Today, President Barack Obama released the administration’s much-anticipated Cyberspace Policy Review.

The preface of the report states:

Cyberspace touches practically everything and everyone. It provides a platform for innovation and prosperity and the means to improve general welfare around the globe. But with the broad reach of a loose and lightly regulated digital infrastructure, great risks threaten nations, private enterprises, and individual rights. The government has a responsibility to address these strategic vulnerabilities to ensure that the United States and its citizens, together with the larger community of nations, can realize the full potential of the information technology revolution.

The architecture of the Nation’s digital infrastructure, based largely upon the Internet, is not secure or resilient. Without major advances in the security of these systems or significant change in how they are constructed or operated, it is doubtful that the United States can protect itself from the growing threat of cybercrime and state-sponsored intrusions and operations. Our digital infrastructure has already suffered intrusions that have allowed criminals to steal hundreds of millions of dollars and nation-states and other entities to steal intellectual property and sensitive military information. Other intrusions threaten to damage portions of our critical infrastructure. These and other risks have the potential to undermine the Nation’s confidence in the information systems that underlie our economic and national security interests.

The Federal government is not organized to address this growing problem effectively now or in the future. Responsibilities for cybersecurity are distributed across a wide array of federal departments and agencies, many with overlapping authorities, and none with sufficient decision authority to direct actions that deal with often conflicting issues in a consistent way. The government needs to integrate competing interests to derive a holistic vision and plan to address the cybersecurity related issues confronting the United States. The Nation needs to develop the policies, processes, people, and technology required to mitigate cybersecurity-related risks.

Information and communications networks are largely owned and operated by the private sector, both nationally and internationally. Thus, addressing network security issues requires a public-private partnership as well as international cooperation and norms. The United States needs a comprehensive framework to ensure coordinated response and recovery by the government, the private sector, and our allies to a significant incident or threat.

The United States needs to conduct a national dialogue on cybersecurity to develop more public awareness of the threat and risks and to ensure an integrated approach toward the Nation’s need for security and the national commitment to privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and law.

Research on new approaches to achieving security and resiliency in information and communications infrastructures is insufficient. The government needs to increase investment in research that will help address cybersecurity vulnerabilities while also meeting our economic needs and national security requirements.

For the full report see the pdf at Cyberspace Policy Review. 

Just about every day, a story is published somewhere across the country documenting the failure of a local, state or federal government agency to protect critical information – including the personal identifying information (PII) Americans trust the government to keep out of the hands of identity thieves.

Perhaps, because of the volume of these reports, we’ve all become immune to the inability of our government to maintain the security of our nation’s secrets – much less our personal information. 

Perhaps, we excuse our government officials based on the defensible belief that information security is a complex issue and, therefore, information can never be completely secured from all threats. 

Realistically, both factors are in play.

But, the story today from SC Magazine that the U.S. Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation fell victim to a computer virus last week because a software security patch wasn’t installed documents an inexcusable security failure on behalf of the federal government.

Why?

Because the patch in question has been available since October of last year.

This leaves me wondering.  How can we as citizens trust the federal government to run our financial, auto and health care industries if they can’t even install run-of-the-mill security patches on computers?

It continues to be a boom time for cybercrime according to the latest Consumer Reports National Research Center “State of the Net” survey. Consumer Reports found that one in five online consumers have been victims of cybercrime in the last two years to the tune of an estimated $8 billion. And the overall rate of the crime has remained consistent over the five years that Consumer Reports has been tracking.

But Consumer Reports notes that the problem stands to get worse as rising unemployment and foreclosures fuel a wave of recession-orientated Internet scams, and as the popularity of social networking services grow, creating more openings for identity thieves. Consumer Reports found that 13 percent of social-network users experienced some form of abuse.

Additionally, Consumer Reports estimates that 1.2 million consumers have had to replace their computers over the past two years due to software infections and an estimated 3.7 million households with broadband Internet access did not use a firewall to protect against hackers. Below are additional findings related to major online threats:

• Phishing or sending authentic-looking but fraudulent e-mail designed to steal sensitive personal information is a continuing concern. Consumer Reports estimates that about 7 million consumers gave phishers personal information over the past two years; that’s 1 in 13 online households. Among scam victims, 1 in 7 lost money in the past two years, comparable with data from the last survey. Total damage to U.S. consumers through phishing attacks works out to about $483 million.
• Spyware: Consumer Reports found 545,000 households had to replace computers in the past six months and one in 12 people had serious problems with spyware.
• Online identity theft: Consumer Reports estimates 1.7 million households were victims of ID theft committed over the Internet in the past year, of those two-thirds said the incident occurred because of an online purchase.

Certain online threats are almost as prevalent today as when Consumer Reports conducted its first survey five years ago. Consistent with last year’s findings, 1 in 3 respondents had heavy levels of spam and 1 in 7 have had serious problems with viruses.

See the full press release at:  PRNewswire

With the recent infection of over 700 computers at the University of Utah, many people are asking, “How do I know if my computer is infected with Conficker?”

For those who want to know if their computer (this does not currently apply to Apple products) is infected, there is a simple test called the “Conficker eye chart test.”

Just click here for the Conficker eye chart test  and follow the easy onscreen instructions.

Some other indications that your computer is infected with the Conficker worm include:

•1)      You cannot visit the Microsoft Conficker fix page.

•2)      You cannot visit security sites like Symantec , Trend Micro , or McAfee.

•3)      You cannot shut down your computer.

 If you determine that your computer is infected with Conficker:

•1)       Disconnect your computer from the Internet.

•2)       From a different computer, which is not infected, change your user names and passwords.

