* See incidents and attacks as they occur * Monitor application SLAs in real time * Correlate and analyze events on streaming data * Track live transactions and online activity.
Microsoft has agreed to share Windows 7 source code with Russian intelligence services. According to a report in Vedomosti, Microsoft will also allow the Russian Federal Security service access to source code for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server. The goal, according to the report, is to help boost the sale of Microsoft products to the Russian government. Microsoft says the agreement is an extension of the Government Security Program agreement reached with Russia in 2002.
China and Google have come to an agreement that will allow Google to once again operate in that country. In January 2010, attacks compromised Google internal servers and the email accounts of Chinese human rights activists; Google indicated that it believed China was behind the attacks. Shortly thereafter, Google announced it would stop censoring search results in China. In March, Google began redirecting users of its Google.cn site to its site in Hong Kong. Google now has a renewed operating license in China. Google will stop rerouting users of Google.cn to its Hong Kong site. If users want to visit Google's Hong Kong site, they will now be required to click to get there. Google has also agreed to "abide by Chinese law."
In an open letter published in the San Francisco Chronicle, US Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California), Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina) call for the US and China to be leaders in cyber security, and say that the issue should be on the agenda for Chinese president Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington. The dates of the visit have not yet been established. The Senators point to attacks against banks and technology companies as well as against government and military networks. They visited China in early June and spoke with top Chinese legislator Wu Bangguo, who suggested that cyber security be made part of the annual Strategic and Economic dialogue between China and the US.
1) CLOUD SECURITY READY FOR PRIME TIME? July 27 - Ask IDC panelist during online discussion.
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On Tuesday, July 13, Oracle will issue its quarterly critical Patch Update to address Oracle will issue 59 vulnerabilities. Twenty-one of the vulnerabilities to be fixed are in Solaris products; seven of those can be remotely exploited. There will also be fixes for 13 flaws in Oracle's database products; of those, nine are remotely exploitable.
Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis has issued a statement saying that Google's collection of personal information through unprotected Wi-Fi networks is a breach of the Australian Privacy Act. Google collected the extra data while gathering images and Wi-Fi location data for its Street View feature in countries around the world. While Australia's Privacy Act does not allow Curtis to impose sanctions on Google, the company was ordered to apologize. Google has also agreed to allow any future Street View activity to be subject to a privacy impact assessment and will consult Curtis about future plans.
The judge in a music file sharing case has reduced the damages award against Boston University graduate student Joel Tenenbaum from US $675,000 to US $67,500. US District Judge Nancy Gertner says that while the initial award was "unconstitutionally excessive," she believes the reduced amount "is still severe, even harsh." Tenenbaum's attorneys may attempt to have the damage award reduced even further because he cannot afford that amount.
The US National Security Agency has acknowledged the existence of the "Perfect Citizen" program, but refuted claims made in a Wall Street Journal article last week that it is a secret system designed to monitor government and private networks. Instead, according to a written statement from an NSA spokesperson, the program is a research and development (R&D) initiative. "Perfect Citizen is purely a vulnerabilities-assessment and capabilities-development contract .... There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are deployed in this endeavor."
The FBI has raided the homes of three people for allegedly harassing a security expert who helped put the leader of a hacking group behind bars. In May, Jesse William McGraw pleaded guilty to transmitting malicious code. He is scheduled to be sentenced on September 16, 2010. McGraw installed malware on computers at the Texas hospital where he worked as a security guard. McGraw was the leader of a hacking group known as the Electronik Tribulation Army and his arrest prompted a series of cyber attacks and harassment of R. Wesley McGrew, who discovered suspicious software on the hospital computers and informed the FBI. The raids occurred in California, Ohio and Kansas on June 23; all harassment ceased following the raids.
People who attended the Cisco Live 2010 conference last week came home to notice informing them of a possible breach of their personal information. A conference vendor detected what "an unexpected attempt to access attendee information through ciscolove2010.com." The data include names, company addresses, email addresses and conference badge numbers.
Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst who stole more than 150,000 diplomatic cables and secret video footage and allegedly leaked it to the Internet, copied the data to CDs. While the US military has issued a ban on removable storage devices to cut down on the possibility of data theft and malware infection, CDs were not on the list of prohibited devices. Manning allegedly used CDs that were labeled with album titles and pretended to be singing along to music while he was downloading the information.
[Editor's Note (Pescatore): Two major mistakes here: (1) USB wasn't why Conficker succeeded, poor patch management was. (2) There is a mission need to physically transfer information between PCs. Security policy that ignores mission needs is like screen windows on submarines.
IT Security expert and SANS Instructor Lenny Zeltser has released a stripped-down version of Ubuntu designed for reverse engineering malware. Dubbed REMnux, the OS comprises an array of malware analysis, network monitoring and memory forensics tools. Zeltser describes REMnux as "a virtual machine that runs Ubuntu and has various useful malware tools set up on it."
The Editorial Board of SANS NewsBites Eugene Schultz, Ph.D., CISM, CISSP is CTO of Emagined Security and the author/co-author of books on Unix security, Internet security, Windows NT/2000 security, incident response, and intrusion detection and prevention. He was also the co-founder and original project manager of the Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) John Pescatore is Vice President at Gartner Inc.; he has worked in computer and network security since 1978. Stephen Northcutt founded the GIAC certification and currently serves as President of the SANS Technology Institute, a post graduate level IT Security College, www.sans.edu.
Alan Paller is director of research at the SANS Institute. Marcus J. Ranum built the first firewall for the White House and is widely recognized as a security products designer and industry innovator.