New enterprise security solutions for Sophos

IT security and data protection company Sophos has announced several new products on its enterprise security line-up, including a new light-weight mobile security platform designed for use on a wide range of mobile communication devices. Sophos Mobile Control provides protection on devices including Apple iPhones, iPads and Google Android and Windows Mobile devices. The system is designed to allow IT administrators to secure, monitor, and control configurations for smartphones running Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows Mobile operating systems. Sophos Mobile Control features a web-based console which allows IT administrators to centrally configure security settings, enable lockdown of unwanted features; and remote over-the-air lock or wipe if a device is lost or stolen. The web-based console is also designed to allow a constant monitoring of mobile devices to ensure consistent security policy enforcement, strong password policies and lock periods and ensure the control and installation of applications. The console also allows users to block the use of cameras, browsers, and sites such as YouTube. The service allows users to register new devices, lock or wipe devices on a self-service portal. It also controls access to corporate email via a secure gate allowing only properly secured and registered devices to access email. "Today, iPads, smartphones, and laptops are everywhere and connected to the web at all times. Mobile technology has allowed today's workforce to be far more productive but it has also opened up a new can of worms for IT teams as they must ensure that the data on those devices - especially the non-company-issues ones - are encrypted at all times no matter where the end user is. Sophos Mobile Control quickly and efficiently protects data on all iOS and Android mobile devices, giving those IT departments' peace of mind that their end users' devices are fully protected," said Matthias Pankert, head of Data Protection Product Management, Sophos. The second enterprise security product now available from Sophos is Sophos SafeGuard Enterprise 5.60, which provides encryption and data loss prevention (DLP) for desktops, laptops and removable media. SafeGuard is now designed to comprehensively manage all encryption options that fully support hardware drives, including Opal, software-based encryption, and hardware encrypted USB. It is also designed to manage enhancements to the latest versions of Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection. The new SafeGuard system is designed to provide up to 30 percent higher read/write throughput on solid state drives compared to the previous version. The software also reduces performance overhead with multiple central processing unit (CPU) processors running in parallel to minimise performance overhead of encryption and decryption, according to Sophos. It also includes active directory synchronisation; automatic event log; deletion; and enables scheduling of custom scripts for reoccurring tasks. "The explosion of smartphones and tablets, and especially the applications for these mobile devices, has pushed the presence of our corporate data even further out of the corporate data center.  The ability to protect our clients by maintaining security controls around this data is critical for businesses, especially financial services companies," said Pat Patterson, Information Security architect from Raymond James. The third software announcement from Sophos is the Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9.7 (Sophos ESDP), which id designed to deliver advanced labs intelligence via a single agent that enhances protection against zero-day and web-based threats along with real-time feedback to security and application policy settings via the cloud using Sophos Live Protection technologies. According to Sophos, the latest upgrade to Sophos ESDP (9.7) also includes encryption, data loss prevention, network access control, device control, application control, management, and reporting. The software is also designed to provide location-aware intelligent updating for mobile workers and extended tamper protection to help stop users from turning off key Sophos protection features, including anti-virus protection, updates, and client firewall. Sophes EDSP will also minimise computer CPU and disk I/O usage during while optimising  performance when users are active or away, according to the company. "IT organisations are facing unprecedented challenges securing their users, corporate data and infrastructure on consumer, mobile and cloud devices and platforms they do not own or control. It is incumbent upon security vendors to adapt and provide solutions that provide a full arsenal of protection against security threats and data loss, yet flexible and lightweight to protect users on any device, in any location," said Arabella Hallawell, vice president of Corporate Strategy, Sophos.

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Symantec Web Gateway 5.0 (Malware Protector)

Symantec Web Gateway protects organizations against multiple types of Web-borne malware, prevents data loss over Web and gives organizations the flexibility of deploying it as either a virtual appliance or on physical hardware. Powered by Insight, Symantec’s innovative reputation technology, Web Gateway relies on a global network of over 175 million of users to identify new threats before they cause disruption in organizations.

