Lawmakers worry over government network breaches
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Congress interests itself in cyber security Long an afterthought for U.S. lawmakers, cybersecurity has received renewed attention in some parts of Congress.â¦
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Lawmakers are questioning whether recently revised guidelines protect the confidentiality of legal communications and the right to legal counsel.
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By Anonymous  Lawmakers in several states are exploring ways to make social networking siteslike MySpace, Friendster, Xanga and others-safer tor kids.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS)Â CIO was on the hot seat Wednesday on Capitol Hill after an independent audit found that a database that screens U.S. visitors lacked security controls. The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee called on DHS CIO Scott Charbo to explain why he should keep his job after persistent cybersecurity problems at the agency. "What happened to leadership?" Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman and a Mississippi Democrat, said during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science, and Technology. "What happened to accountability?" Lawmakers also said they were concerned that the agency reported 844 cybersecurity incidents in 2005 and 2006. "Although we still have a ways to go, we've made measurable improvements in the management of information security at the department," Charbo said. "Certainly, we need to increase our vigilance to ensure that such incidents do not happen again." Many of the 844 incidents were minor, and the agency has taken major steps to fix past cybersecurity issues, Charbo said. Many of the reported cybersecurity incidents related to problems like lost laptops that did not result in data breaches, he added. The subcommittee did not have a breakdown of the incidents Wednesday. Asked about reports of bots installed on DHS computers that could send information out to hackers, Charbo said he had "no evidence" that the bots caused a breach. Thompson's comments came as the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report saying DHS continues to have "significant weaknesses in computer security controls that threaten the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of key ... systems." GAO investigators found no security controls on the US-VISIT database, the system that screens people who want to visit the U.S. for potential terrorists and criminals. Lawmakers are concerned whether terrorists could get into the database "and change or alter their names to allow them access to this country, and we wouldn't even know that they're doing it," said Representative Bob Etheridge, a North Carolina Democrat. A contractor provides IT security for US-VISIT, but DHS has its own security controls in place to protect the database, Charbo said. He didn't disclose specific security measures. The GAO doesn't have evidence that the US-VISIT database was breached, said Keith Rhodes, chief technologist and director of the GAO's Center for Technology and Engineering. "I did not see controls in place that would prevent it," Rhodes said. "I did not see defensive perimeters, and I did not see detection systems in place whether it had or had not [been breached]." GAO started a cybersecurity review of DHS a year ago but curtailed its efforts because it kept finding "more and more" problems, Rhodes said. "If we had continued to this day, I would argue we'd still be finding things," he said. "The problems were pervasive. The problems were systemic." Charbo outlined recent measures DHS has taken to improve cybersecurity there. The agency is collapsing multiple legacy WANs into a single WAN, and it is standardizing all e-mail and directory services onto a single platform, he said. The agency had 13 separate e-mail systems when it was formed out of 22 U.S. agencies in 2002, he said. DHS also is combining multiple data centers into a shared center, he said. Thompson asked how DHS officials can preach cybersecurity practices to other agencies and private companies while continuing to have its own problems. Among the incidents DHS reported were employees sending out classified documents on unclassified networks and contractors attaching unauthorized laptops to the DHS network, he said. "How can the Department of Homeland Security be a real advocate of sound cybersecurity practices without following some of its own advice?" he said. "What the department is doing on its own network speaks so loud that the message isn't getting across to anyone else."
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House of Representatives panel chairman says peer-to-peer networks pose a "national security threat," new laws needed.
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House committee demands answers from the agency after investigators turn up dozens of intrusions last year with ties to Chinese Web servers; IT contractor says it wasn't at fault.
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Philadelphia officials have laid the  groundwork to provide wireless, high-speed Internet access  anywhere in the city, but their plan is threatened under a  state bill that could be signed into law on Tuesday.
