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Archive for the ‘cybercrime/malcode’ category: Page 191

Mar 28, 2016

NSA head secretly visited Israel last week

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, finance, government, neuroscience, privacy

U.S. Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers, who serves as Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, Director of the National Security Agency, and Chief of the Central Security Service, secretly visited Israel last week, according to Israel-based Haaretz.

The visit’s purpose was to reinforce ties with Intelligence Corps Unit 8200 of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), particularly against cyber attacks by Iran and Hezbollah, according to Haaretz.

Israel has been the target of cyber attacks since the summer of 2014, but attacks have lately intensified. The U.S. too appears to have been victimized by Iran, with a federal court indicting a seven Iranians last week – said to be working for the Iranian government and the Revolutionary Guards – on charges of carrying out attacks against financial institutions and a dam in New York.

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Mar 28, 2016

Brussels Attacks Likely to Bring Cyber-Aftermath

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, finance, terrorism

The tragedy in Brussels shocked the world this week—but the aftershocks of the March 22 terrorist bombings are likely to include follow-on cyber-threats.

These attacks typically involve hackers targeting critical infrastructure in order to cause chaos and physical damage, alongside fear and financial damage.

“We have been able to identify a pattern of behavior of cyber attackers and attack methods surrounding major terrorist events in Western Europe, the latest such pattern was identified after the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks,” Cytegic noted in an intelligence brief shared with Infosecurity.

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Mar 25, 2016

Machine learning is reshaping security

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI, transportation

At the recent RSA Conference it was virtually impossible to find a vendor that was not claiming to use machine learning. Both new and established companies are now touting “machine learning” as a major component of the data science being used in their products. What the heck is machine learning anyway? And is it really going to reshape cyber security in 2016?

For brevity’s sake, I’ll define machine learning as the science of getting computers to act without being explicitly programmed. Over the past decade, machine learning has enabled self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and has vastly improved our understanding of the human genome. Machine learning is so pervasive today that we use it dozens of times a day without knowing it. Many researchers also think machine learning is the best way to make progress towards human-level Artificial Intelligence.

[ MORE MACHINE LEARNING: Machine learning: Cybersecurity dream-come-true or pipe dream? ].

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Mar 19, 2016

Watch out for these malware attacks on your vehicle — Federal Bureau of Investigation to drivers

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, transportation

FBI — You have a connected car/ self driving car in the US; be careful because the hackers are coming.


That’s why the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a bulletin warning about the increasing vulnerability of motor vehicles to hacking.

The FBI warns drivers to ensure their car’s software is up to date, to be careful making unauthorized modifications to their car’s software and when connecting to third-party devices, and be wary of who has physical access to their vehicle. Instead it’s meant to educate the public after a series of publicly known hacks of cars in 2015, including a Jeep intentionally hijacked by researchers while driving down the highway.

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Mar 16, 2016

Danish intelligence agency to start ‘hacker academy’ to fight cyber warfare

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, military, neuroscience

This is interesting; especially for us who have been engaged in the Cyber Security Warfare for a while. In the 90’s, the top hackers at the time got much of their training out of a known network ring of hackers in Denmark. In fact, they had an underground monthly magazine I believe it was called “Hacker 77” or something like that. Anyway, now Demark is setting up an academy to teach others to combat hackers.


The Danish security and intelligence service PET has announced plans to recruit talented IT nerds interested in helping the Danish state with its cyber espionage against foreign powers like terrorist organisations.

The agency has today launched a marketing campaign for what the media is calling a “hackers’ academy” with the slogan: “Have you got what it takes to become a member of a secret elite unit?”

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Mar 16, 2016

We Are Coming for You, Tesla, And You, Too, Google, Says Hacker Hotz

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, mobile phones, robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

The legendary hacker George Hotz, known by his nom de guerre “geohot,” who first came to public attention by hacking Apple’s (AAPL) first iPhone, spoke this morning at the South by Southwest conference about taking on Tesla’s (TSLA) self-driving car initiatives with his own garage efforts, a talk titled “I built a better self-driving car than Tesla.”

