![\"Image](\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/6769187599_6a47ee8d63_z-1.jpg\" "\\"Image")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A large DDoS incident hit the Internet last Friday, taking down<\/a> several US news, entertainment and business websites including Netflix, Twitter, Spotify, The New York Times<\/em>, Facebook and Tumblr. Domain name system manager Dyn reported<\/a> that it was \u2018monitoring and mitigating\u2019 DDoS attacks against its infrastructure throughout the day, with fallout mainly affecting sites across the US East coast. The significance of the incident wasn\u2019t only in its size but its source, with the DDoS emanating from a botnet propped up by thousands of seemingly innocuous devices<\/a> such as CCTV video cameras, baby monitors and digital video recorders. The malware used to conduct the attack, Mirai, is the same as that launched against Brian Kreb\u2019s website<\/a> in September\u2014a fairly unsurprising development after the malicious source code was recently made available online<\/a>. Chinese manufacturer XiongMai Technologies has actually recalled<\/a> several of its products sold in the US, mostly webcams, in light of their security vulnerabilities that were leveraged to execute the DDoS attack. In a small silver lining, Friday\u2019s Internet takedown has served to focus attention<\/a> on the need to secure the ever-growing Internet of Things.<\/p>\n After reports<\/a> surfaced earlier this month of Yahoo secretly scanning millions of customer emails on behalf of US intelligence services, people are still scrambling to clarify if that was actually the case. This week, Yahoo\u2019s general counsel sent a letter<\/a> to the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, urging for clarification on the supposed secret directive issues by the government, arguing that \u2018transparency is critical to ensure accountability\u2019. On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion<\/a> with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the release of classified records relating to any \u2018novel or significant interpretations of law\u2019 between 9\/11 and the passage of USA Freedom Act in June 2015. Until the government makes a definitive statement on the legitimacy of those claims, rumours and speculation will continue to hurt<\/a> Yahoo\u2019s impending acquisition by Verizon.<\/p>\n The future looks worse for NSA contractor Harold Martin, arrested<\/a> last month for the unauthorised removal of \u2018an astonishing quantity\u2019 of classified government data over the last 20 years. Initial reports concluded that Martin was more likely a digital hoarder than a leaker<\/a>, however, the latest filing<\/a> in his case states \u2018the government anticipates that the charges will include violations of the Espionage Act\u2019. The government refers to a breach of 18 US Code 793<\/a> of the Act, namely the gathering, transmitting or losing of information to be used \u2018to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation,\u2019 and those heightened charges will likely mean more severe sentencing<\/a>. While no solid connection has been found between Martin and the Shadow Brokers\u2019 online auction<\/a> of NSA hacking tools, he reportedly remains the prime suspect<\/a>.<\/p>\n Amnesty International has released a new report<\/a> scoring technology companies on how well they fulfil their human rights responsibilities when it comes to encryption and an individual\u2019s right to privacy. The report provides a \u2018message privacy ranking\u2019 of 11 companies based on multiple criteria including whether the company provides default end-to-end encryption, if it has an active dialogue with customers on threats to their privacy, and its level of transparency in terms of government requests for access to personal data. Facebook, Apple and Telegram came in as the top three, while Snapchat, Blackberry and Tencent have been named and shamed, with each scraping together less than 30 points out of a possible 100.<\/p>\n Yesterday was a tough day for those involved in the August #censusfail<\/a> with their appearance before a Senate hearing. Witnesses program<\/a>\u00a0IBM, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister \u00a0on Cyber Security and the Australian Privacy Foundation were grilled by the Senate Economics References Committee over responsibility for the national debacle\u2014you can check out a detailed breakdown of the day\u2019s blame game discussions here<\/a>. It\u2019s now up to the Prime Minister to determine<\/a> \u2018which heads will roll and when\u2019.<\/p>\n Finishing on a positive note, it\u2019s been a good week for cybersecurity collaboration between private sector and educators. The National University of Singapore has teamed up<\/a> with Singtel to establish a new US$30.8 million cybersecurity lab that will focus on the development of cybersecurity tools. The partnership between the University of New South Wales and the Commonwealth Bank is also growing, with the creation<\/a> of a new cyber engineering lab intended to address the \u2018alarming shortfall of in-demand cyber security graduates in Australia\u2019. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also just published a new report on the global shortage of cyber skills, titled Recruiting and Retaining Cybersecurity Ninjas<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>The report explores ways organisations can solve their human resources problem in order to \u2018build and keep a critical mass of high-end specialists\u2019, so take notes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A large DDoS incident hit the Internet last Friday, taking down several US news, entertainment and business websites including Netflix, Twitter, Spotify, The New York Times, Facebook and Tumblr. Domain name system manager Dyn reported …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":390,"featured_media":29286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[391,95,732,31],"class_list":["post-29283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-cyber","tag-cyber-security","tag-ddos-attack","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n