Key Features:-

• Backed by Symantec Global Intelligence Network
• Powered by Symantec Insight Technology
• Integrates Award-winning Symantec AntiVirus engine
• Seamless integration with Symantec Data Loss Prevention
• Application control capabilities
• URL filtering with flexible policy setting
• Virtual or physical appliance deployment option
• SSL Decryption capabilities
• Multiple layers of malware protection

Key Benefits:-

1. Protection

• Backed by Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network with real time updates to bolster protection
• Integrates Symantec’s Award-winning AntiVirus engine
• Powered by Symantec Insight providing proactive protection against new, targeted, or mutating threats

2. Control

• Integration with Symantec Data Loss Prevention Network Prevent for Web allows for a robust Web and Data Loss prevention solution from a single vendor
• Application controls provides administrators with multiple policy settings ensuring users are given access to applications which adhere to company guidelines
• URL filtering list gives administrators ability to monitor, block, or allow access to over 100+ million sites organized within 62 different categories

3. Management

• Multiple deployment options give customers ability to deploy Web Gateway as a physical appliance, virtual appliance, or a combination of both
• Powerful reporting capabilities with out of the box reports and administration through a secure browser with a simple dashboard view
• Proxy and caching capability meeting unique needs of customer network requirements

To Download the the Trail Version Click Here

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Greater Manchester Police Fined £150,000 By ICO For Using Unencrypted USB Sticks

Greater Manchester Police Fined £150,000 By ICO For Using Unencrypted USB Sticks 

To fight against major security breaches, data loss, cyber theft, and many other cyber challenges, both Government and higher authorities are becoming as tight and strict as they can. While sitting at edge of cyber security, not even a single mistake or carelessness will be negotiated. So either you have to deliver your very best, or you have to penalty, exactly the same thing happened to Greater Manchester Police. Yesterday, I mean 16th of October The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK recently fined the Greater Manchester Police £150,000 for a data breach. In their press release ICO said - Greater Manchester Police force is being fined for failing to take appropriate measures against the loss of personal data. The action was prompted by the theft of a memory stick containing sensitive personal data from an officer’s home. The device, which had no password protection, contained details of more than a thousand people with links to serious crime investigations. The ICO found that a number of officers across the force regularly used unencrypted memory sticks, which may also have been used to copy data from police computers to access away from the office. Despite a similar security breach in September 2010, the force had not put restrictions on downloading information, and staff were not sufficiently trained in data protection.

The findings prompted the Information Commissioner to use his powers under the Data Protection Act to impose a Civil Monetary Penalty of £150,000. Greater Manchester Police paid that penalty yesterday, taking advantage of a 20 per cent early payment discount (£120,000). 

David Smith, ICO Director of Data Protection, said: -“This was truly sensitive personal data, left in the hands of a burglar by poor data security. The consequences of this type of breach really do send a shiver down the spine. “It should have been obvious to the force that the type of information stored on its computers meant proper data security was needed. Instead, it has taken a serious data breach to prompt it into action.

“This is a substantial monetary penalty, reflecting the significant failings the force demonstrated. We hope it will discourage others from making the same data protection mistakes.” 

The monetary penalty is paid into the Treasury’s Consolidated Fund and is not kept by the Commissioner.   

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Cloud Computing: Managing Risk and Compliance in the Cloud

Cloud computing represents today's big innovation trend in the information technology (IT) space. Because it allows enterprises to deploy quickly, move swiftly, and share resources, cloud computing is rapidly replacing conventional in-house facilities at enterprises of all sizes.

Unfortunately, in their eagerness to adopt cloud platforms and applications, enterprises are neglecting to recognize and address the compliance and security risks that come with implementation. Often the ease of getting a business into the cloud - a credit card and a few keystrokes is all that is required - provides a false sense of security.

However, shortcomings in the cloud providers' security strategy can trickle down to the businesses that leverage their services. In this context, damages can range from pure power outages impacting business performance, data loss, unauthorized disclosure, data destruction, copyright infringement, to brand reputational loss.

Risk in the Cloud
For enterprises planning to transition their IT environment to the cloud, it is imperative to be cognizant of issues such as loss of control and lack of transparency, which are often overlooked. Cloud providers may have service level agreements in place, but security provisions, the physical location of data, and other vital details may not be well defined. This leaves enterprises in a bind, as they must also meet contractual agreements and regulatory requirements for securing data and comply with countless breach notification and data protection laws.

Whether organizations plan to use public clouds, which promise an even higher return on investment, or private clouds, better security and compliance is needed. To address this challenge, organizations should institute policies and controls that match their pre-cloud requirements. At the end, why would you apply less stringent requirements to a third-party IT environment than your own - especially if it potentially impacts your business performance and valuation?

