Congressman lambastes Chinese cyber-espionage

From the Washington Post,

The chairman of the House intelligence committee on Tuesday launched a broadside against the Chinese government and its efforts to steal commercial data and other intellectual property online, saying that Beijing’s cyber-espionage campaign has “reached an intolerable level” and that the United States and its allies have an “obligation to confront Beijing and demand that they put a stop to this piracy.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) noted that it might seem odd that a lawmaker charged with overseeing the U.S. intelligence community should lament spying by another government. But he said that China’s espionage activities now extend beyond the U.S. government and military to include scores of private American companies.

Continue reading here

Homeland Security tries to shore up nation’s cyber defenses

From the Washington Post,

Screens glowed, mice clicked and lines of code scrolled on the laptop monitors of a hacker team hired by Barney Advanced Domestic Chemical Co. — or BAD Company — to break into a rival firm’s computer network.

In another room here at Idaho National Laboratory, a computer operator noticed something wrong. “They’re hitting one of our servers!” he said. The lights in the control room soon failed, and liquid gushed from a set of tanks as green and red lights flashed.

“We’ve got a spillover!” shouted the supervisor. “Call the hazmat team!”

Continue reading here.

2,700 hacking attempts on S.Korea military in year

From the AFP,

South Korea's military has seen more than 2,700 attempts to hack into its websites over the past year, a lawmaker said Wednesday, amid growing concern over North Korea's cyber warfare capability.

Kim Ok-Lee of the ruling Grand National Party said the military's websites had seen 2,772 hacking attempts from July 2010 to last month, according to data from the defence ministry.

The monthly average number of attacks has grown from some 170 last year to more than 200 in 2011, the ministry said in a report submitted to Kim.

Continue reading here

Suit Claims Real Estate Firm Hacked Rival’s Listings

From the Wall Street Journal,

Bond New York, a real estate brokerage with hundreds of upscale apartment listings around the city, has been accused of hacking into a competitor’s computer system and stealing listing information.

A.C. Lawrence & Co., a competitor firm, has filed suit in New York Civil Supreme Court, claiming that Bond has been hacking into its computer system since February and stealing exclusive listing information.

Competition among residential brokers for exclusive listings has long been fierce, the suit notes that this appear to be the first time in New York State that a brokerage has been accused of hacking into computers to steal listings.

Continue reading here

There's little privacy in a digital world

From the LA Times,

During his two-hour morning bike ride, Eric Hartman doesn't pay much attention to his iPhone.

But the iPhone is paying attention to him.

As he traverses the 30-mile circuit around Seal Beach, Hartman's iPhone knows precisely where he is at every moment, and keeps a record of his whereabouts. That data is beamed to Apple Inc. multiple times each day, whether Hartman is using his phone to take pictures, search for gas stations or check the weather.

And it's not just the iPhone that's keeping track.

Continue reading here

Facebook Targeted in Group Privacy Suit Over Internet Tracking

From BusinessWeek,

Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking service, was accused by users of the site in a class-action lawsuit of secretly tracking their Web activity after they log off.

The company assures users that “cookie” files installed on their computers to identify them and track their interactions with Facebook applications and websites while they are logged on are removed when they log off, according to a complaint in federal court in San Jose, California. Facebook admitted on Sept. 26 that the cookies track users’ Internet activity after they log off, according to yesterday’s complaint.

Continue reading here

'Lurid' malware hits Russia, CIS countries

Courtesy of ComputerWorld's Jeremy Kirk,

The latest espionage-related hacking campaign detailed by security vendor Trend Micro is most notable for the country it does not implicate: China.

Researchers from Trend Micro wrote on Thursday that they discovered a series of hacking attacks targeting space-related government agencies, diplomatic missions, research institutions and companies located mostly in Russia but also Vietnam and Commonwealth of Independent States countries. In total, the attacks targeted 1,465 computers in 61 countries.

Read more here