Quick survey of recent cyber news . . .
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Dennis Fisher wrote a blog post for threatpost, a Kaspersky Lab blog, arguing that we need to clearly define cyberweapons and cyberwar. Stemming from that, people need to be more precise in their language; cyberwar get’s tossed around too much and is used too loosely. Fisher quoted Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab:
There’s no definition of cyberweapons. What’s the difference between cyberweapons and traditional ones? One difference is software is software. People can make a copy, disassemble it, learn its tricks.
Owen Fletcher for the Wall Street Journal on how the same Eugene Kaspersky doubts the accuracy of U.S. attribution claims, perhaps as a challenge to SecDef Panetta’s claim that “potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests.”
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Nextgov’s Aliya Sternstein on how Huawei, the oft-criticized Chinese telecomm, is poaching ex-feds, congressional staffers, and lobbyists, including the ex head of DHS’ cybersecurity division. Sternstein raises the question of whether we should institute more stringent post-employment restrictions for people working in national security positions.
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Ross Gianfortune for Nextgov on James Bond’s encounter with cyber in Skyfall. I saw it last week, solid movie, definitely recommend it. Note: the article is mostly a big spoiler. Also, SPOILER: Javier Bardem (the villain) manages to destroy an office by manipulating computer networks and triggering a gas explosion. He also hacks into all of Bond’s personnel files. Interesting movie for the cyber themes.
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Aliya Sternstein reported for Nextgov on how cars are vulnerable to hacking and how the “National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hasn’t even developed safety guidelines for the insecure electronics that come standard in today’s cars.” Point of the article? We’re going to have to have more conversation on car cybersecurity. Great article.
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William Jackson, for GCN, on how the U.S. is “still at the starting line in the cyberdefense race.”
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Paul Rosenzweig, for The Heritage Foundation, putting together a list of federal government cybersecurity breaches and failures since May 2012. Although the federal government wants to issue a cybersecurity executive order, the list of breaches calls into question “the performance of the federal government in securing its own computer systems.”
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The Heritage Foundation’s David Inserra on how the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is back, but the same problems and questions remain.
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