Obama inserts White House into leadership role to secure the Internet
May 30, 2009
In a historic White House speech, President Obama on Friday, May 29, 2009, became the first head of a nation state to stake out a leadership role in attempting to make the Internet safer.
Dozens of tech executives, military and intelligence officials, agency heads and lawmakers attuned to the topic gathered in the East Room of the White House witnessed the speech live, as did myself and many others glued to …More
U.S. cybersecurity report: ‘Leading From The Top’ is crucial
May 29, 2009
President Obama 11 minutes from now will name a cybersecurity czar. I just received this outline to Melissa Hathaway’s 60-day review.
The review team’s report to the President contains five main chapters, outlined below, and includes a near-term action plan for U.S. Government activities to strengthen cybersecurity.
Chapter I: Leading from the Top – Makes the case for strengthening cybersecurity leadership for the United States through 1) the establishment of a Presidential cybersecurity policy official and supporting structures, 2) reviewing laws …More
Scareware infestation hits Google search results & YouTube comments
May 26, 2009
Scareware pitches, like this one, are surging. Those obnoxious promotions that try to entice you to spend $39 to $59 for worthless antivirus cleanup and protection are being spread online as intensely as ever.
And here’s the latest: you really can’t trust Google search query results, nor the comments posted alongside YouTube videos. Why? Because scareware purveyors are increasingly corrupting Google search results pages and YouTube video comments with their …More
Simplistic Facebook phishing attack seeks userIDs and passwords only
May 21, 2009
There’s power in simplicity. That’s the upshot of the phishing attack now bombarding Facebook users. Many FB’ers are receiving messages titled, simply, “Hello.” The body of the text contains a brief imperative sentence: “Check areps.at” or “Check bests.at” Several USA Today staffers have received these bogus messages.
Clicking on the “areps.at” or “bests.at” hyperlink takes you to a realistic-looking, but counterfeit, Facebook login page, where you will be prompted to …More
Cybersecurity czar debated in USA — as Europe seeks top cyber cop
May 15, 2009
Four weeks have gone by since Melissa Hathaway delivered her 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity policy to President Obama. At this point, Obama would shock the tech security, military and intelligence communities if he does not name a cybersecurity czar.
Still, there has been no public comment from the White House. The hold up at least in part appears to be due to a protracted internal discussion about where a presidential …More