cyber

Senators propose law to go after foreign cybercriminals

Shortly after the Pentagon announced the Chinese government has been involved in widespread cyberespionage targeting the U.S. government and businesses, a bipartisan group of senators proposed a new law to fight cyber-theft.

The law, dubbed "Deter Cyber Theft Act," was proposed Tuesday by Democrats Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller and Republicans John McCain and Tom Coburn, according to Reuters. The goal of the legislation is to protect commercial data from foreign hackers and governments.

Several foreign countries, including Russia, Israel, and France, have been blamed for spying on U.S. government Web sites or American businesses, but … Read more

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft execs back CISPA through trade group

A tech trade group whose guiding lights include executives from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo sent a letter to Congress this week in support of CISPA -- the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act -- proposed cybersecurity legislation that's raised privacy concerns among groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

The letter, from TechNet President Rey Ramsey, is addressed to the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee -- Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D -Md.) -- and commends the committee for providing liability protections to companies that would share data under CISPA and for making an … Read more

U.S. Air Force designates six cybertools as weapons

Six cybertools have been designated as weapons by the U.S. Air Force, allowing the programs to better compete for increasingly scarce Pentagon funding, an Air Force official said on Monday.

Lt. Gen. John Hyten, vice commander of Air Force Space Command, told a conference held in conjunction with the National Space Symposium that the new designations would boost the profile of the military's cyberoperations as countries grapple with attacks originating from the Internet.

"This means that the game-changing capability that cyber is, is going to get more attention and the recognition that it deserves," Hyten told … Read more

Did the spam cyber fight really slow down the Internet?

Reports from Internet monitoring services show that recent news of a cyber attack so big that it made the Internet slow to a crawl around the world was a bit dramatic.

The New York Times reported about spam-fighting nonprofit Spamhaus and a distributed-denial-of-service attack on the Dutch group's site that became the "largest computer attacks on the Internet" and caused a "widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world."

Matthew Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, the company enlisted to fight the attacks for Spamhaus, told CNET today that the attacks -- which ceased yesterday … Read more

Wells Fargo site hit by denial-of-service attack

Wells Fargo was the target of another distributed denial-of-service attack.

The bank's Web site was slowed down by the attack yesterday, affecting a certain number of customers, according to Fox Business News.

"Yesterday we saw an unusually high volume of Web site traffic which we believe was a denial of service attack," a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told CNET today. "The vast majority of customers were not impacted and customer information is safe. For customers who had difficulty accessing the site, we encouraged them to call us by phone, use ATMs or try logging on again as … Read more

Charge your smartphone, become a cyberspy

There's just never enough battery life on your smartphone, is there?

You need it for so many things, like informing yourself, informing others and informing some mythical creature that you're about to kill it.

This might be especially true if, say, you happen to be in a U.S. Army garrison in South Korea.

Everyone in South Korea is on smartphones nonstop. It's de rigueur.

Now, efficiency is very important to the Army. Which means it's always tempting to charge a smartphone by plugging it into a computer.

The small drawback at a U.S. Army … Read more

Akamai: A third of cyberattacks come from China

A third of all cyberattacks in the third quarter of 2012 came from China, a new report from Akamai said, double the percentage in the second period.

Akamai, one of the world's largest globally distributed networks, released its State of the Internet report today that found a steep increase in the percentage of attacks originating in China. In the second quarter of 2012, only 16 percent of attacks came from the country, but that rose to 33 percent in the period ended in September. The U.S. came in at No. 2 with 13 percent, up sequentially from 12 … Read more

Sony WX80 gives glimpse into 2013 Cyber-shots to come

LAS VEGAS--Though Sony announced five new Cyber-shot camera models at CES 2013, none of them are jaw-droppers.

However, one of them, the DSC-WX80, does give you a look at some features coming to Sony's higher-end Exmor R CMOS sensor-based cameras this year.

The $199 WX80 is the entry model with an Exmor R sensor, in this case 16 megapixels. That sensor gets you features like multishot shooting modes for improved low-light and backlit photos, 1080/60i AVCHD movie capture, 10fps burst shooting, and high-resolution, 360-degree panoramas.

New for 2013, these models get faster autofocus speeds and improved optical image … Read more

Fab holidays so far for Fab

Fab is reporting record sales for the Thanksgiving period, with roughly 33 percent of purchases made by way of its mobile apps.

The quirky flash-sales site sold more than $6.5 million worth of product in the span from Black Friday through Cyber Monday -- nearly four times the amount sold during the same period last year, the company said. Cyber Monday was particularly busy. Fab made the most money ever on a single day, pulling in $1.3 million in sales.

Fab said its mobile apps were partially responsible. A third of the sales came from the apps, with … Read more