Recent cyber-attacks and associated data breaches of Google and Epsilon (a marketing services firm) are prime examples of why companies need to think about an advanced risk and compliance plan that includes their third-party managed cloud environment.

To protect your business, you should insist that your cloud service provider provides visibility into security processes and controls to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

Best Practices for Cloud Risk Management
According to Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), main inhibitors to the adoption of cloud computing in large organizations are consistent and standardized frameworks, open standards, interfaces that address security controls, and easy-to-implement processes to provide assurances on levels of Governance, Risk, and Compliance and security in cloud environments.

According to a report by Forrester Research (Compliance with Clouds: Caveat Emptor, August 2010) organizations should not wait for the cloud industry to step up its support for regulatory compliance, but instead security professionals should look beyond their cloud providers for compensating controls to aid cloud sourcing.

This view is obviously shared by IT and security leaders, who responded to the 2011 Global State of Information Security Survey of PricewaterhouseCoopers, CIO Magazine, and CSO Magazine, as they identified compliance (34%) and regulatory compliance (33%) among the top five business issues that will drive information security spending in their organization in 2011.

As cloud computing is still an emerging technology space, advice on how to address cloud risk management is limited. What best practices should organizations follow? Probably the best bet are the guidelines developed by the Cloud Security Alliance, a non-profit organization formed to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing.

The CSA defines three distinct stages of a cloud adoption life cycle, starting with cloud risk readiness assessment, cloud risk operations monitoring, and finally leading to cloud audits (an area that still requires further standardization).

Cloud Risk Readiness
When you transition your IT infrastructure to a cloud environment you have to find ways to determine how to trust your cloud provider with your sensitive data. Practically speaking, you need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.

To quickly evaluate your tolerance for moving asset to various cloud computing models (e.g., public cloud, private cloud, community cloud, or hybrid cloud) you should apply the followings steps:

1. Identify the assets for the cloud deployment (e.g., data, applications, functions, processes)
2. Evaluate the assets as it relates to criticality to the business and answer questions such as:
   
   • What impact would the business face if the asset became public information?
   • What impact would the business face if the asset would be accessed by the cloud service provider?
   • What impact would the business face if the application would be attacked or corrupted by an outsider?
   • What impact would the business face if the stored data were unexpectedly modified?
   • What impact would the business face if the asset were unavailable for a period of time?
3. Map the asset to the potential cloud deployment model
4. Evaluate potential cloud service models and providers and answer questions such as:
   
   • Does the cloud service provider meet current standards for security (e.g., assessment of threat and vulnerability management capabilities, continuous monitoring, business continuity plan)
   • Is the cloud service provider compliant with applicable regulations and can it pass a regulatory audit?
   • Can the cloud service provider generate dynamic and detailed compliance reports that can be used by the provider, auditors, as well as your internal resources?

Considering that many organizations deal with a heterogeneous cloud eco-system, comprised of infrastructure service providers, cloud software providers (e.g., cloud management, data, compute, file storage, and virtualization), platform services (e.g., business intelligence, integration, development and testing, as well as database), it is often challenging to gather the above mentioned information in a manual fashion. Thus, automation of the vendor risk assessment might be a viable option, especially if the same software tool can be leveraged for the other stages of the cloud adoption life cycle.

In addition, it's important to select a software tool that provides compliance controls assessment frameworks and content from regulations such as PCI DSS 2.0, FISMA 2010, SOX, NIST, ISO, CSA, SANS and BITS, threat controls content from CSA, as well as cloud risk dashboards and reports.

Cloud Risk Operations

A portion of the cost savings obtained by moving to the cloud should be invested into increasing the scrutiny of the security qualifications of an organization's cloud service provider, particularly as it relates to security controls, and ongoing detailed assessments and audits to ensure continuous compliance.

In this context, organizations should consider leveraging monitoring services or security risk management software that achieves:

• Continuous compliance monitoring
• Segregation and virtualization provisioning management
• Automation of CIS benchmarks and secure configuration management integrations with security tools such as VMware vShield, McAfee ePO, and NetIQ SCM
• Threat management with automated data feeds from zero-day vendors such as VeriSign and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), as well as virtualized vulnerability integrations with companies such as eEye Retina and Tenable Nessus

Automated technology, which allows a risk-based approach and continuous monitoring for compliance, would be suitable for enterprises seeking to protect and manage their data in the cloud.

