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India has mandated that all government ministries and departments secure their websites with proper certification. This directive follows the hacking of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) website by a group calling themselves the "Pakistani Cyber Army." The National Informatics Centre has been instructed to host websites only after these ministries and departments provide security certification and comply with government guidelines, according to India's Press Information Bureau (PIB). The CBI website was defaced by hackers over a week ago. The attackers claimed their actions were in retaliation for similar hacks on Pakistani websites. A CBI spokeswoman stated that the site would undergo a thorough security audit and fix all vulnerabilities before being restored. Importantly, the agency's internal IT systems remained uncompromised. As of Wednesday morning, the CBI site had not yet been restored. India's Minister of State for Communications and IT, Sachin...

"Operation Payback" is evolving, as attackers have initiated a fax-based campaign against companies that severed ties with WikiLeaks. Hacktivists from the group "Anonymous" are urging members to send faxes to Amazon, MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, Tableau Software, and Moneybookers. This action aims to create a fax-based version of denial-of-service attacks, according to Netcraft. Over the past few days, the group has launched distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against websites of several companies and organizations, including MasterCard and Visa. Paul Mutton from Netcraft blogged, "This latest campaign by the Anonymous group is analogous to the distributed denial of service attacks it has been carrying out against websites over the past week. In essence, this has turned into a DDoS attack against fax machines. The group started the fax-attacks on Dec. 13 at 13:00 GMT and published a list of target fax numbers in their call to arms." "The Anon...

In New York on Sunday, lawmakers urged President Obama to expand the U.S. State Department’s foreign policy mechanisms to address crime and security on the Internet. They cited recent attacks on companies severing ties with WikiLeaks as a main reason for these changes. At Symantec's New York City office, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Yvette D. Clarke urged the President to adopt proposals to protect New York businesses and infrastructure. These proposals would put foreign countries that fail to enforce cybersecurity laws on notice and even apply sanctions to those that do not cooperate. For the past week, MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and other American companies faced coordinated attacks after cutting ties with WikiLeaks. The lawmakers explained during a press event that the global cyber assault was "intended to flood the companies' websites with traffic," blocking access and leaving them unavailable to customers. In addition to these attacks, State De...

The United States could soon face a significant shortage of computer science professionals unless it starts graduating more students in this field. At a time when computer hacking and security are critical issues for both the government and the private sector, the U.S. is producing only 9,000 computer science graduates annually. Among them, only 700 specialize in computer and information systems security. This number is far from sufficient, especially when considering that a single defense contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, alone needs 1,000 computer security specialists. Meanwhile, the military is dealing with the rapid rise of cyber warfare. It is becoming increasingly clear that while a traditional military attack on the United States is unlikely, the nation's economic system could be vulnerable to a cyber attack. Conversely, the U.S. can leverage its cyber capabilities to attack other countries. For instance, in September, Iran's nuclear program was disrupted by a computer...

A Dutch hacker collective called Revspace aims to "re-educate" Dutch teens suspected of cyberattacks against Mastercard, Visa, and the Dutch National Prosecutors Office, transforming them into "ethical hackers." Last week, Dutch police arrested a 16-year-old boy for participating in web attacks against MasterCard and Visa as part of a grassroots effort to support WikiLeaks. On Saturday, another teenager was arrested in Hoogezand-Sappemeer for admitting to flooding the website of the Dutch prosecutor. The 19-year-old, known online as Awinee, reportedly encouraged others to join the attack. The teen was released today. Martijn Gonlag, who admitted to using the tool, claimed he only wanted to test software and did not support Wikileaks. Both arrests were straightforward because the teenagers used LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon), a tool that lacks security features like anonymization. The attackers' IP addresses were visible in all packets sent during the attacks, as...