U.S. Said To Be Target of Massive Cyber-Espionage Campaign

Nakashima, Ellen. "U.S. Said To Be Target of Massive Cyber-Espionage Campaign." The Washington Post, February 10, 2013. 

From the article: "A new intelligence assessment has concluded that the United States is the target of a massive, sustained cyber-espionage campaign that is threatening the country’s economic competitiveness, according to individuals familiar with the report.

The National Intelligence Estimate identifies China as the country most aggressively seeking to penetrate the computer systems of American businesses and institutions to gain access to data that could be used for economic gain." Read more 

Chicago Designing Predictive Software Platform to Identify Crime Patterns

Schectman, Joel. "Chicago Designing Predictive Software Platform to Identify Crime Patterns." The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2012. 

From the article: "Chicago is designing an analytic software system to improve city services and fight crime.

The system will allow policymakers to analyze disparate pieces of information from across agencies, including crime statistics, building and business permits, and transcripts from resident complaints, Chicago’s chief data officer, Brett Goldstein, told CIO Journal. Goldstein hopes the system, which will be available to all agencies, will help officials parse out patterns for violent crime and allow public workers to provide better services by understanding how different factors affect city life." Read more

Computer Viruses Are "Rampant" on Medical Devices in Hospitals

Talbot, David. "Computer Viruses Are 'Rampant' on Medical Devices in Hospitals." Technology Review, October 17, 2012. 

From the article: "Computerized hospital equipment is increasingly vulnerable to malware infections, according to participants in a recent government panel. These infections can clog patient-monitoring equipment and other software systems, at times rendering the devices temporarily inoperable….

Software-controlled medical equipment has become increasingly interconnected in recent years, and many systems run on variants of Windows, a common target for hackers elsewhere. The devices are usually connected to an internal network that is itself connected to the Internet, and they are also vulnerable to infections from laptops or other device brought into hospitals. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that manufacturers often will not allow their equipment to be modified, even to add security features." Read more

Cybercrime Attacks, Costs Escalating

Schwartz, Mathew J. "Cybercrime Attacks, Costs Escalating." Information Week, October 8, 2012.

From the article: "The frequency of online attacks against U.S. businesses continues to increase, along with the cost of defending against those attacks and mitigating any resulting data breaches. Cybercrime now costs a U.S. business $8.9 million per year, an increase of 6% from 2011 and 38% from 2010.

Those findings come from the "2012 Cost of Cyber Crime Study," which was sponsored by security intelligence tool vendor HP and released Monday by the Ponemon Institute." Read more

Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week

Melloy, John. "Mysterious Algorithm Was 4% of Trading Activity Last Week." CNBC, October 8, 2012.

From the article: "A single mysterious computer program that placed orders — and then subsequently canceled them — made up 4 percent of all quote traffic in the U.S. stock market last week, according to the top tracker of high-frequency trading activity. The motive of the algorithm is still unclear.

The program placed orders in 25-millisecond bursts involving about 500 stocks, according to Nanex, a market data firm. The algorithm never executed a single trade, and it abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. ET Friday." Read more

We Can’t All Be in Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth Race

Crawford, Susan. "We Can’t All Be in Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth Race." Wired, October 2, 2012.

From the article: "Even though America is in a “global bandwidth race” and our “nation’s future economic security is tied to frictionless and speedy access to information,” according to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s latest speech – we don’t have a plan for winning that race.

And our current incumbent providers are not going to help. They’re not going to be the ones rolling out the fiber-to-the-home networks that could provide this speedy access to information. Why? They have no incentive to do so. Because they never enter one another’s territories, they don’t face the competition that might spur such expansion." Read more

Inquiry Cites Flaws in Counterterrorism Offices

Risen, James. "Inquiry Cites Flaws in Counterterrorism Offices." The New York Times, October 2, 2012.

From the article: "One of the nation’s biggest domestic counterterrorism programs has failed to provide virtually any useful intelligence, according to Congressional investigators.

Their scathing report, to be released Wednesday, looked at problems in regional intelligence-gathering offices known as “fusion centers” that are financed by the Department of Homeland Security and created jointly with state and local law enforcement agencies.

The report found that the centers “forwarded intelligence of uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” Read more

See also
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs. "Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations."

ACLU: Electronic Surveillance by US Agencies Skyrocketing

Gross, Grant. "ACLU: Electronic Surveillance by US Agencies Skyrocketing." Computerworld, September 27, 2012.

From the article: "U.S. law enforcement surveillance of email and other Internet communication has skyrocketed in the last two years, according to data obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. 

The number of so-called pen register and trap-and-trace orders obtained by federal law enforcement agencies has increased 361 percent between 2009 and 2011, the ACLU said. The U.S. Department of Justice released the data to the ACLU after the civil rights group sued the agency under the Freedom of Information Act." Read more

New Tracking Frontier: Your License Plates

  Angwin, Julia and Jennifer Valentino-Devries. "New Tracking Frontier: Your License 
  Plates." The Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2012.

