cyberwarfare

International Herald Tribune: Britain’s intelligence services, working alongside security experts from private companies, are setting up a secret control center in London to combat what the head of the country’s domestic spy agency has described as “astonishing” levels of cyberattacks. The existence of the so-called Fusion Cell was due to be confirmed on Wednesday in [...]

The discovery that an early version of Stuxnet was in development in 2005, suggests that work on the computer worm may have begun soon after the U.S. received Libya’s P-1 centrifuges in January 2004. In September 2005, Dennis Ruddy, a general manager at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge nuclear facilities said: “There’s a lot [...]

MIT Technology Review reports: Every summer, computer security experts get together in Las Vegas for Black Hat and DEFCON, conferences that have earned notoriety for presentations demonstrating critical security holes discovered in widely used software. But while the conferences continue to draw big crowds, regular attendees say the bugs unveiled haven’t been quite so dramatic [...]

The Washington Post reports: The Pentagon has approved a major expansion of its cybersecurity force over the next several years, increasing its size more than fivefold to bolster the nation’s ability to defend critical computer systems and conduct offensive computer operations against foreign adversaries, according to U.S. officials. The move, requested by the head of [...]

Tim Maurer writes: On October 11, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave a speech on cyber threats — “an issue at the very nexus of business and national security,” he said. “Ultimately, no one has a greater interest in cybersecurity than the businesses that depend on a safe, secure, and resilient global digital infrastructure.” He’s right: [...]

Noah Shachtman writes: It’s early February in Cancun, Mexico. A group of 60 or so financial analysts, reporters, diplomats, and cybersecurity specialists shake off the previous night’s tequila and file into a ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. At the front of the room, a giant screen shows a globe targeted by crosshairs. Cancun is in [...]

The Washington Post reports: The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort. The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran’s computer networks, [...]

Karl Vick writes: Eugene Kaspersky, the Russian cyber sleuth who last week revealed the most sophisticated virus yet targeting Iran, was greeted as a hero at the Tel Aviv University conference on digital security Wednesday. He didn’t pretend not to know why, any more than the Israeli audience that played along with the coy remarks [...]

If Bradley Manning ever gets a chance to read two new books — Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency, by Daniel Klaidman, and Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, by David E Sanger — he’ll be wondering: how do these guys [...]

NBC News reports: As the United Nations and Iran warn that the newly discovered Flame computer virus may be the most potent weapon of its kind, U.S. computer security experts tell NBC News that the virus bears the hallmarks of a U.S. cyber espionage operation, specifically that of the super-secret National Security Agency. The Flame [...]

Update below. The Next Web reports: A team of researchers from Cambridge University say they have found evidence that a Chinese-manufactured chip used by US armed forces contains a secret access point that could leave it vulnerable to third party tampering. The researchers tested an unspecified US military chip — used in weapons, nuclear power [...]