By the end of the talk, it was clear he had numerous targets, including Alphabet’s (GOOGL) self-driving car efforts, despite mighty respect for the search giant.

Hotz’s achievement, rigging up home made parts to an Acura ILX to make it self-driving, first came to prominence with an article in mid-December by Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance.

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Mar 15, 2016

IDC Financial Insights Explores the Rising Demand for Cyber Insurance and the Opportunity It Creates for Insurers Worldwide

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, finance

Nice concept; however, given the recent warnings for 2016; I hope that IDC and others are not overwhelmed as well as able to meet their client’s expectations. My concern is expectations by policy holders as well as leaders operating in a mode of false sense of security and ignoring warnings that they would have focused on closely without the insurance.


New report offers insight into some of the tools and models available today to help insurers expand into this emerging market, balance their risk portfolios, and maintain a positive outlook

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., March 15, 2016 – Increased digitization and interconnectivity have catapulted the risk of cyber threats as one of the top global perils of 2016 and beyond. To combat this risk, many companies will look to insurance as a critical risk management technique that complements improved cyber security measures. IDC Financial Insights outlines the tremendous opportunities for insurers to capitalize on this largely untapped market in a new report, Perspective: Cyber Insurance — Can Technology Help Insurers Overcome Their Skepticism? (Doc #EMEA41044816), and emphasizes some of the tools and models that can help insurers effectively penetrate the emerging market while balancing their risk portfolios.

Read more

Mar 15, 2016

72% Indian companies faced cyber attacks in 2015, yet most do not have a threat response strategy

Posted by in categories: business, cybercrime/malcode, finance, information science

Very concerning: 72% of all India companies were hacked in 2015. How many were hosting consumer and business data for non-Indian companies say US or European companies?


According to KPMG’s, Cyber Crime Survey Report 2015, around 72 per cent of the companies in India have faced cyber-attacks in the year 2015. In India a spate of cyber security issues have been witnessed like the Gaana.com or Ola Cabs apps being hacked. Such issues have raised the alarm for the whole enterprise community. And it doesn’t seem to be stopping here. According to a report from McAfee Labs, the number of cyber attacks where malware holds user data hostage is expected to grow in 2016 as hackers target more companies and advanced software is able to compromise more types of data. In many cases the objective would be financial gain or corporate espionage, either ways, resulting in heavy losses for the enterprise.

Today, no single new age enterprise is immune to cyber threats. The humongous amount of information popping out of various social and mobile platforms continues to add to organizations’ vulnerabilities, making them attractive targets for complex cyber crimes.

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Mar 15, 2016

Schumer: Iranian Cyber-Attack on New York Dam Was “Shot Across the Bow”

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, energy

So does this mean war?


Sen. Chuck Schumer (D – N.Y.) said that an Iranian cyber-attack on a dam near New York City was a “shot across the bow” of the United States, which should be answered with harsher sanctions, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

“Now it looks clear that the Iranians did it,” Schumer said during an appearance on Long Island. “What were they doing? They were sending a shot across our bow. They were saying that we can damage, seriously damage, our critical infrastructure and put the lives and property of people at risk.”

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Mar 15, 2016

Artificial intelligence has become a religion

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, quantum physics, robotics/AI

To me; it’s all common sense. If you step back look at the technology landscape as a whole along with AI; you start to see the barriers that truly spolights where we have way too much hype around AI.

Example, hacking. If we had truly advance AI at the level that it has been promoted; wouldn’t make sense that researchers would want to solve the $120 billion dollar money pit issue around Cyber Security and make billions to throw at their emerging AI tech plus ensure their AI investment wouldn’t incur pushback by consumers due to lack of trust that AI would not be hacked? So, I usually tread litely on over hype technologies.

I do see great possiblities and seen some amazing things and promise from Quantum Computing; however, we will not truly realize its impact and full potential until another 7 years; I will admit I see more promise with it than the existing AI landscape that is built off of existing traditional digital technology that has been proven to be broken by hackers.

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