Obama’s security summit “snubbed” by tech leaders

From Payment Eye -
"Apple appears to be one of the few companies willing to play ball with the US government’s proposed surveillance and security rules, with CEOs of Facebook, Microsoft and Google conspicuously absent from an Obama-led industry event.

Revelations by ex-NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the US gathers intelligence from social networks, e-commerce systems and other websites not caused an international outcry over consumer privacy.

Rather than scale back surveillance, the Obama administration is insisting that companies and websites that routinely collect customer data or facilitate communications and transactions between individuals will have to make this information available to the NSA. Plans announced at the summit show that the government is reluctant to tell companies how this data will be stored or used, making it a hard sell to their customers."

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Why Hide Cyber Skirmishes With Iran?

From Bank Info Security -

Were distributed denial-of-service attacks against major American banks in 2012 waged in retribution for U.S. government actions? A top-secret memo prepared in 2013 for Keith Alexander, who was then director of the National Security Agency, seems to confirm that's the case.

It's long been widely assumed that Iranians waged the DDoS attacks, and that it was retribution for earlier assaults on Iranian IT (see More U.S. Banks Report Online Woes). This memo seems to confirm that and also answers the question of why the Iranians launched those attacks.

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Cyber-security - The Kaspersky equation

From The Economist –

“There is more than one reason to harbour doubts about Eugene Kaspersky and the computer-security company that bears his name. He graduated from an institute close to the KGB and later worked for the Red Army. He has called Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower, a “traitor” for having broken his contract with his former employer, America’s National Security Agency (NSA). And, like many an executive in his industry, his regular warnings about big, emerging cyber-threats just happen to be good for drumming up business.”

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Will the NSA's activities handicap IT in the United States?

From TechRepublic

“NSA spying has given U.S. IT a black eye, possibly triggered a recession in its tech industry, and fueled data protectionist movements. 

Excepting revelations on NSA spying, 2013 was a good year for the technology industry, particularly in the United States. Silicon Valley experienced a strong resurgence on all fronts, with innovative new startups at the consumer and enterprise level and venture funding and new ideas reminiscent of the heady dotcom days of the late 1990s. In the corporate sector, after years of frozen budgets, many companies once again started hiring and spending money on internal IT, funding initiatives ranging from rudimentary application modernization to cutting-edge big data to digital marketing initiatives.”

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Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

From The Washington Post

“The familiar voice on the hotel room phone did not waste words.

“What time does your clock say, exactly?” he asked.

He checked the reply against his watch and described a place to meet.

“I’ll see you there,” he said.

Edward Joseph Snowden emerged at the appointed hour, alone, blending into a light crowd of locals and tourists. He cocked his arm for a handshake, then turned his shoulder to indicate a path. Before long he had guided his visitor to a secure space out of public view.

During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.”

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Online Firms Blast NSA's Tactics

From BankInfoSecurity

“A letter from eight prominent online companies to President Obama and Congress calls for reform of government surveillance programs, outlining concerns about the way the National Security Agency monitors online and telephone communications.

The companies - AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo - sent the letter this week, urging the federal government to institute reforms that ensure government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight.

"The tech giants' message couldn't be any clearer or more welcome - the government's massive spying authorities must be reined in immediately," says Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office. "Widespread support for reform will only continue to grow until Congress and the administration deal with out-of-control spying head on by prohibiting indiscriminate surveillance."

Fueling concerns about NSA activities are what seem to be never-ending leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Among the latest was a Dec. 4 Washington Post report that the agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, which allows it to track the movements of individuals - and map their relationships - in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.”

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Understanding Snowden's impact on IT... in 2 minutes

When Edward Snowden leaked 200,000 classified documents that uncovered the NSA's digital surveillance programs, it rocked the IT world. We break down the three biggest impacts.

How the NSA betrayed the world's trust - time to act

Recent events have highlighted, underlined and emboldened the fact that the United States is performing blanket surveillance on any foreigner whose data passes through an American entity - whether they are suspected of wrongdoing or not. This means that, essentially, every international user of the internet is being watched, says Mikko Hypponen. An important rant, wrapped with a plea: to find alternative solutions to using American companies for the world's information needs.

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The Snowden effect: NSA leaker shakes up corporate security

 

From ABA Banking Journal

“Experts agree, the human element is as much an issue as advanced technology.

It must have made bank security officers everywhere cringe when it was reported that Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, convinced about two dozen fellow agency employees to provide him their login credentials.

As Brian Feldman, writing for The Atlantic, points out, “A support worker asking for a user’s login credentials is actually a huge security red flag.” Furthermore, Feldman says, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo!, Facebook, and AOL—technology giants that NSA allegedly has back door entry into—all state clearly in their security pages, in one wording or another: Never share your password with anyone.”

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US stonewalling on NSA/SWIFT snooping allegations

From Finextra

“European politicians have raised the possibility of suspending or even terminating the EU-US Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) after failing to get a convincing rebuttal from US authorities over allegations that the National Security Agency spied on bank-to-bank messaging data transmitted over the Swift network.

At a meeting of the Civil Liberties Committee Tuesday, Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said she had written to US Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen on 12 September to ask for clarifications, following the allegations in the press that the NSA had been tapping into personal financial data from Swift's international bank-transfer database.

"I am not satisfied with the answers I got so far," Malmström told MEPs. "We need more information and clarity." “

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European politicians to debate NSA tapping of SWIFT data

From Finextra

“European politicians are to debate the purported tapping by the US National Security Agency of bank-to-bank payments messages sent over the SWIFT network.

Leaked papers released last week by whistleblower Edward Snowden alleged that the NSA tapped in to credit card and bank-to-bank transactions crossing the Visa and SWIFT networks as part of its global intelligence gathering operations.

Both Visa and SWIFT have denied the claims, saying they are not aware of any unauthorised intrusion into their networks.”

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Will NSA Code-Cracking Dent Online Banking Security?

From American Banker 

“Recent reports that the National Security Agency has been undermining encryption on the Internet raise questions about the security of online banking data. The spy agency has been installing "back doors" in commercial software and introducing weaknesses to industry encryption standards, according to documents leaked to the media by Edward Snowden. The good news (such as it is) is that cybercriminals may not take advantage of these vulnerabilities, since they usually focus more on tricking humans through tactics like phishing than on the time-consuming work of cracking codes.”

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How Mobile Changes What We Do Every Hour Of Every Day

From PTMNTS.com

“I’ll bet you didn’t know that each year for the last 10, the U.S. government has been collecting data on how Americans spend their time each day. That agency isn’t the NSA (shame on all you cynics out there) but the Bureau of Labor Statistics through something they call the American Time Use Survey. Over 136,000 interviews have been done over the last decade to systematically and statistically estimate “how, where, and with whom” Americans spend their time across a broad spectrum of activities.”

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Secret court 'troubled' by NSA surveillance, ruled illegal

From ZDNet

“The U.S. government on Wednesday released a secret court ruling that found some surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency illegal.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) heralded the release of the 86-page opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), set up under its namesake 1978 act, as a "victory."

The Director for National Intelligence James Clapper announced in a statement, following the release of the court opinion, the establishment of a review group which will report on the U.S.' surveillance capabilities by mid-December.”

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