New Zealand has joined a global taskforce to fight online child exploitation. Police Superintendent Win Van Der Velde today signed an agreement with the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT) board in Rome. VGT is made up of international law enforcement agencies, and Deputy Commissioner Rob Pope said joining strengthened an already firm resolve to tackle the online abuse of children. Police will collaborate with VGT through its Online Child Abuse Exploitation Squad (OCEANZ). VGT is chaired by the Australian Federal Police.

(Source: New Zealand Herald)

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New Zealand Herald

Experts from nearly 40 countries gathered in the Estonian capital Tallinn to discuss the latest issues in the fight against virtual attackers. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves opened the conference with a stark warning about the seriousness of cybercrime. "Our critical infrastructure, electricity grids, transportation networks and mobile phone networks are so enmeshed and tied to the internet that any open society is open to complete and utter failure," he said. "There are no smoking guns, no foot or fingerprints in virtual reality," Estonia's Minister of Defence Jaak Aviksoo added.

Skilled hackers at the conference said malware designed to be used in attacks could be purchased for a few hundred dollars online, or even downloaded for free.

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

Police have arrested 178 people in Europe and the United States suspected of cloning credit cards in an international scam worth over 20 million euros ($24.52 million), Spanish police said on Tuesday. Police in fourteen countries participated a two-year investigation, initiated in Spain where police have discovered 120,000 stolen credit card numbers and 5,000 cloned cards, arrested 76 people and dismantled six cloning labs. The raids were made primarily in Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland and the United States, with arrests also made in Australia, Sweden, Greece, Finland and Hungary.

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge Richard A. McFeely of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

(Source: Baltimore FBI)

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Baltimore FBI

Federal chief information officers and chief information security officers will convene Monday, June 14, at an annual information technology conference where they are sure to discuss the Office of Management and Budget's mandate to look toward cloud computing to cut IT costs, increase efficiencies and enable greater government-wide collaboration and data exchange. In examining the potential benefits and vulnerabilities of moving their services to the cloud, government CIOs and CISOs should ask and demand answers to some difficult questions.

Does your provider ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability with mature processes, proof of past performance, understanding of and mechanisms for disaster recovery options, and encrypted backups?

(Source: GovInfo Security)

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GovInfo Security

The 12th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Application & Services aims to bring together interested parties from around the world working in the healthcare field to exchange ideas, to discuss innovative and emerging solutions and to develop collaborations. Participants include clinicians, hospital administrators, IT professionals, researchers, educators, healthcare solutions vendors, and consultants. It will also offer an important forum for discussions on e-Health projects supported by world bodies such as ITU, WHO and the EU, including FP6 and FP7 European projects.

(Source: IEEE Communications Society)

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IEEE Communications Society

With over 3.4 million users of the internet in Kenya, research indicates that the importance of the internet outstrips those of several key developed countries. Even so, the latent demand for local content is underlined by the fact that surveys show that lack of local content is the main reason many Kenyans shy away from accessing the internet. On the launch of the grant facility, the CEO, Kenya ICT Board Paul Kukubo, commented, “We are pleased that we are launching this grant at a time that the ICT industry is growing and access to the internet all over the country has vastly improved.

The future for content industry is bright. Talent, creativity and skills are key drivers of competitiveness in the content sector and we expect that this grant will enable Kenyans everywhere to develop world class locally relevant content and get this industry to rapidly match the lucrative opportunities for talented content developers in developed nations.”

(Source: Afrinnovator)

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Afrinnovator

In Africa, few countries have started their security project and fulfilled some good steps; other countries have now started implementing national mechanisms for combating cybercrime and other related threats; however, a sizeable number of African countries still do not have a strategic plan and are unable to start their first actions. These countries need to be assisted and supported, through guidance and advisory services as well as experience and information sharing with others. Knowledge and information sharing is indeed the missing link at the moment.

CERT-AFRICA is ultimately the resource outlet that will help security experts to share and enhance collaboration to address security threat by connecting leading African security experts and bringing them around a common project. While CERT-AFRICA will be inward looking for its activities, it will also be a conduit for connecting African countries to ongoing efforts within international instances such as the FIRST, the ITU, ICANN, UNCTAD, OIC, etc.

