Security News
UK Parliament's Defence Committee is to open an investigation into 5G and Huawei with a special focus on national security concerns. The House of Commons committee, made up of MPs, wants to find out for itself whether or not Huawei poses a threat to national security, something that nobody has ever raised before and which is bound to uncover lots of new and original insights.
At an event run by think tank The Institute for Government last month, he was asked about proposals that could allow the sharing of medical and social care data across government bodies under the Digital Economy Act 2017. The Public Service Delivery Review Board has suggested that it will ask government to extend the Digital Economy Act to include the sharing of medical data across government, something primary legislation currently prevents.
The UK's spy agency auditor has given public sector snoopers a clean bill of health - except for domestic surveillance specialists MI5, whose cloud data storage blunder is still under investigation. In its annual report for 2018, published this week, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office concluded once again that all is broadly well in the murky world of British state surveillance, where everyone from eavesdropping agency GCHQ to council binmen is legally allowed to spy on you.
UNITED NATIONS - The United States, United Kingdom and Estonia accused Russia's military intelligence Thursday of conducting cyber attacks against the Georgian government and media websites in an attempt "To sow discord and disrupt the lives of ordinary Georgians." Estonian Ambassador Sven Jurgenson read a statement afterward, flanked by UK Ambassador Karen Pierce and acting U.S. deputy ambassador Cherith Norman Chalet, saying the cyber attacks "Are part of Russia's long-running campaign of hostile and destabilizing activity against Georgia and are part of a wider pattern of malign activity."
Consulting giant Accenture has acquired UK-based cyber defense consultancy Context Information Security from Babcock International Group. Accenture says it's not disclosing any financial terms, but aerospace and defense company Babcock revealed that it sold Context for £107 million, or roughly $140 million.
Virgin Media, one of the UK's biggest ISPs, on Thursday admitted it accidentally spilled 900,000 of its subscribers' personal information onto the internet via a poorly secured database. In a separate email to subscribers, shared with El Reg by dozens of readers, the telco expanded: "The database was used to manage information about our existing and potential customers in relation to some of our marketing activities. This included: contact details, technical and product information, including any requests you may have made to us using forms on our website. In a very small number of cases, it included date of birth."
Virgin Media, one of the UK's biggest ISPs, on Thursday admitted it accidentally spilled 900,000 of its subscribers' personal information onto the internet via a poorly secured database. In a separate email to subscribers, shared with El Reg by dozens of readers, the telco expanded: "The database was used to manage information about our existing and potential customers in relation to some of our marketing activities. This included: contact details, technical and product information, including any requests you may have made to us using forms on our website. In a very small number of cases, it included date of birth."
Garrison is using ARM processor chips to create a hardware defense against data breaches and malware. Instead of relying on endpoint protection or user training to improve security, the UK-based security company Garrison wants to use hardware to prevent malware infections and data breaches.
The Information Commissioner's Office has fined Cathay Pacific Airways £500,000 for leaky security that exposed the personal data of 9.4 million passengers - 111,578 of whom were from the UK. The breach, which occurred between October 2014 and May 2018, exposed passengers' names, passport and identity details, dates of birth, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, and travel history, as well as 430 credit card numbers, 27 of which were active. The unauthorised access was first suspected in March 2018, when Cathay's database suffered a brute force attack, and confirmed in May. A Cathay Pacific spokesman said at the time that the combination of data accessed varied for each affected passenger.
A British judge on Thursday paused Julian Assange's extradition hearing following four days of intense legal wrangling over Washington's request for the WikiLeaks founder to stand trial there on espionage charges. The judge refused a request Thursday by Assange's lawyers to let him sit with his defence team, and not in the secure glass-walled dock area of the courtroom, when the hearing resumes.