted the creation of the Coalition for and Accountable Recovery, which represents about 30 groups.
Along with OBM Watch, some of its other members include the Center for Responsive Politics, OMB Watch, Sunlight Foundation, Economic Policy Institute. The groups criticized the usability of the Web site, and said it needed functions, such as ability to search by recipient.
The stimulus is expected to create IT jobs but there's never been any estimate about how many. Both IT and engineering jobs have declined in the recession.
However, IT firms are expecting the stimulus to perk up spending. IBM's chief financial officer, said this month that public sector was again the fastest growing sector with 2% growth, led by health care and education.
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Evolving data threats - CIOs and enterprises adapt
10/17/2009
Businesses adapt to increased mobility and expanded connectivity: Evolving data threats
Mobile computing and global networking cast a new light on data security issues as, in response, organizations reassess the technologies in use within their IT infrastructures and reconsider the ways in which staff members, customers and partners communicate. Solutions that do not provide the appropriate balance between protection and usability must be discarded in favor of solutions that effectively minimize risks of data theft or loss achieve compliance with existing regulations and equip personnel with tools that help them work productively and securely.
The facts are that business processes today rely on vastly different methods of data storage and data exchange than even a few years ago. These changes in the computing landscape make it essential that companies adopt a very different approach to security. According to the a research report by a leading IT think tank, 90% of organizations say that data security is "important" or "very important" and would get high priority in 2009.
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DHS to hire 1,000 IT Pros - Feds to hire 12,000 in total
10/05/2009
The Department of Homeland Security wants to hire 1,000 cybersecurity professionals in the next three years, according to agency Secretary Janet Napolitano. That along with the projections of other government agencies puts the feds in the driver's seat of the job market.
The DHS has the authority to recruit and hire cybersecurity professionals over the next three years in order to help fulfill its mission to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure, systems, and networks, she said.
"This new hiring authority will enable DHS to recruit the best cyber analysts, developers and engineers in the world to serve their country by leading the nations defenses against cyber threats," Napolitano stated.
DHS is the focal point for the security of cyberspace -- including analysis, warning, information sharing, vulnerability reduction, mitigation, and recovery efforts for public and private critical infrastructure information systems.
The hiring authority, which results from a collaborative effort between DHS, the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, lets DHS staff up to 1,000 positions over three years across all DHS agencies to fulfill critical cybersecurity roles, including cyber risk and strategic analysis, cyber incident response, vulnerability detection and assessment, intelligence and investigation, and network and systems engineering.
The need for DHS to bolster its security realm is a hot topic. A Government Accountability Office report this year said that while DHS established the National Cyber Security Division to be responsible for leading national day-to-day cybersecurity efforts that has not enabled DHS to become the national focal point for security as envisioned.
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Security and Privacy Under Congressional Scrutiny
09/30/2009
Four Democrat U.S. senators will introduce a bill to repeal a provision protecting telecommunications carriers from lawsuits due to their assistance to a controversial U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program. The new legislation, called the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, would allow lawsuits against telecom providers, such as AT&T Inc., to resume.
The original legislation repealed telecom immunity provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, passed by Congress in July 2008.
The FISA Amendments Act provides some additional court oversight to the NSA wiretapping program, which former President George Bush's administration launched after terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. The FISA Amendments Act allowed the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, which allowed the interception of phone calls and e-mail messages of people with suspected ties to terrorism, to continue until the end of 2012.
Critics of the NSA program said it illegally targeted U.S. residents' communications with people linked to terrorist groups without court-approved warrants. The program was illegal under the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, critics said.
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Another Data Breach of 160,000 plus SSNs
09/28/2009
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Friday began notifying about 163,000 women about the potential compromise of their Social Security numbers and other personal information after a hacker breached a system containing the data.
The breached server belonged to the UNC School of Medicine and contained information that was collected as part of a federally funded mammography research project. The system contained records on a total of 236,000 women, of which about 163,000 included Social Security numbers.