(Source: CERT Africa)

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CERT Africa

The number of internet threats coming from the UK has increased in May, according to research by managed security firm, Network Box. The UK is now responsible for nearly six (5.9) per cent of the world’s internet viruses, up from three per cent in April. The only countries that produce more viruses than the UK are Korea (16.26 per cent) and the US (11.68 per cent). The US and India continue to dominate the production of the world’s spam, with the US producing 10.7 per cent, and India 7.1 per cent (similar figures from last month).

Russia has seen a decline in viruses produced from within its borders – possibly an early result of Russian hosting service, PROXIEZ-NET – notoriously used by criminal gangs – being taken down earlier this month.

(Source: Network Box)

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Network Box

Internet security firm Sophos has warned Facebook users to be on the alert for a scam which sends a spam message to all of their friends on the social network. Sophos, in a pair of blog posts late Monday, said "hundreds of thousands" of Facebook users have fallen for the scam which it dubbed "likejacking." It said some Facebook users had received a message such as "This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!" and were encouraged to click on a link. "This of course posts a message to your newsfeed, your friends see it and click on it, and so it spreads," Sophos said.

That followed a similar scam that spread on Facebook the week before involving a fake posting tagged as the "sexiest video ever," according to Sophos.

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

With the threat of cyber wars lurking, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nation's arm, has asked countries to take the ‘no-first-attack' vow in order to avert chain of events. “There have been countries at (cyber) war already. A wrong attack could lead to a chain of events. Like they do with regard to nuclear arms, the countries should take a vow that they would not attack first,” Mr Hamadoun Toure, Secretary-General of ITU, said.

“We need to have an international framework to make cyber space peaceful. Some say, it might take 10 years. Even if it takes that long, we need to start now (to get there),” he said. “It will be like a cyber tsunami. It would be a catastrophe if a war were to start. In order to achieve a secure cyber space, countries should have a legal and regulatory framework, technological readiness (with a robust response team), a coordinated national effort and capacity building,” he said.

(Source: Business Line)

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Business Line

According to the latest data by Trend Micro, a leading Internet security company, more than 2 million computers were hacked and 476 million spam e-mails were sent in Turkey between June 2009 and May 2010. With Internet an increasingly integral part of daily life, criminals are finding new playgrounds in cyberspace.

In 2004 there were 680 million Internet users and 3 million malwares globally. Six years later, the number of Internet users increased to around 1.7 billion, but malwares jumped 10-fold to 30 million. The nature of the Internet also makes it harder to track down a criminal of cyber crime, as it crosses borders and is hard to understand. “It is not like a bank robbery. There is no eyewitness or video footage,”

(Source: Hurriyet Daily News)

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Hurriyet Daily News

"People that play these fast-paced games have better vision, better attention and better cognition," said Daphne Bavelier, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester. Bavelier was being a presenter at Games for Learning, a daylong symposium on the educational uses of video games and computer games. The event, the first of its kind, was an indication that electronic games are gaining legitimacy in the classroom.

President Barack Obama recently identified the creation of good educational software as one of the "grand challenges for American innovation," and the federal Department of Education's assistant deputy secretary for the Office of Innovation and Improvement, Jim Shelton, was to attend Thursday's conference. Panelists were to discuss how people learn and how games can be engineered to be even more educational. "People do learn from games,"

(Source: AP)

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AP

A few weeks ago I came across several email messages in Spanish purporting to have been sent by Western Union: As you can see, this is a typical message sent as spam that we have seen in many guises. It tries to pass itself off as some kind of official notification from well-known companies -anyone from UPS to Apple or even Panda- with the real aim of trying to trick users into running the attached file. However, this time when I saw the message I couldn’t help but smile. Why? Because I thought there was a certain irony about the message claiming to have been sent by Western Union, a company used by virtually all cyber-criminals.

Should we be pointing an accusatory finger at companies like Western Union? There are those who would argue that this is like criminalizing the Internet just because there are users that abuse its services. Fair enough. But if Western Union is just like any other company, why is it used so insistently by criminals?

(Source: PandaLabs)

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PandaLabs

On 23 November 2010 the Belgian Privacy Commission will organize an international conference on privacy and scientific research. The conference will take place in the context of the 2010 Belgian EU presidency and focuses on several target groups, first of all the European data protection authorities, but also national and international academics and researchers. Two areas of scientific research will be examined: historical and clinical-medical research. The conference is primarily intended as a discussion forum on best practices in both areas. That is why workshops will be organized alongside the traditional plenary sessions.