•3)       If you have used your credit card while infected contact your credit card company and cancel that card and ask for a new card/number.

•4)       Have an expert remove the Conficker worm from your computer from a different uninfected computer.

Conficker is now selling itself to unsuspecting victims by pretending to be a $50 Anti-Virus product named “Spyware Protect 2009.”   Spyware Protect 2009 is being offered to computer users though spam emails and pop-up advertisements.  Those who sign up for Spyware Protect 2009 lose their $50 and have their computer infected with the Conficker worm.

A Conficker timeline:

 Win32/Conficker.A was reported to Microsoft on November 21, 2008

 Win32/Conficker.B was reported to Microsoft on December 29, 2008

 Win32/Conficker.C was reported to Microsoft on February 20, 2009

 Win32/Conficker.D was reported to Microsoft on March 4, 2009

 Win32/Conficker.E was reported to Microsoft on April 8, 2009

Computer-virus infections don’t cause your machine to crash anymore.

Nowadays, the criminals behind the infections usually want your computer operating in top form so you don’t know something’s wrong. That way, they can log your keystrokes and steal any passwords or credit-card numbers you enter at Web sites, or they can link your infected computer with others to send out spam.

Here are some signs your computer is infected, tapped to serve as part of “botnet” armies run by criminals:

See the full report at MSNBC.com.

Getting hacked is like having your computer turn traitor on you, spying on everything you do and shipping your secrets to identity thieves.

Victims don’t see where their stolen data end up. But sometimes security researchers do, stumbling across stolen-data troves that offer a glimpse of what identity theft looks like from criminals’ perspective.

Researchers from U.K.-based security firm Prevx found one such trove, a Web site used as a stash house for data from 160,000 infected computers before it was shut down this month.

The find offers a case study on just how much data criminals are stealing every day, from the utterly inconsequential to the alarmingly private.

It also shows the difficulty in shuttering criminals’ ID-theft beachheads: The Web site Prevx found, which was operating on a server in Ukraine, was still online for nearly a month after security researchers alerted the Internet service provider and law-enforcement authorities. The site was sucking up data from 5,000 newly infected computers each day.

See the full report at WAtoday.

Shortly after Microsoft offered a bounty on the heads of the criminals behind the widespread Conficker worm, a new version of the malware has appeared that could signal a major shift in the way the worm operates.

The new variant, dubbed Conficker B++, was spotted three days ago by SRI International researchers, who published details of the new code on Thursday. To the untrained eye, the new variant looks almost identical to the previous version of the worm, Conficker B. But the B++ variant uses new techniques to download software, giving its creators more flexibility in what they can do with infected machines.

Conficker-infected machines could be used for nasty stuff – sending spam, logging keystrokes, or launching denial of service (DoS) attacks, but an ad hoc group calling itself the Conficker Cabal has largely prevented this from happening. They’ve kept Conficker under control by cracking the algorithm the software uses to find one of thousands of rendezvous points on the Internet where it can look for new code. These rendezvous points use unique domain names, such as pwulrrog.org, that the Conficker Cabal has worked hard to register and keep out of the hands of the criminals.

See the full report at Techworld.com.

Verizon.net is home to more than twice as many spam-spewing zombies as any other major Internet service provider in the United States, according to an analysis of the most recent data from anti-spam outfit Spamhaus.org. Verizon, however, says it plans to put measures in place to prevent it from being used as a home to so many spammers.

See the full report at Security Fix.

A couple of recent events have shown how purposefully useless the U.S. government is with regard to cybersecurity. Every so often, the FBI parades some success stories through the media. Unfortunately, what’s behind them are prosecutions for show rather than true demonstrations of tackling cybercrime.

For example, U.S. law enforcement had nothing to do with the takedown of McColo, the ISP that was home to major botnet controllers. It’s telling that foreign criminal gangs felt comfortable enough to use a U.S.-based service to host their critical servers.

Despite the fact that the crimes enabled by McColo included child pornography, cyberextortion, distribution of malware, identity theft — really, just about every cybercriminal act known to law enforcement — the FBI had nothing to do with taking down the hosting service or making any arrests of those profiting from criminal behavior. It was up to independent malware researchers to identify McColo and work with upstream ISPs to cut it off from the Internet. That is despicable.

See the full report at ComputerWorld.com.

The botnet formerly known as Storm is ramping up its ability to evade detection by automatically generating thousands of different variants of its malware each day as it spreads and recruit more bots.

Waledac — the new and improved Storm — is using its favorite holiday, Valentine’s Day, to spread the love with signature phony greeting cards and romance-themed email that Storm so infamously spread in the past. “Over the last 24 hours, we’ve seen over 1,000 new variants [of Waledac code],” says Pierre-Marc Bureau, a senior researcher with Eset, which expects Waledac to eventually pump out thousands of variants a day. “It was a bit lower than what we are expecting. It may not have reached many of our clients yet.” That said, it’s still a big jump from the around 10 new versions a day Eset had seen the botnet creating, he adds.

One of Waledac’s latest attacks comes in the form of a puppy love e-card with a Valentine’s-related link, as well as other warm and fuzzy-looking email. Subject lines include the usual “a Valentine card from a friend” and “you have received a Valentine E-card,” but once you click the URL to retrieve the message, Waledac’s malware is downloaded onto your machine. Another attack uses a phony pop-up that appears to be from Microsoft stating the machine is infected with spyware. That leads to a fake antispyware site that not only infects the machine, but also tries to sell the victim its scareware, according to Patrick Murray, director of product management for Marshal8e6.

See the full report at Dark Reading.