From the article: "Until recently it was far too expensive for police to track the locations of innocent people such as Mr. Katz-Lacabe. But as surveillance technologies decline in cost and grow in sophistication, police are rapidly adopting them. Private companies are joining, too. At least two start-up companies, both founded by "repo men"—specialists in repossessing cars or property from deadbeats—are currently deploying camera-equipped cars nationwide to photograph people's license plates, hoping to profit from the data they collect. 

The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane, has become the default rather than the exception." Read more

ONC Examines Health IT and Disaster Response

Barr, Paul. "ONC Examines Health IT and Disaster Response." Modern Healthcare.com, September 26, 2012.

From the article: "A plan to improve the sharing of electronic health records among health information exchanges during disasters was issued to HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

The 117-page report (PDF) was the result of a project of the Southeast Regional HIT-HIE Collaboration, which began in November 2010 to develop a strategic plan for sharing health information data among states in the Southeast and Gulf regions during and after a declared national disaster, according to the report. The group goes by the name SERCH.

The report proposes that a memorandum of understanding that offers a limitation on liability for wrongful release of records during a disaster be issued, outlines a strategy for governance of HIE interactions and notes that a mix of HIE models means that very little cross-state exchange of EHRs is taking place." Read more

See also
Southeast Regional HIT-HIE Collaboration Final Report. "ONC State Health Policy Consortium Project: Health Information Exchange in Disaster Preparedness and Response," prepared for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, July 2012.

 

In Cyberattacks, Hacking Humans is Highly Effective Way to Access Systems

O'Harrow, Robert.  "In Cyberattacks, Hacking Humans is Highly Effective Way to Access Systems." The Washington Post, September 26, 2012.

From the article: "But like much of the digital universe, the e-mails were not what they seemed. They were cyberweapons, part of a devastating kind of attack known as “social engineering.”

Emerging details about the e-mails show how social engineering — long favored by con artists, identity thieves and spammers — has become one of the leading threats to government and corporate networks in cyberspace.

The technique involves tricking people to subvert a network’s security. It often relies on well-known scams involving e-mail, known as “spear phishing,” or phony Web pages. But such ploys now serve as the pointed tips of far more sophisticated efforts by cyberwarriors to penetrate networks and steal military and trade secrets."  Read more

At U.N., Egypt and Yemen Urge Curbs on Free Speech

MacFarquhar, Neil. "At U.N., Egypt and Yemen Urge Curbs on Free Speech." The New York Times, September 26, 2012.

From the article: "The new presidents of Egypt and Yemen — both of whom were swept to power by uprisings demanding democratic rights — issued clear rebuttals on Wednesday to President Obama’s ardent defense of Western values at the United Nations, arguing that cultural limits on rights like freedom of speech had to be respected…. Mr. Morsi rejected Mr. Obama’s broad defense of free speech a day earlier at the United Nations, saying “Egypt respects freedom of expression, freedom of expression that is not used to incite hatred against anyone.”  Read more

EU’s Revamped Privacy Rules May Save Companies $3 Billion a Year

Bodoni, Stephanie. "EU’s Revamped Privacy Rules May Save Companies $3 Billion a Year." BusinessWeek, September 25, 2012.

From the article:  "Companies could save as much as 2.3 billion euros ($3 billion) in administrative costs thanks to an overhaul of the European Union’s data-protection rules, the EU’s justice chief said.

The proposed changes to the EU’s 17-year-old data protection rules will allow companies to do business in Europe based on “just one law” and the savings they could make “is not peanuts,” EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said in prepared remarks for a speech in Dublin, Ireland, today. Companies will save a further 130 million euros every year by not having to notify authorities “each and every time data is processed.”  Read more

Freedom of the Net 2012: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media

Kelly, Sanja, Sarah Cook and Mai Truong. "Freedom of the Net 2012: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media." Freedom House, September 24, 2012.

 From the report: "This year’s findings indicate that restrictions on internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow, though the methods of control are slowly evolving and becoming less visible. Of the 47 countries examined, 20 have experienced a negative trajectory since January 2011, with Bahrain, Pakistan, and Ethiopia registering the greatest declines." Read more

Ad Industry, Privacy Advocates Spar Over 'Do Not Track'

Gruenwald, Juliana. "Ad Industry, Privacy Advocates Spar Over 'Do Not Track'." National Journal, September 21, 2012.

From the article:  "Lawmakers and the Federal Trade Commission are being lobbied to intervene to help settle differences between some advertising industry representatives and privacy advocates over how to implement a “do-not-track” option giving consumers the choice of whether they want to be tracked online. …The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international organization that sets technical standards for the Web, has been convening talks involving advertising and tech industry representatives and privacy advocates on developing a standard for what it means to abide by a consumer’s do-not-track preference. Those talks, which have been going on for months, however, appear to have reached a stalemate and some of the parties involved are now looking outside the group for help." Read more