"Privacy & Scientific Research: from Obstruction to Construction" was opted for as the working title of the conference, the objective of the event being a reflection on how to integrate privacy protection in scientific research without making it an obstacle. And what's more, the quality of research will only be improved thanks to privacy protection.

(Source: Commission For The Protection Of Privacy)

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Commission For The Protection Of Privacy

It might go against conventional wisdom, but a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is adding fuel to the argument that young people are fast becoming the gurus of online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites. Among other things, the study found that they are most likely to limit personal information online — and the least likely to trust free online services ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn and MySpace.

Marlene McManus, 21, is among those young adults. On the job hunt since graduating from Clark University in Massachusetts, she's been "scouring" her Facebook page, removing photos that contain beer cups and any other signs of college exploits. She's also dropped Twitter altogether. "I have to present a public face that doesn't have the potential to hurt my image," McManus says.

(Source: AP)

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AP

CYBER-GEDDON has been overhyped, but IT security professionals need to find new ways of dealing with the never-ending threats, says Scott McIntyre, chief security officer for Amsterdam-based ISP XS4ALL Internet. "The sky is not falling, the situation is not as bad as many make out, but we need to accept that the internet has been 'pwned' (compromised or controlled by rivals)," he told the AusCERT 2010 conference on the Gold Coast last week. "We need to maintain a sense of proportion and adjust our expectations about internet security,"' he said.

"Not everything that happens is a major crisis, you don't need huge cyber bunkers because there's a worm on the network -- this should be your daily routine by now." Mr McIntyre, who is also a member of the Dutch computer security incident response team KPN-CERT, said the industry was stuck in "a weird loop of going backwards and forwards" on the same issues.

(Source: The Australian)

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The Australian

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the Internet social network will roll out new privacy settings for its more than 400 million users, amid growing concerns that the company is pushing users to make more of their personal data public. "Many of you thought our controls were too complex," said Zuckerberg in an opinion piece published on Monday in The Washington Post.

"Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark," said the 26-year-old Zuckerberg, who co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. In the coming weeks, Zuckerberg promised, Facebook will add privacy controls that he said would be much simpler to use. Facebook will also give users an easy way to turn off all third-party services, Zuckerberg said.

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

Malaysia’s Information Communication and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, said that the country plans to work in collaboration with a number of countries in the fight against cyber crime. “The rise in cyber security attacks over the last few years reinforces the urgency to address the issue through the establishment of appropriate global frameworks for assessment and exchange of information related to cyber security,” he said at the opening of the World Information and Communication Summit in Seoul.

Last year the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT) opened its global headquarters in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. IMPACT is a platform for governments and industry players to exchange ideas and best practices and work together in combating cyber threats.

(Source: Malaysia In Focus)

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Malaysia In Focus

Carders.cc, a German online forum dedicated to helping criminals trade and sell financial data stolen through hacking, has itself been hacked. The once-guarded contents of its servers are now being traded on public file-sharing networks, leading to the exposure of potentially identifying information on the forum’s users as well as countless passwords and credit card accounts swiped from unsuspecting victims.

The breach involves at least three separate files being traded on Rapidshare.com: The largest is a database file containing what appear to be all of the communications among nearly 5,000 Carders.cc forum members, including the contents of private, one-to-one messages that subscribers to these forums typically use to negotiate the sale of stolen goods. Another file includes the user names, e-mail addresses and in many cases the passwords of Carder.cc forum

(Source: Krebs on Security)

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Krebs on Security

The UAE can lead international efforts to promote global cyber security and cyber peace and to avoid the use of cyberspace for conflict, said a former senior White House adviser on Tuesday. "The UAE can play a leading role in creating an international system for cyber peace. You can do that not just by computers. But you can do that by strategists and diplomats. And there is a great role for the UAE to play in helping the world step back from cyber war to create an international system for cyber peace," said Richard Clarke, who served as a counterterrorism adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Warning that cyber war is the next threat to UAE national security, Clarke argued physical defences akin to borders such as firewalls will remain essential, but given the high levels of cross-border connectivity in cyber world, new approaches for cyber security must include the international diplomatic dimension.

(Source: Gulf News)

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Gulf News

Du 17 au 21 mai 2010 se tient à Ouagadougou un atelier sur la cybersécurité. Avec comme objectif de former les acteurs chargés de la sécurisation du cyberespace à la lutte efficace contre les cybermenaces, cette session connaît la participation de délégués de la Côte d’Ivoire, du Ghana, du Mali et du Nigeria. Les travaux dudit séminaire ont été ouverts par le Secrétaire général du Premier ministère, Paul Marie Compaoré.

