Information Technology Security

Report: The attack targeted municipal alert systems but did not breach essential IDF infrastructure. By  JNS A suspected Iranian cyber attack likely set off rocket-warning sirens in the cities of Jerusalem and Eilat on Sunday, Israeli media reported. Israeli cyber-security authorities said the attack targeted municipal alert systems but did not breach essential IDF infrastructure, according to Ynet. Authorities “instructed local councils to take precautionary steps to secure their alert systems, since they were activated by municipal alert systems and not by the IDF’s Home Front Command,” the report issued on Monday said. The report cited Yoram Cohen, head of the Israel Internet Association, as saying that the hack “did not appear to harm any vital infrastructure,” but that it had once again exposed vulnerabilities in civilian systems. “There is a gap between Israel’s excellent cyber defenses on critical infrastructure compared to non-critical civilian systems,” said Cohen. “This w...

Israeli cybersecurity company CheckPoint revealed that Iranian hackers broke into email accounts of senior Israeli officials to gather critical intel. By  United With Israel As tensions mount between Iran and Israel, Israeli cyber security company CheckPoint revealed that Iranian hackers broke into the email accounts of senior Israeli officials to gather critical intel. Some of the high-profile targets included former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a reserve general who dealt with sensitive and complex matters, the former US ambassador to Israel, and the head of a large security research institute in Israel. Gil Messing, CEO of CheckPoint, discusses what the hackers managed to achieve and what all Israelis should do to protect themselves.

By Thomas Brewster, Forbes In 2015, the U.S. Secret Service was on the hunt for Aleksei Burkov, an infamous Russian hacker suspected of facilitating the theft of $20 million from stolen credit cards on the Cardplanet website. The methods the agency used to pursue him, revealed for the first time as a result of a Forbes legal challenge, show how the U.S. government was able to strong-arm two data companies into spying on him for two years based on the authority of a 233-year-old law and to issue weekly reports on his whereabouts. The government has never disclosed how many other individuals could be under such prolonged and unconventional surveillance. The two companies, Sabre in the U.S. and Travelport in the U.K., were perfect suppliers to American law enforcement because of the business they’re in. For decades, they’ve been collecting and storing information about international tourists in a so-called global distribution system. GDSs are essentially hubs of information that make trav...

A 2018 letter from the bureau to the Israeli government is the clearest documentary evidence to date that the agency weighed using the spyware for law enforcement operations.

By Griffin Davis, Tech Times Cybersecurity stocks are now increasing as more people invest in security firms. This may sound like a good thing since the industry that focuses on preventing hackers, and other online attackers is further growing.   A participant looks at lines of code on a laptop on the first day of the 28th Chaos Communication Congress (28C3) - Behind Enemy Lines computer hacker conference on December 27, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The Chaos Computer Club is Europe's biggest network of computer hackers and its annual congress draws up to 3,000 participants. However, this is bad news for some U.S. companies and government agencies. Among the cybersecurity firms that experience share increases are FireEye Inc. and Crowdstrike Holdingfs Inc.  "It's really the pure-play security companies that do threat detection that are the ones that can be the direct beneficiary of something like this," said Mandeep Singh, an intelligence analyst working for Bloomberg.  ...