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The government may be spending too much time and money seizing knives and other potentially dangerous items from airline passengers and too little on preventing terrorist attacks against other forms of transportation, lawmakers said Tuesday.
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There&#39;s a wireless router gathering dust in Bob LaRocca&#39;s office. It&#39;s yours if you can hack into his network.First, some background: &#160;LaRocca is director of IT security with the School District of Palm Beach County in Florida, where he oversees a network of 60,000 computers in 175 schools and which he says covers more acres than any other school district east of the Mississippi River. Computer security has traditionally been a low priority in the public school system, but that&#39;s not the case in Palm Beach County.That&#39;s because a computer breach stung the school system in a very public way two years ago when local papers reported that Jeff Yorston, a student at one of the county&#39;s schools, got hold of an administrative password and gave himself an &quot;A&quot; in a French class he never took. He also managed to boost the grades of a few friends.Yorston was discovered when another student complained that her ex-boyfriend -- with worse grades than she had -- was accepted into the University of Florida while she had been rejected. He has since paid a fine and agreed to state supervision in connection with the charges, according to the Palm Beach Post.After an investigation, county officials discovered that they hadn&#39;t been hacked. Instead the breach occurred because of a leaked password. &quot;One of the administrators lent her password out to one of the students who was working on a project,&quot; LaRocca said. &quot;That&#39;s what happens when you share passwords. We could put $1 million worth of controls in place, but when I give you my password, all bets are off.&quot;LaRocca says that the grades-changing incident was &quot;a wake-up call for the district,&quot; which has now made security a top priority.Palm Beach County has spent more than $1.5 million over the past two years overhauling systems throughout the county&#39;s schools. It has upgraded the county&#39;s desktops with anti-virus, host intrusion prevention, and network access control software from McAfee. Network-based intrusion detection and content filtering have also been added, and the county is now logging its grading systems, which have much stricter access controls.The county has also made security awareness a priority, taking steps to educate users about safe online behavior.And that&#39;s where the hacking challenge comes in. LaRocca issued it as part of an April security awareness event held at county schools, setting up a target server that attackers would have to break into in order to claim the prize. This type of &quot;capture the flag&quot; game is popular at hacking conferences.Any students who might see the contest as a chance to hack the system, change their grades, and win a router need to think again. &quot;We set up a honeypot server that they specifically had to hack into and capture a flag,&quot; he said. &quot;We didn&#39;t say if you go in and change your grades you&#39;ll get a router.&quot;That hasn&#39;t deterred some attackers. Thanks to the publicity surrounding his Wi-Fi challenge, LaRocca says the schools are being hit by about 16,000 online attacks per day.Still, LaRocca says the insider threat remains his biggest concern. &quot;All my hackers are inside the network,&quot; he said. &quot;I&#39;m not too worried about the ones from the outside.&quot;
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As more details emerge about the recently disclosed security breach at TJX Companies, lawmakers in Massachusetts are considering new laws that would put the onus for paying for such breaches on retailers and merchants, rather than banks and credit unions, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
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Officials from cybersecurity company tells the U.S. Congress that a data breach notification bill with reasonable security practice requirements would protect Americans.
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Some powerful people have a bad feeling about online music--and that&#39;s making other folks in the tech industry nervous. A controversial bill in the Senate aimed at quelling online file swapping has raised
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Some U.S. lawmakers want wireless networks to be opened up to new devices and applications, and they questioned expensive early termination fees on wireless service contracts.
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A half dozen federal investigations into the activities of Republican lawmakers are raising new worries for GOP leaders who hope to regain the House majority they lost last fall.
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The FBI wants to compile a massive computer database and analyze it for clues to unmask terrorist sleeper cells. Two congressmen are worried about whether the bureau will protect the privacy of U.S. citizens.
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A Congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
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U.S. lawmakers wrote to regulators on Monday expressing concern that some banks are processing unsigned checks used by fraudsters seeking to drain money from the accounts of vulnerable people like the elderly.