by Constantine von Hoffman

2012 Cybersecurity Turkeys for Thanksgiving Week

Opinion
Nov 20, 20122 mins
CybercrimeSecurity

CIO.com blogger Constantine von Hoffman shares a special Thanksgiving week IT security roundup with stories from the past year on China's complaints about Chinese hackers; compromised computers at the DoD; fictional cybercrime stats; the Big Bay Boom; and more.

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Beijing Upset About Chinese Hackers
: China, the world’s go-to suspect when it comes to IT security, is finally acknowledging its hacking problem. Beijing also started a campaign to crack-down on non-government-approved Chinese hackers who stole personal data from 100 million people in January. Irony is a dish best served … with mu shu pork and maybe a side order of white rice. Best quote from Chinese-news site Caixin’s story on the subject: “China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology … denounced the slew of hackings, saying they infringed on Internet users’ legal rights.”

LulzSec, Antisec and Anonymous Learn about Honor Among Thieves:  Authorities arrested three people allegedly affiliated with LulzSec, Anonymous and Antisec based on information from a fellow group member turned informant. Hector Xavier Monsegur, the alleged former leader of LulzSec who went by the code name “Sabu,” rolled over on his comrades after being arrested last August.

Defense Department’s Computer Networks Totally Compromised

Global Payments: “Only” 1.5M Credit-Card Numbers Stolen: Global Payments announced in April that it had “contained” an incident in which fewer than 1.5 million credit card numbers were hacked. And that’s actually good news. Sort of. When Visa and MasterCard first alerted banks to the incident, the estimate was around 10 million.

Russian Security Firm Says Cost of Russian Cybercrime Doubles in a Year: Russia’s cybercrime market is now valued at $2.3 billion, nearly double last year’s total of $1.2 billion, according to an April report by Russian security firm Group-IB. Unfortunately the report gives no information on the data that the statement is based on.

NSA Cites “Personal Privacy” as Reason to Not Tell Congress How Many Americans It Spied On

Computer Virus Blamed for Shooting off $400,000 worth of Fireworks in 15 Seconds:

Yahoo! Gives Away 400,000 User Passwords: Data was stored without encryption.

Norton 2012 Cybercrime Report Pretends 2011 Report With Made Up Statistics Didn’t Happen

AntiSec Lies About Hacking FBI Computer

Press Goes Hysterical Over Bank DDoS Attacks That Do Nothing More Than Inconvenience Customers

Sophos Antivirus Software IDs Itself as Malware