Cybersecurity News

Earlier this week, Cybersecurity News reported on a weak cyber attack that briefly disrupted WikiLeaks, the controversial, whistleblowing website that recently took to posting thousands of secret US government documents on the Web.

But after repairing the site and releasing even more of its latest leaks, hackers have again stepped up to the digital plate to take a series of DDoS swings at WikiLeaks.

According to the New York Times this morning, the hackers also threatened to start launching larger attacks to include sites hosting WikiLeaks severs, including that of online shopping giant Amazon.com and EveryDNS.net, which hosts 500,000 domain names on the Web.

The Times also reported that, as of Wednesday, Amazon.com chose to drop WikiLeaks from its servers.  And following precedent, other organizations, including the French government itself, have been creating measures to do the same.

“But by Friday, WikiLeaks was pointing users to Web addresses in a number of European countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Finland and the Netherlands,” the Times reported.

Late this afternoon, the Press Association said the site had changed its domain name from wikileaks.org to the Swiss server wikileaks.ch.

Back in the States, senators on both sides of the aisle joined forces yesterday to condemn Julian Assange and his site’s release of the classified information.

Taking it a step further, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) John Ensign, (R-Nev.) and Scott Brown, (R-Mass.) introduced new legislation to allow the President to go after Assange, the WikiLeaks site and anyone else in on the action.

According to Wired, the bill would also make it a federal crime for anyone to publish names of US intelligence sources, stating that this action would “endanger these sources of information that are vital to protecting our national security interests.”

Over in the House, Intelligence Committee ranking member Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich) also introduced a resolution on the matter.   According to the National Journal, Rep. Hoekstra’s measure would require the administration to provide the Intelligence panel with all of the documents that WikiLeaks was able to obtain.

“If this information could be made available to more than a half-million people, there’s no reason it should not be accessible to the group of lawmakers who are responsible for ensuring that the authorities are in place to protect America’s vital national security information,” Hoekstra said.

Additional cybersecurity news headlines follow:

Expert: Pentagon cybersecurity changes ‘very basic, very late’ (CNN)

Federal cybersecurity spending to hit $13.3B by 2015 (InformationWeek)

FTC proposes ‘do not track’ tool (Politico)

OMB’s tech changes start with new role for CIOs (Federal News Radio)

NATO works to set right cyber balance (Department of Defense)

France says it is improving its cybersecurity in wake of WikiLeaks scandal (RFI)

US delivers record 1.7B supercomputing hours to boost energy research (NetworkWorld)

Gartner predicts cyber attack will seriously damage G20 economy by 2015 (Computer Weekly)

China’s cyber crime situation remains ‘very grave’ (The New New Internet)

Pakistan government sites hacked; no respite from cyber attacks (PC World)

Kaspersky discovers new ‘ransomware’ cyber attack (Computing News)

FBI warns of cell phone cybersecurity crimes (Federal News Radio)

GAO finds wireless network cybersecurity vulnerabilities (Fierce Government IT)

TechAmerica urges passage of cybersecurity legislation (Tech Journal South)

Iran confirms cyber attack on nuclear facilities (Reuters)

Critical infrastructure facilities provide substandard cyber supply chain security (InfoSecurity)

Chinese police arrest hundreds of cyber attack suspect (People’s Daily – China)

UK develops cybersecurity plan for 2012 Olympic games (The New New Internet)

Multidisciplined partnerships are central to country’s cybersecurity (SC Magazine)

BAE Systems buys Australian cybersecurity consulting firm (InfoSecurity)