Legal & Security
17 October 2017
'All wifi networks' are vulnerable to hacking, security expert discovers The Guardian
The security protocol used to protect the vast majority of wifi connections has been broken, potentially exposing wireless internet traffic to malicious eavesdroppers and attacks, according to the researcher who discovered the weakness.
The World Once Laughed at North Korean Cyberpower. No More. New York Times
When North Korean hackers tried to steal $1 billion from the New York Federal Reserve last year, only a spelling error stopped them. They were digitally looting an account of the Bangladesh Central Bank, when bankers grew suspicious about a withdrawal request that had misspelled “foundation” as “fandation.”
10 October 2017
British spy boss says cyber security as important as fighting terrorism Reuters
Protecting Britain from cyber crime is as important as defending it against terrorism, the head of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency said on Monday.
Australia warns businesses about sophisticated cyberattacks The Guardian
An Australian company with contracting links to national security projects was caught up in one of 47,000 cybercrime incidents across the nation in the past year.
08 October 2017
Australian police sting brings down paedophile forum on dark web The Guardian
Australian police secretly operated one of the dark web’s largest child abuse sites for almost a year, posing as its founder in an undercover operation that has triggered arrests and rescues across the globe.
Scam baiter: Why I risk death threats to expose online cons BBC News
In the flesh, Wayne May (not his real name) is an affable gentleman in his late 40s, softly spoken with a lilting Welsh accent. When we meet he's casually dressed in jeans and a Batman T-shirt. He works full-time as a carer.
04 October 2017
Yahoo says all of its 3bn accounts were affected by 2013 hacking The Guardian
Yahoo said on Tuesday that every one of its 3bn accounts was affected by a 2013 data theft at the tech company, tripling its earlier estimate of the largest breach in history.
30 September 2017
2017, the year when cybercrime hit close to home Europol
The past 12 months have seen a number of unprecedented cyber-attacks in terms of their global scale, impact and rate of spread. Already causing widespread public concern, these attacks only represent a small sample of the wide array of cyber threats we now face. Europol’s 2017 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) identifies the main cybercrime threats and provides key recommendations to address the challenges.
24 September 2017
Major cyber-attack will happen soon, warns UK's security boss The Guardian
A “category one” cyber-attack, the most serious tier possible, will happen “sometime in the next few years”, a director of the National Cybersecurity Centre has warned.
Cyber-security - what are the risks from increased connectivity? Economist Intelligence Unit Perspectives
Cyber-security practices in critical infrastructure traditionally relied upon isolation of the operational networks from the enterprise environment and the outside world to avoid attacks and minimise incidents. Today, that approach is no longer tenable as increased connectivity and converged platforms have blurred that divide.
20 September 2017
Google launches UK 'anti-terror fund' BBC News
Google has announced it will give a total of £1m ($1.3m) to fund projects that help counter extremism in the UK.
14 September 2017
Equifax's Maddening Unaccountability New York Times
Last week, Americans woke up to news of yet another mass breach of their personal data. The consumer credit reporting agency Equifax revealed that as many as 143 million Americans’ Social Security numbers, dates of birth, names and addresses may have been stolen from its files — just the kind of information that allows for identity theft and other cybercrimes.
EU set to demand Internet firms act faster to remove illegal content Reuters
Companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter could face European Union laws forcing them to be more proactive in removing illegal content if they do not do more to police what is available on the Internet.
10 September 2017
Poisoned water holes: the legal dangers of dark web policing The Conversation
Australian police are using “poisoned watering holes” to investigate crime on the dark web. By taking over illegal marketplaces that traffic in child pornography or drugs, law enforcement are collecting information about criminals all over the world.
04 September 2017
Catching the hackers in the act BBC News
Cyber-criminals start attacking servers newly set up online about an hour after they are switched on, suggests research.
31 August 2017
Giant spambot scooped up 711 million email addresses BBC News
A malware researcher has discovered a spamming operation that has been drawing on a list of 711.5 million email addresses.
24 August 2017
Blockchains - Disruption and the Future of the Legal Profession Microsoft
Blockchain technology has been utilised for almost a decade and has propelled the cryptocurrency Bitcoin into ubiquity after its creation in 2008. However, even after all this time, we have barely scratched the surface of what blockchain technology is capable of bringing to the digital age. The colossal success of Bitcoin has led to a technological race to find the most lucrative and efficient ways of utilising blockchain technology in various industries. The legal profession is perfectly poised to reap the benefits of blockchain both as an integrator and as an advisor on the murky legal issues that will no doubt arise.
The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike The Guardian
The neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer finally crossed a line following the killing of a civil rights activist at a white supremacist rally it helped organise in Charlottesville, Virginia: a blogpost attacking victim Heather Heyer lead to it being chased from the web, first by technology companies who steadily refused to provide service, then by hackers who tried to crash the site.
23 August 2017
Identity Thieves Hijack Cellphone Accounts to Go After Virtual Currency New York Times
Hackers have discovered that one of the most central elements of online security — the mobile phone number — is also one of the easiest to steal.
22 August 2017
To Sue Founder of Daily Stormer, a Neo-Nazi Site, First He Must Be Found New York Times
For the past five months, a group of litigants has been trying to hold Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, to account for some of his actions. It has not been easy.
21 August 2017
If Only a Simple Gadget Rating Could Save Us from Cyberattack MIT Technology Review
Suggestions that a security score be awarded to connected devices is a lovely idea that would be almost impossible to implement.
17 August 2017
A running list of websites and apps that have banned, blocked, deleted, and otherwise dropped white supremacists Quartz
Last weekend’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument, drew hate groups that included neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, white supremacists, and gun-wielding militias. The rally turned violent shortly after it began on the evening of August 11, when counter-protestors and rally attendees clashed with one another. The violence continued throughout the weekend, leaving one woman dead after a man drove his car at full speed into a large group of counter-protestors.
09 August 2017
UK organisations could face huge fines for cyber security failures The Guardian
British organisations could face fines of up to £17m, or 4% of global turnover, if they fail to take measures to prevent cyber-attacks that could result in major disruption to services such as transport, health or electricity networks.
04 August 2017
Europe's Cyber Victims Are Racking Up Hundreds of Millions in Costs Reuters
Global hackers have unleashed a brace of attacks in recent months, but while their haul in bitcoin has been paltry, the revenue hit to companies infected is reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
03 August 2017
Here's what's on the dark web: Child snuff videos, WMD recipes and your details Australian Financial Review
An internet realm known as the dark web was once promoted as a safe haven for political dissidents and libertarians worldwide, and financed partly by the State Department. But it has turned into a criminal cesspool.