Cloud Risk Audit
This stage of the cloud adoption life cycle has not been very well defined yet and therefore requires further standardization driven by an increase in cloud deployments.

Nonetheless, when evaluating cloud service providers, organizations should ensure that they perform automated regulatory health checks and provide transparency in their infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), and software (SaaS) environments.

Practical Tips in Selecting the Right Cloud Risk Management Tool
When assessing Cloud Risk Management services or software, organizations should apply the following selection criteria:

• Choose a vendor that offers an all-encompassing solution, meaning providing methodologies, frameworks, tools, and best practices to properly assess and manage your organization's cloud initiatives across all three stages of your cloud adoption life cycle. The solution should cover Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), as well as Security in the form of threat and vulnerability management capabilities.
• Choose an automated technology with an open architecture, since many organizations have invested heavily in security tools. This will allow data to be fed from the existing tools into the Cloud Risk Management tool and provide an aggregated view into both IT and business compliance and risk.
• Make sure you work with a vendor that offers a solution that is content rich and includes many of the regulations (PCI, FISMA, SOX, etc.), frameworks, and standards that are applicable to your organization.
• Seek out a vendor or service provider that can add value by offering innovative technology that goes beyond the traditional view of GRC. Namely, ensure that beyond governance and compliance, the areas of security (e.g., threat and vulnerability) and risk (e.g., enterprise risk management) are well covered, as it ensures higher return on investment.
• Since you measure the success of a technology implementation by the time it takes to achieve value from its investment, it's crucial to engage with a vendor that offers the most efficient time-to-value. From a deployment perspective, this means that an on-site implementation should not exceed 90 days and as a managed service client, you should be up and running within 30 days.

Summary
There is no doubt that cloud computing will continue growing and, as it does, continue to get safer. But data breaches at some of the largest enterprises highlight the fact that there are still many risks associated with cloud adoption. Constantly changing government regulations are making it more difficult to keep compliant during the audit process as well. While it's exciting to be at the frontline when it comes to embracing a new technology that is poised to change the way we conduct business, we must remember that these technologies almost always come with new risks that have not yet been fully addressed.

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Chinese Hackers Broke Into Indian Navy's Computer System & Stolen Sensitive Data (VOGH Exclusive)

VOGH Exclusive:- Chinese Hackers Broke Into Indian Navy's Computer System & Stolen Sensitive Data

Again cyber criminals from China targeted Indian cyber fence. This time Indian Navy have fallen victim of this cyber espionage. According to sources hackers have broken into sensitive naval computer systems in and around Visakhapatnam, the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command, and planted malware that relayed confidential data to IP addresses in China.  There is, to date, nothing known about the data thieves. 

Primary investigation revealed that the classified data has been leaked and that the breach may have occurred as a result of the use of USB flash storage on important systems. The Navy and other armed forces store sensitive data on standalone systems, unconnected to the internet and supposedly with no free USB ports where a flash drive could be plugged in.

The malware is reported to have created a hidden folder on the USB flash drives. When the drive was plugged into a Navy system, the malware searched for files based on particular key words it had been configured to look for. These files were then copied to the flash drive where they would remain hidden. When the drive was plugged into a system which was connected to the internet, the malware would then begin to transfer the files to a specific IP address. The extent of the loss is still being ascertained, and officials said it was “premature at this stage” to comment on the sensitivity of the compromised data. But the Navy has completed a Board of Inquiry (BoI) which is believed to have indicted at least six mid-level officers for procedural lapses that led to the security breach. Navy official also said: “An inquiry has been convened and findings of the report are awaited. It needs to be mentioned that there is a constant threat in the cyber domain from inimical hack ers worldwide.”

Couple of months ago Tokyo based computer security firm Trend Micro confirmed that Chinese hackers were responsible for biggest cyber-espionage in India, Japan & Tibet. Also the director of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander confirmed that hackers from China was responsible for the serious attack on one of the leading IT security & cyber security company RSA. Also in 2011 China was responsible behind the attack on US Chamber of Commerce, Satellite System of U.S, Nortel Network & so on.  But few days ago National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC), China's primary computer security monitoring network claimed that China fallen victim of one of biggest cyber attacks originated from US, Japan & South Korea. We must have to say that this statement is truly irrelevant. Cyber crime investigator have found that China was directly responsible for the hack into Japan's Biggest Defense Contractor Mitsubishi, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) & Parliament of Japan. In case of South Korea  more than 13 Million of MapleStory players data has been stolen, there also hackers from China was responsible. 

