Security News

Europe and the United States will use a thaw in ties to strike a pact that would allow for the exchange of private data across the Atlantic, replacing previous agreements struck down by an EU court. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and thousands of other companies want such a deal to keep the internet traffic flowing without facing significant legal jeopardy over European privacy laws.

The U.S. Cyber Command conducted more than two dozen operations aimed at preventing interference in last November's presidential election, the general who leads the Pentagon's cyber force said Thursday. He said his command's operations were designed "To get ahead of foreign threats before they interfered with or influenced our elections in 2020.".

A lawyer for a Cypriot hacker who has served almost four years behind bars said he will not appeal against a one-year jail sentence in the US for cyber-crimes he committed as a minor. A Georgia court handed down the jail term on Thursday in the trial of Joshua Pelloso Epifaniou, now 22, who was arrested in Cyprus in May 2017 and last year became the first Cypriot national ever extradited to the United States.

The United States sentenced a Russian and a North Macedonian on Friday to prison for their roles in a vast cyber crime operation. Sergey Medvedev, 33, of Russia and Marko Leopard, 31, of North Macedonia, were sentenced to ten and five years respectively, according to a Justice Department statement.

China's government on Thursday called on Washington to drop efforts to expel three state-owned Chinese phone companies from the United States in a new clash over technology and security. The United States should "Stop the wrong practice of generalizing the concept of national security and politicizing economic issues" and "Stop abusing state power to unreasonably suppress Chinese enterprises," said a ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is warning US private sector companies about an increase in business email compromise attacks targeting state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities. "From 2018 through 2020, the FBI observed increases in business email compromise actors targeting state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities for financial gain due to vulnerability exploitation and transparency requirements," the FBI said.

Readers may remember Kottman pointed out holes in a security skills assessment website run by Deloitte, dropped 20GB of Intel secrets onto the web and shamed the security of DevOps tool SonarQube by releasing third-party code created with the project. Illegally accessing computers belonging to a security device manufacturer located in the Western District of Washington and stealing proprietary data.

The Justice Department has charged a Swiss hacker with computer intrusion and identity theft, just over a week after the hacker took credit for helping to break into the online systems of a U.S. security-camera startup. Swiss authorities said they had raided Kottmann's home in Lucerne late last week at the request of U.S. authorities.

Entrust announced a master distributor agreement with SYNNEX to offer its comprehensive range of Entrust nShield hardware security modules and cybersecurity solutions to customers across the United States and Canada. This North America distribution agreement with SYNNEX provides its resellers with Entrust nShield HSMs to protect customer data and secure emerging technologies such as cloud, IoT, blockchain, and digital payments.

The latest scams use phishing emails to deliver remote access trojans to control a victim's computer and steal sensitive data, says Cybereason. With the usual April 15 deadline approaching, a report released Thursday by security provider Cybereason reveals the latest scams against taxpayers and offers advice on how to avoid them.