ClearSky Cyberdefense Forum

Agency outlines strategies for developing energy-delivery systems that are resilient even in the face of cyberattack.

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/Energy%20Delivery%20Systems%20Cybersecurity%20Roadmap_finalweb.pdf

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/231601606

Gathered at a Cold War bunker, a yet-unnamed Russian youth organization is being conjured into life. Its mission? To launch an online information war to prevent an Arab Spring-type uprising in Russia.

On Wednesday, the project’s participants came together at Moscow’s Cold War Museum – also known as Bunker-42 – hidden 65 meters under Taganka, reports the Nezavisimaya Gazeta (NG) newspaper.

http://rt.com/politics/secret-organization-information-war-623/

Another CA ? The company is still investigating whether bogus certificates were created in its name. Had that happened, cyber criminals would have been able to spy on users accessing supposedly secure sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14879998

New Research :
With the success of Web applications, most of our data is
now stored on various third-party servers where they are pro-
cessed to deliver personalized services. Naturally we must
be authenticated to access this personal information, but
the use of personalized services only restricted by identi-
cation could indirectly and silently leak sensitive data. We analyzed Google Web Search access mechanisms and found that the current policy applied to session cookies could be used to retrieve users' personal data. We describe an at-
tack scheme leveraging the search personalization (based on
the same sid cookie) to retrieve a part of the victim's click
history and even some of her contacts. We implemented a
proof of concept of this attack on Firefox and Chrome Web
browsers and conducted an experiment with ten volunteers.
Thanks to this prototype we were able to recover up to 80%
of the user's search click history.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1108/1108.5864v1.pdf

As millions of people around the world pause to remember the heart-wrenching moments of Sept. 11, 2001, hundreds of hackers, spammers and cyber-criminals are launching their own 9/11 assaults – on computers, web sites and social networks worldwide. And next week may bring on the largest wave of 9/11 hacks and scams ever.

http://www.malwarecity.com/blog/spammers-hackers-prepare-round-of-attacks-for-sept-11-1134.html

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Sept. 7, 2011 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) For the first time a Norton study calculates the cost of global cybercrime: $114 billion annually¹. Based on the value victims surveyed placed on time lost due to their cybercrime experiences, an additional $274 billion was lost². With 431 million adult victims globally in the past year and at an annual price of $388 billion globally based on financial losses and time lost, cybercrime costs the world significantly more than the global black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin combined ($288 billion).³

Link

The confirmed count of fraudulently-issued SSL (secure socket layer) certificates now stands at 531, said Gervase Markham, a Mozilla developer who is part of the team that has been working to modify Firefox to blocks all sites signed with the purloined certificates.

Among the affected domains, said Markham, are those for the CIA, MI6, Mossad, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft’s Windows Update service.

Technical details fo the hack to Diginotar

Link

The Chinese government has apparently leaned on some of the most prominent hacker groups to advise their members and followers to avoid hacking Chinese targets, and to be more discreet (don’t get caught) when attacking foreign targets.

Link

“If you can’t trust the trusted authority, who in the cloud can I trust? If the trusted authority can’t do enough, then how do we rely on anyone else?” asked David Sockol, president of Emagined Security, a security solution provider based in Santa Clara, Calif. “The biggest lesson learned? We can’t really trust anyone, including ourselves, and we need checks and balances.”

Link