The above phenomena are clearly indicating that hackers from China was directly linked and responsible for all those biggest cyber espionage. Still it is not clear that whether these cyber criminals are supported by the Govt. or not!!

 

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PostgreSQL Patches Vulnerability in The built-in XML & XSLT (CVE-2012-3488,3489)

PostgreSQL Patches Vulnerability in The built-in XML & XSLT (CVE-2012-3488,3489)

PostgreSQL Global Development Group released security updates for all active branches of the PostgreSQL database system, including versions 9.1.5, 9.0.9, 8.4.13 and 8.3.20. This update patches security holes associated with libxml2 and libxslt, similar to those affecting other open source projects. All users are urged to update their installations at the first available opportunity. This security release fixes a vulnerability in the built-in XML functionality, and a vulnerability in the XSLT functionality supplied by the optional XML2 extension. Both vulnerabilities allow reading of arbitrary files by any authenticated database user, and the XSLT vulnerability allows writing files as well. The fixes cause limited backwards compatibility issues. These issues correspond to the following two vulnerabilities:

• CVE-2012-3488: PostgreSQL insecure use of libxslt
• CVE-2012-3489: PostgreSQL insecure use of libxml2

This release also contains several fixes to version 9.1, and a smaller number of fixes to older versions, including:

• Updates and corrections to time zone data
• Multiple documentation updates and corrections
• Add limit on max_wal_senders
• Fix dependencies generated during ALTER TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT USING INDEX.
• Correct behavior of unicode conversions for PL/Python
• Fix WITH attached to a nested set operation (UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT).
• Fix syslogger so that log_truncate_on_rotation works in the first rotation.
• Only allow autovacuum to be auto-canceled by a directly blocked process.
• Improve fsync request queue operation
• Prevent corner-case core dump in rfree().
• Fix Walsender so that it responds correctly to timeouts and deadlocks
• Several PL/Perl fixes for encoding-related issues
• Make selectivity operators use the correct collation
• Prevent unsuitable slaves from being selected for synchronous replication
• Make REASSIGN OWNED work on extensions as well
• Fix race condition with ENUM comparisons
• Make NOTIFY cope with out-of-disk-space
• Fix memory leak in ARRAY subselect queries
• Reduce data loss at replication failover
• Fix behavior of subtransactions with Hot Standby

Users who are relying on the built-in XML functionality to validate external DTDs will need to implement a workaround, as this security patch disables that functionality. Users who are using xslt_process() to fetch documents or stylesheets from external URLs will no longer be able to do so. The PostgreSQL project regrets the need to disable both of these features in order to maintain our security standards. These security issues with XML are substantially similar to issues patched recently by the Webkit (CVE-2011-1774), XMLsec (CVE-2011-1425) and PHP5 (CVE-2012-0057) projects. As with other minor releases, users are not required to dump and reload their database or use 

pg_upgrade

In order to apply this update release; you may simply shut down PostgreSQL and update its binaries. Perform post-update steps after the database is restarted. All supported versions of PostgreSQL are affected. Or you can download the new versions now at the main download page.

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Obama Administration Is Implementing Tighter Penalties For Cybercrimes

The Obama administration is seeking tougher sentences for people who are found guilty of hacking or other digital offenses, two officials said Wednesday.  

Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker and Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Pablo Martinez said the maximum sentences for cyber crimes have failed to keep pace with the severity of the threats.  

Martinez said hackers are often members of sophisticated criminal networks.

"Secret Service investigations have shown that complex and sophisticated electronic crimes are rarely perpetrated by a lone individual," Martinez said.

"Online criminals organize in networks, often with defined roles for participants, in order to manage and perpetuate ongoing criminal enterprises dedicated to stealing commercial data and selling it for profit," he said.

Baker and Martinez appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the portion of the White House's cybersecurity legislative proposal that calls for stiffer penalties for cyber crimes as part of an update to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

The administration argues the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act should be updated to make CFAA offenses subject to its terms. That law is used to prosecute organized crime. 