The Chairman of the university's Department of Radiology said the breach was first discovered in July when a researcher reported problems accessing the system. A subsequent investigation by the school's information systems staff revealed that the system had been hacked.
Though the breach was discovered in July, there are indications that the actual intrusion may have taken place as long as two years ago.
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Denial of service attacks are on the rise
09/18/2009
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- What you see is not always what you get. Determining the source of an attack is challenging. The so-called North Korean attacks in July appear to have been controlled from a server in the United Kingdom. Remember, just because an attack originates in one country does not mean it is managed from there.
- Money changes everything. Money is a motivator as underground developers are selling tools such as an online service to run new malware variants against the most popular antivirus engines to identify which ones make it through. With botnet tools for sale, relative amateurs can launch sophisticated attacks.
- It is no longer just kids. Professionalism is on the rise. The most serious attacks can go undetected as botnets designed to steal data or tap computing power have gotten better at encryption and covering their tracks.
- It is not the medium, it is the message. Be as suspicious of tweets and videos as you are of e-mails.
- Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Consider real-time content analysis as a weapon in defending your networks.
- New world order. Get used to them -- they are here to stay. New attacks are emerging at a faster and faster pace, so the need to update security is paramount.
DRP - Business Continuity Template Update Service Is A Must
09/12/2009
The Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Template version 5.4 has just been released. Janco contiues to update its templates to meet the ever changing requirements of the business environment.
Janco provides and update service for all of its templates which guarantees its clients have the all of the information they need to meet mandated requirements.
With this new version a fully indexed PDF copy of the template is now provided in addition to the two versions of WORD (2003 and 2007).
The updates to the template included:
- Added Pandemic Coordinator job description
- Added Business Pandemic Planning Checklist
- Updated organization chart to include Pandemic Coordinator
- Updated backup and backup retention section
- Updated style sheet to be CSS Style sheet format
- Added Disaster Recovery Business Continuity General Distribution Information
- What to do after an explosion / terrorist attack
- How to clean up after a disaster
- Defined generic metrics for DR/BC success
- Business & IT Impact Analysis Questionnaire Updated
- Updated references to DRP card
- Updated formatting to meet WORD 2007 requirements
The version history for updates to template can be seen at http://www.e-janco.com/drpversion.htm and the full Table of Contents with sample pages can be downloaded at http://www.e-janco.com/Register_drp.asp .
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Security Adminstrator spends 14 months in jail
09/01/2009
A Bay Area has been held on a $5 million bond since his July 12, 2008, arrest in a case that
Prosecutors had charged a bay area man with holding the city's FiberWAN network hostage and installing unauthorized "back-door" modems on the city's network. Recemtly, a Superior Court Judge threw out three of the four charges against the man. Lawyers for the former city network administrator had hoped that this might lead to a bail reduction and a chance to get their client out of jail.
But that was not to be. The judge has denied the motion to reduce bail, alluding to "public security concerns."
Curretnly the man is now charged with one count of disrupting computer services and could face as much as five years in prison.
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Internet warrent search limited by courts
08/28/2009
The reach of the government has been limited by a federal appeals court that ruled that government investigators cannot retain incriminating information found in electronic searches unless it is within the scope of a search warrant. The majority opinion states this was an obvious case of deliberate overreaching by the government in an effort to seize data as to which it lacked probable.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a 9-2 vote, rejected arguments by the U.S. Justice Department that it could retain and use all of the data that it seized in 2004 as part of a federal.
The court disputed the Justice Department's argument that it should be allowed to retain and use information not included in its original search warrant because it came into "plain view." The court contended that the so-called "plain view doctrine," which allows investigators to seize evidence without a warrant if it was found in plain view during a legitimate search, does not extend to electronic searches.
The warrant issued allowed the government investigators to search through computer files for the records of 10 individuals. When the warrant was executed however, investigators seized and reviewed the records of hundreds of other individuals.
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