Joseph Menn reports: The Chinese hacking group suspected of stealing sensitive information about millions of current and former U.S. government employees has a different mission and organizational structure than the military hackers who have been accused of other U.S. data breaches, according to people familiar with the matter. While the Chinese People’s Liberation Army typically…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
The OPM Hack and the New DOD Law of War Manual
Kristen Eichensehr writes: Last Friday was a big day in cybersecurity news. OPM announced that, in addition to the compromise of the personnel information of federal employees revealed on June 4, Chinese hackers also breached a database containing millions of security clearance forms. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Potomac, the Department of Defense…
Iranian hackers attacking Saudi Arabian, Israeli, and Yemeni sites
Iranian hackers have been busy, it seems, attacking web sites in both Saudia Arabia and Israel. The Tower reports: An Israeli cybersecurity firm released a report on Iranian hacking efforts primarily targeting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Yemen, The Times of Israel reported Sunday. The Israeli ClearSky cybersecurity company said it has discovered an ongoing wave of…
LastPass Security Notice
Posted by LastPass: We want to notify our community that on Friday, our team discovered and blocked suspicious activity on our network. In our investigation, we have found no evidence that encrypted user vault data was taken, nor that LastPass user accounts were accessed. The investigation has shown, no entanto, that LastPass account email addresses,…
IRS’s $130 million RFP to fix ID theft diverges from governmentwide initiative
Jared Serbu reports: The Internal Revenue Service has notified a relative handful of contractors that it plans to spend nearly $130 million to build its own new suite of identity verification services, an approach that appears to significantly diverge from an established governmentwide program to verify users’ identities. The agency issued a request for quotations…
UK: Majority Of Data Breach Incidents Not Reported To ICO
Brian Honan writes: According to ViaSat UK, a specialist security and communications company, the number of breaches of the Data Protection Act reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office only represent a tiny proportion of the actual such incidents occurring across the UK. I can’t say that I’m in the least bit surprised by that. Neither am I. Read…