Baker said hacking has increasingly become a tool of choice for crimes like identity theft, extortion and corporate espionage.

"As computer technology has evolved, it has become a key tool of organized crime," Baker said. "Many of these criminal organizations are similarly tied to traditional Asian and Eastern European organized crime organizations."

The administration's proposal also calls for a national data breach standard to replace the current patchwork of state laws. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) expressed concern that the proposed 60-day window for companies to notify customers their data has been breached would be too long, but Baker said the administration is willing to work with Congress on the issue. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) shifted the conversation to the portion of the White House plan dealing with protecting critical private sector networks from outside attacks.

Baker said the White House plan does not include any criminal or civil provisions for forcing companies to comply with Department of Homeland Security cyber security standards. "The idea was to create a lighter touch ... to build incentives into the system," Baker said.

Experts have warned that without some sort of enforcement mechanism companies will not take the necessary security precautions. Blumenthal echoed that stance, suggesting the administration "consider some kind of stick as well as a carrot." Industry has argued that resources are the main limitation and argued for incentives such as liability protection for firms that experience attacks. 

But Baker expressed agreement with Blumenthal and said the current range of incentives built into the system, such as the loss of investor trust, stock market value and privileged corporate data has not been enough to convince companies to take adequate security measures.

-News Source (The HILL, CCFA, HLS)

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HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous

HSBC Comeback Online After Prolonged DDoS Attack From Anonymous 

Massive attack against banking and financial sector continues, this time HSBC became the latest victim of cyber attack. The attack which interrupt the service for 10 hours long were mainly originated from Iran and Russia. After 'Izz ad-Din al Qassam Cyber Fighters' now it was the time for Fawkes Security, an offshoot of hacktivist group Anonymous, quickly took credit for the attack, acknowledging the take down in posts yesterday afternoon on Twitter and Pastebin The group claimed to have knocked HSBC’s main site, along with its US, UK and Canadian counterparts offline and on Friday,claimed it logged 20,000 debit card details from the site while it was down. 

According to HSBC newsroom- "On 18 October 2012 HSBC servers came under a denial of service attack which affected a number of HSBC websites around the world." But HSBC denied any sort of data loss. Fawkes Security claimed to have details of more than 20K cards, but in their release HSBC said "This denial of service attack did not affect any customer data, but did prevent customers using HSBC online services, including internet banking." 

But now the whole situation is under control, websites belonging to British bank and financial services company HSBC are back online and working normally. According to an update posted on its website, HSBC restored all of its websites globally to full accessibility as of 3:00am UK time. 

New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank and PNC was brought down by few hacker collective group as protest against the anti Islamic movie. After this attack the name of HSBC has also been enlisted with those poor victims (affected banks & finance sector) who suffered DDoS attack in last month.

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2 Bangladeshi Hacker Get Busted In Supreme Court Website Hacking Case

Two Bangladeshi hacker, Md. Rasel (18) & Mizanur Rahaman (21) get busted by RAB due to Supreme Court hacking case. Earlier in this month a Bangladeshi Hacker group named 3xp1r3 Cyber Army has hacked and defaced the official website of Bangladesh Supreme Court. Official authority of RAB said that 7 guys ware related in that hacking case, among them four guys are from Bangladesh, two from Arab and one from Kuwait. Mizanur & Rasel said that they did not hack the site, it was done from some other country, they just enter the server and tried to protect the data. Also they claimed that no data loss was done on that particular server. 

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Adidas, German Sportswear Under Cyber Attack

Adidas, the German sportswear and equipment manufacturer was forced to take its website offline after facing a 'sophisticated and criminal' cyber assault. The company has revealed that it had no confirmations that its users' data had been violated, but said that the affected sites was being taken down in order to safeguard visitors. In addition, it has been revealed according to a recent statement by Adidas that the hacking incident was first spotted on November 3.
The company further stated that ever since the breaching activity was first tracked, the company has reinforced data security measures and has started relaunching the content of its websites. The statement released by the company stated, "Nothing is more important to us than the privacy and security of our consumers' personal data. "We appreciate your understanding and patience during this time", the statement further stressed.

