January 13, 2012

National Cybersecurity

Nakashima, E. (2012, January 12). Cyber defense effort is mixed, study finds. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cyber-defense-effort-is-mixed-study-finds/2012/01/11/gIQAAu0YtP_story.html

A Pentagon pilot program that uses classified National Security Agency data to protect the computer networks of defense contractors has had some success but also has failed to meet some expectations, according to a study commissioned by the Defense Department.

Perloth, N. (2012, January 12). Malicious software attacks security cards used by Pentagon. New York Times. Retrieved from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/malicious-software-attacks-security-cards-used-by-pentagon/

Chinese hackers have deployed a new cyber weapon that is aimed at the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and potentially a number of other United States government agencies and businesses, security researchers say.  Researchers at AlienVault, a Campbell, Calif., security company, said on Thursday that they had uncovered a new variant of some malicious software called Sykipot that targets smart cards used by government employees to access restricted servers and networks. Traces of Sykipot malware have been found in cyberattacks dating back to 2006, but AlienVault’s researchers say this is the first time Sykipot has compromised smart cards.

Sternstein, A. (2012, January 3). Cyber spies try probing U.S. drone plans. Nextgov. Retrieved from http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120103_5731.php

China-based hackers for months have been targeting federal agencies and contractors through infected emails apparently to spy on the Pentagon's drone strategy and other intelligence matters, according to Internet security researchers. The reported espionage employed a tactic known as spear-phishing where infiltrators, operating under the guise of a legitimate sender, email specific victims a virus-laden file or link. In this case, the hackers used email addresses from military and other government organizations, Jaime Blasco, manager of AlienVault Labs, said Tuesday.

United States. Government Accountability Office. (2011, December). Critical infrastructure protection: Cybersecurity guidance Is available, but more can be done to promote its use (GAO-12-82). Retrieved from http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-92

Reviews currently available guidance and makes recommendations for improving ease of application. [Related article from Infosecurity.]

Global Cybersecurity

& broadly applicable items

Carr, J. (2011). Inside cyber warfare (2nd ed.). Sebastapol. CA: O'Reilly Media. [E-book available in the Safari Books Online database.]

Inside Cyber Warfare provides fascinating and disturbing details on how nations, groups, and individuals throughout the world use the Internet as an attack platform to gain military, political, and economic advantages over their adversaries. The second edition goes beyond the headlines of attention-grabbing DDoS attacks and takes a deep look inside recent cyber-conflicts, including the use of Stuxnet. It also includes a Forward by Secretary Michael Chertoff and a guest essay by Melissa Hathaway, among others.

Economist Intelligence Unit. (2012). Cyber power index: Measuring the drivers of cyber power across the G20 countries [online tool]. Retrieved from http://www.cyberhub.com/CyberPowerIndex

The purpose of the Cyber Power Index is to benchmark the ability of the G20 countries to withstand cyber attacks and to deploy the digital infrastructure needed for a productive economy. In doing so, the index measures both the success of digital uptake and the degree to which the economic and regulatory environment promotes national cyber power.  The index is developed as an interactive quantitative and qualitative scoring model constructed from the following four categories:

• Legal and Regulatory Framework
• Economic and Social Context
• Technology Infrastructure
• Industry Application

[Related article from Military Technology News.]

Malicious URLs being disguised by QR codes. (2012, January 12.) Infosecurity. Retrieved from http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/23182/malicious-urls-being-disguised-by-qr-codes/

QR codes, a square pattern of black dots on a white background, are a form of barcode originally developed to track automotive parts during manufacture. Their fast readability, versatility and storage capacity have made them popular in many areas, and not least within mobile phones. “In many ways it was just a matter of time before we saw spam messages point to URLs that use embedded QR codes,” says Websense researcher Elad Sharf. “The advantage QR codes have over bit.ly is that it is a fast growing and marketing technology that currently has an inherent level of trust and novelty for consumers.”

Nye, J. S., Jr. (2011, Winter).  Nuclear lessons for cybersecurity? Strategic Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 18-38. Retrieved from http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/2011/winter/nye.pdf

After a short overview of the problem of cyber security . . .  I will suggest several general lessons and then discuss a number of international lessons that can be learned from the nuclear experience. While the two technologies are vastly different, as I will argue below, there are nonetheless useful comparisons one can make of the ways in which governments learn to respond to technological revolutions.

Ren, K., Wang, C., & Wang, Q. (2011, January-February). Security challenges for the public cloud. IEEE Internet Computing, 16(1), 69-73. [Full text available in the IEEE Computer Science Digital Library database.]

Cloud computing represents today's most exciting computing paradigm shift in information technology. However, security and privacy are perceived as primary obstacles to its wide adoption. Here, the authors outline several critical security challenges and motivate further investigation of security solutions for a trustworthy public cloud environment.

Song, D., Shi, E., Fischer, I., & Shankar, U. (2012, January). Cloud data protection for the masses. Computer, 45(1), 39-45. [Full text available in the IEEE Computer Science Digital Library database.]

Offering strong data protection to cloud users while enabling rich applications is a challenging task. Researchers explore a new cloud platform architecture called Data Protection as a Service, which dramatically reduces the per-application development effort required to offer data protection, while still allowing rapid development and maintenance.