InfoSec Odds and Ends

Last Updated on Thursday, 4 March 2010 01:58 Written by Jeffreycarr Thursday, 4 March 2010 01:56

Here are some of the important events of the last few days that I haven’t had time to blog about but would like to briefly share with you:

• The takedown of the Mariposa botnet is a wonderful case study of how the collaboration between international law enforcement agencies with the assistance of private industry can beat the bad guys.
• Forbes Special Report: The Real Meaning of Cyber Warfare
• Digital Sky Technologies CEO Yuri Milner, who’s Russian company now owns over 5% of Facebook has $1 billion to invest in social media outside of Russia, and he’s interested in Twitter.
• Hack-Jet

The Weekend Brief

Last Updated on Saturday, 28 November 2009 09:16 Written by Jeffreycarr Saturday, 28 November 2009 09:16

The holiday weekend notwithstanding, a lot is going on. Here’s some of the more interesting stories in my newsreader to tide you over until Monday, when I’ll be announcing the start of a weekly series of reports that I’m very excited about.

• “Let’s taste it.” This is one of those interesting translations that comes from machine translation software. In this case, it’s the recommendation of a Bulgarian poster on Russian hacker forum Форум АНТИЧАТ who posted about SHODAN, a new search engine which enables users to find servers by type, country, host name and port. Richard at Taosecurity has some concerns about it.
• Cool video demo of Palantir’s use in cyber security analysis is up at the Palantirtech blog.
• Nikita Borovikov, leader of the Russian youth organization Nashi, is upset over the dismantling of historical statues in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and plans a protest there. It will be interesting to see if there are any DDoS attacks against Tashkent websites in the near future similar to those launched against Estonian websites (also over a statue issue).
• DST sold an undisclosed percentage of its shares of the hugely profitable Mail.ru and Astrum Online to Naspers. It’ll be interesting to see where Yuri Milner (CEO of DST) decides to reinvest the proceeds of the sale – acquiring more shares of Facebook stock perhaps?
• Perhaps this proposed Canadian law will force ISP providers to start paying attention to who they sell their services to and what type of data they’re hosting. That would be a welcome change from the present situation of some ISPs shrugging their shoulders and taking the position of “if you find it, we’ll take it down – maybe”.

Have a good weekend. See you Monday.

The Friday Brief

Last Updated on Friday, 2 October 2009 09:07 Written by Jeffreycarr Friday, 2 October 2009 09:07

Lots of good stuff in my newsreader this morning:

• UK Conservative MP Eleanor Laing speaks to Parliament on how less is more when it comes to the UK’s approach to Information Security.
• Reading “The Rise of Telecom Diplomacy” by Evgeny Morozov suggests that we take a closer look at who is behind new Russian telecom Scartel (aka Yota).
• DST is buying up more Facebook stock from ex-Facebook employees, raising its ownership stake to 5%. Interesting timing considering the release of Russia’s law on foreign ISPs operating inside RUNET. More on both of these events in this coming Monday’s issue of IntelFusion FLASH Traffic.
• P2P software used by DoD members has resulted in very serious breaches of personal data (h/t Fergie’s Tech Blog). More and better OPSEC training, anyone?
• FSB arrests three hackers suspected of attacking Dagestan government Web sites.
• Today marks the start of Cyber Security Awareness Month and to kick it off, DHS announces that it is looking to hire 1000 cyber security professionals.

Finally, as most of you know, I set up Greylogic, Inc. as a non-profit corporation. Now I’m being forced to re-think that because of some really stupid policies at the SBA; e.g. they won’t guarantee a bank loan for a nonprofit. A lot of small companies that do business with the Federal government borrow against their invoices because it takes so long to get paid. As a startup with no operating capital but with a few contracts, I immediately contacted the SBA, particularly since they have some extra money to spend thanks to Obama’s economic recovery plan. Unfortunately, the moment I mentioned that GreyLogic is a nonprofit corporation, the call ended. We are not allowed to assist non-profit companies, I was told. WTF!?!