The recent cyber assault is the latest to the chain of various high-profile attacks which took place in recent past are targeted websites of many high-profile organizations like Sega, and Nintendo. Assuring its users regarding no loss of personal information and other data, the German multinational stressed on the fact that the company values the privacy of its users beyond anything else and due to this very reason, the decision has been made to keep the site offline for a while. The recent cyber attack, which will soon be monitored by forensic experts, has narrowly follows a recent report by security officials wherein they claimed that nearly 29 chemicals companies have been targeted for a sequence of cyber-invasions less than a week ago.

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NATO Said:- Anonymous will be "infiltrated" and "persecuted"

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization contains the combined military might of 28 member countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. All three of those nations, and the United States, possess huge armies, nuclear weapons, and are committed to Article Five of NATO's charter:

"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked."

Yet reading NATO's new draft general report on cyber security, one gets the impression that what the alliance worries about most these days is not an "armed attack," but a cyberattack on its network servers, or the infrastructure of any of its member countries.

"In this Information Age, the North Atlantic Alliance faces a dilemma of how to maintain cohesion in the environment where sharing information with Allies increases information security risks," NATO's Information and National Security survey observes, "but where withholding it undermines the relevance and capabilities of the Alliance."

And WikLeaks and Anonymous get top billing as visible threats to NATO's efforts to control its information perimeters.

"The time it takes to cross the Atlantic has shrunk to 30 milliseconds, compared with 30 minutes for ICBMs and several months going by boat," the report warns. "Meanwhile, a whole new family of actors are emerging on the international stage, such as virtual 'hactivist' groups. These could potentially lead to a new class of international conflicts between these groups and nation states, or even to conflicts between exclusively virtual entities."

The irony of 9/11:-

Authored by Lord Michael Jopling, Rapporteur for NATO, the study begins with an irony. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York City and Washington, DC, the United States government concluded that one of the reasons that the plot succeeded was because information about its perpetrators wasn't widely shared among US intelligence agencies, especially the Department of Defense, CIA, State Department, and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And so the US opened up its data sharing practices. This made matter worse, Jopling appears to suggest. It "resulted in an exponential number of people obtaining access to classified information." Over 850,000 functionaries now enjoy some kind of "top-secret" security status, he claims. Many have access to the DoD's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), dispenser of embassy cables.

The study cites critics of SIPRNet who say that it lacks the ability to detect unauthorized access. "Thus, those in charge of the network design relied on those who had access to this sensitive data to protect it from abuse. These users were never scrutinized by any state agency responsible for the data-sharing system."

Jopling doesn't explicitly blame this openness policy for WikiLeaks phenomenon, but his narrative leads right into Private Bradley Manning, accused of providing documents for the outfit, prompting the group's famous publication of a continuous stream of State Department cables.

Not surprisingly, he thinks that this is bad:

The Rapporteur believes that even if one is in favour of transparency, military and intelligence operations simply cannot be planned and consulted with the public. Transparency cannot exist without control. The government, and especially its security agencies, must have the right to limit access to information in order to govern and to protect. This is based on the premise that states and corporations have the right to privacy as much as individuals do and that secrecy is required for efficient management of the state institutions and organizations.

Hacktivity:-

A big chunk of the assessment is devoted to the activities of Anonymous, most notably its denial-of-service attacks against PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and Amazon.com for shutting down financial and server space services to WikiLeaks. Next comes the Anonymous assault on HBGary Federal, which had been planning some methods to take down WikiLeaks and expose Anonymous. It didn't turn out that way, of course. Instead, Anonymous penetrated the security company, erasing data, publishing e-mails, and wrecking its website.

The author seems confident, however, that the notorious group's days are numbered. "It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths," Jopling writes. "The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted."

But the larger question hovering over this document is what NATO should do if one of its over two-dozen member nations is cyberattacked. The US has lately been pondering this dilemma as well.

"Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners," says a White House strategy report published in mid-May. "When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country."

This NATO draft seems to want to go in a similar direction—especially if something on the scale of a Stuxnet malware attack is deployed against a member nation. Designed to penetrate software for industrial equipment, researchers believe that it was originally intended for Iran's nuclear program.

"Some argue that Article 5 should not be applied with respect to cyberattacks because their effect so far has been limited to creating inconvenience rather than causing the loss of human lives and because it is hard to determine the attacker," Jopling notes. "However, The Rapporteur believes that the application of Article 5 should not be ruled out, given that new developments in cyber weapons such as Stuxnet might eventually cause damage comparable to that of a conventional military attack."

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