Cybersecurity News

Less than a year after reporting that its nuclear program was the target of never-before-seen computer worm Stuxnet, Iran announced this week that its systems had suffered yet another cyber attack.

Continuing to investigate the issue, Iranian security officials are calling the malicious new malware “Stars,” claiming that the worm aimed at efforts of espionage, meanwhile noting that it would take time to determine the virus’ precise purpose.

But the Stars’ attempt at destruction may have been minimal, according to Iran’s Mehr News, which spoke with the director of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, Gholam-Reza Jalali.
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A new report out today from McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that global critical infrastructure is ill-prepared for cyber attacks, at a time when threats continue to rise.

Focusing on the power, oil, gas and water sectors, the report “In the Dark: Crucial Industries Confront Cyberattacks,” surveyed 200 executives from the critical electricity infrastructure industry in 14 countries regarding practices and policies surrounding IT security.

According to the findings, 40 percent of the executives said that cyber vulnerabilities within their industry had grown over the past year, with almost 30 percent asserting that their organization would not be prepared in the event of a cyber attack.

“What we are learning is the smart grid is not so smart,” Dr. Phyllis Schneck, vice president and chief technology officer for McAfee’s public sector, said in a statement.
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Millions of bloggers worldwide were put at risk yesterday when blogging platform WordPress.com announced that hackers broke into several of its servers, potentially gaining access to the source code and other sensitive information on the site.

Alerting its 19 million users of the breach, WordPress called the incident a “low-level (root) break-in” in a blog post, adding, “We have been diligently reviewing logs and records about the break-in to determine the extent of the information exposed, and re-securing avenues used to gain access. We presume our source code was exposed and copied.”

And while the company continues its investigation, it advised its users to take preventative precautions, including strong password usage and varying passwords for the different sites and accounts its users inhabit.

Meanwhile, password protection was no safeguard for Russian bloggers using LiveJournal last week.  According to the Moscow Times, LiveJournal Russia, the country’s main blogging platform, fell victim to a DDoS cyber attack, flooding servers and crippling the system for seven hours.
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As budget talks continue to hog headlines in Washington this week, elsewhere in the world, hackers are busy working on their own financial plans.

According to a press release, email marketing firm Epsilon is the latest organization to take a cyber hit, compromising clients’ customer data and causing big headaches for the big-name corporations involved.

Among the list of companies alerting customers of the breach are financial giants Citibank, Capital One and JP Morgan, as well as the Home Shopping Network, Walgreens, Brookstone, Kroger, New York & Company and TiVo.
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