Schmidt Wants to Change Federal Cybersecurity Game

Yesterday, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt and federal CTO Aneesh Chopra wrote a blog post about the launch of a web forum that is designed to allow individuals to discuss their research and development ideas to “change the game” in cybersecurity.

The web forum looks to promote information exchange on…

Bank of America Names Greg Garcia Partnership Executive for Cyber and ID Management

Bank of America has announced that Gregory T. Garcia, formerly assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications (CS&C) in the Department of Homeland Security, has been named partnership executive for cybersecurity and identity management.

In this position, Garcia will be responsible for leading the bank’s relationships with private and public…

Symantec to Acquire VeriSign for $1.3 Billion

Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) has announced that it plans to acquire VeriSign for around $1.3 billion. Symantec will acquire VeriSign’s authentication and identity business.

That includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate Services, the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Services, the VeriSign Trust Services and the VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service.

“With the anonymity…

Over 80 Chinese Government Websites Hacked

In China, 81 government websites were hacked from May 10 to May 16, according to a report by National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team. This represents a drop in attacks by 35 percent from the previous week.

As of noon on Monday, May 17, at least 29 of the websites were still down. In China, a number of threats are exploited by malware and unpatched systems. China…

Suspected Videogame Hacker Pleads Not Guilty

A 20-year-old man who was charged with trying to download the code of a soon-to-be released videogame at a tech convention pleaded not guilty in court today.

On March 28, Justin D. May of Delaware was attending the March PAX East 2010 in Boston, where he allegedly used his laptop to hack into an Xbox 360 Test Kit that was demonstrating the game Breach, and downloaded the code….

Featured Job- Cyber Warfare Expert with Northrop Grumman

The Advanced Technology and Solutions (ATS) Operating Unit of Defense Systems Division is seeking a Program Manager – Cyber Warfare Expert (CWE). In this position, the CWE will: Be responsible for establishing a multi-year Cyber strategy for ATS. This strategy will establish an actionable plan for growing ATS’s customer sales with Cyber-Security customers, primarily DoD customers. Be responsible for establishing a…

Why Energy Companies Should Care About Cyber Too

Over the past year, the profile of cyber threats has increased dramatically, with Google announcing in January that the company was the victim of a cyber attack. However, Internet based companies are not the only organizations that need to pay attention to the growing cyber threat.

Individuals like Mike McConnell, former DNI now working at Booz Allen, have repeatedly said…

Microsoft Will Provide Vulnerability Info to Governments

Microsoft has announced its plans to provide pre-patch vulnerability data to governments around the globe. Under the new program, named Omega, Microsoft will share the information with governments in an effort to help protect critical infrastructure and government systems from hackers.

The program includes a Defensive Information Sharing Program (DISP) that offers national government entities technical information on vulnerabilities…

DARPA Looks to SMITE Traitors

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is in the market for automated technology that can uncover “increasingly sophisticated malicious insider behavior” on U.S. networks.

DARPA is calling the new technology Suspected Malicious Insider Threat Elimination (SMITE).

“We define insider threat as malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by an already trusted person with access to sensitive information and information systems and sources,”…

Quantum Cryptography Hacked

Quantum cryptography is widely considered to be one of the most secure methods of communication, as the cryptography is alleged to be unbreakable.

Researchers at the University of Toronto appear to have contradicted that myth, however. Feihu Xu, Bing Qi and Hoi-Kwong Lo claim to have successfully broken a commercial quantum cryptography system developed by ID Quantique. This is the first successful attempt to break a quantum cryptography system.

The researchers…