Face aux spams, scams, virus, vers et autres cyberattaques, il est plus qu’urgent de développer des stratégies et des dispositifs de pointe à même de sécuriser les systèmes du cyberespace en le protégeant de toutes ces cybermenaces. C’est dans cette optique que l’Union internationale des télécommunications (UIT), en partenariat avec IMPACT et l’Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques (ARCE) du Burkina, organise du 17 au 21 mai 2010, un atelier sur la cybersécurité.

(Source: Le Faso)

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Le Faso

Phishing may not be the most sophisticated form of cyber crime, but it can be a lucrative trade for those who decide to make it their day jobs. Indeed, data secretly collected from an international phishing operation over 18 months suggests that criminals who pursue a career in phishing can reap millions of dollars a year, even if they only manage to snag just a few victims per scam.

Phishers often set up their fraudulent sites using ready-made “phish kits” — collections of HTML, text and images that mimic the content found at major banks and e-commerce sites. Typically, phishers stitch the kits into the fabric of hacked, legitimate sites, which they then outfit with a “backdoor” that allows them to get back into the site at any time.

(Source: Krebs on Security)

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Krebs on Security

Thousands of people have paid tribute on Facebook to an Australian teenager allegedly lured to her death by a man she met on the social networking site. The body of Nona Belomesoff was found two days after she went on a trip with the man, who told her they were going to rescue injured animals, police say. A 20-year-old man has been charged with Ms Belomesoff's murder at a creek south of Sydney.

Detectives say the case reinforces the need for vigilance when using Facebook. Ms Belomesoff, 18, is believed to have befriended Christopher James Dannevig, who police say set up a fake Facebook profile in which he claimed to work for an animal welfare group.

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

Researchers at Imperva have discovered an 'experimental' botnet that uses around 300 hijacked web servers to launch high-bandwidth DDoS attacks. The servers are all believed to be open to an unspecified security vulnerability that allows the attacker, who calls him or herself 'Exeman', to infect them with a tiny, 40-line PHP script. This includes a simple GUI from which the attacker can return at a later date to enter in the IP, port and duration numbers for the attack that is to be launched. Building a Secure and Compliant Windows Desktop: Download nowBut why servers in the first place? Botnets are built from PCs and rarely involve servers.

According to Imperva's CTO, Amachai Shulman, they have no antivirus software and offer high upload bandwidth, typically 10-50 times that of a consumer PC.

(Source: Networkworld)

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Networkworld

For all the Twitterers who were fretting about where their followers went earlier today, fear not. They're back. Twitter engineers have corrected a bug that was messing with users' followers on Monday. To fix the problem, Twitter engineers had to reset users' followers/following numbers to zero for a while around midday, according to Twitter's Status update.

"What we really see with social networking is that for any given tool, whether it's Twitter, Facebook or any other site, there is a hard core of very active users who care a lot about any problems, changes, or interruptions. These people are very vocal and opinionated -- passionate, in other words."

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup less than two months away, cybercriminals (as expected) are banking on this prestigious international football event to trick users. TrendLabsSM spotted the latest threat involving this, and it came in the form of an email message currently being spammed in the wild.

The spam carried a .PDF file attachment which was found to contain details about the lottery the recipient allegedly won. It also instructed the recipient to give out personal information and send them to the contact person or email sender before the prize could be claimed. What was interesting about the purported sender of the email—one Mrs. Michelle Matins, Executive Vice President—was also the signatory for the 419 scam, aka the Nigeria scam.

(Source: Trend Micro)

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Trend Micro

Cybersecurity needs a global rethink, and fast, Dell's CEO Michael Dell and Services CIO, Jim Stikeleather, have warned experts at the EastWest Institute Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in the US. In separate presentations and briefings, the men developed the theme of piecemeal reactions to the rapid rise of crymber-criminality, which included economic crime and direct threats to critical infrastructure.

Governments haven't done enough and have fallen into the trap of seeing matters in a narrow, national way. Meanwhile, the security industry has been content to sell products without asking whether security was properly embedded into the way products are developed. "Governments and private industry need to work collaboratively to develop the appropriate international framework to secure cyberspace. We should all do this in a way that keeps our global information central nervous system intact and secure," said Michael Dell.

(Source: MIS Asia)

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MIS Asia