“Germany’s high court on Wednesday upheld the legality of an anti-terrorist database that tracks thousands of people, but ordered changes in how it is operated and who is included. Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, told reporters after the verdict that the new guidance from the court would also affect how authorities run [...]
” Social media accounts maintained by CBS News programs, ’60 Minutes’ and ’48 Hours,’ were compromised on Saturday, the two programs’ official Twitter accounts said. A post on the ’60 Minutes’ Twitter microblog account, @60Minutes, said, ‘PLEASE NOTE: Our Twitter account was compromised earlier today. We are working with Twitter to resolve.’ Another post read, [...]
“On March 28, American Express’ website went offline for at least two hours during a distributed denial of service attack. A group calling itself ‘the cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam’ claimed responsibility for the attack, which began at about 3:00pm Eastern Time. In a statement, an American Express spokesperson said, ‘Our site experienced a distributed-denial-of-service [...]
“Wells Fargo & Co on Tuesday said its online banking website was experiencing an unusually high volume of traffic that it believes stems from a denial-of-service cyber attack. ‘The vast majority of customers are not impacted and customer information remains safe,’ said Bridget Braxton, a spokeswoman for the fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets. Customers who [...]
“The Hong Kong government has thrown HK$9 million (£730,000) at a new Cyber Security Centre in a bid to tackle the growing threat to critical infrastructure in the Special Administrative Region of China.” Source:Hong Kong cops open £700k cyber security centre • The Register
“Hackers broke into insurance company Nationwide’s network in October, stealing the personal information of more than a million customers across the country, the insurance company recently revealed. The company said the compromised information included people’s names and a combination of Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, their date of birth, and possibly marital status, gender, [...]
“The Committee overwhelmingly voted to approve proposals to criminalise certain activity relating to cyber attacks last week. The proposals contain plans to make specified “legal persons” within companies liable for certain offences. “Legal persons would be liable for offences committed for their benefit (e.g. a company would be liable for hiring a hacker to get access to [...]
“Symantec Corp took the rare step of advising customers to stop using one of its products, saying its pcAnywhere software for accessing remote PCs is at increased risk of getting hacked after blueprints of that software were stolen.” (Source: Symantec tells customers to disable pcAnywhere software | Reuters.)
“Four people in the Philippines hacked into the accounts of AT&T business customers in the United States and diverted money to a group that financed terrorist attacks across Asia, according to police officials in the Philippines.” (Source: 4 in Philippines Accused of Hacking U.S. Phones to Aid Terrorists – NYTimes.com.)
“To get a sense of how vulnerable the U.S. economy could be if the euro currency union cracks apart, start with the volume of U.S. exports to the euro zone — $153 billion in the first six months of the year. Add several hundred billion dollars in investments by U.S. banks in the euro zone and [...]
