Is Russia's Cyberwar Heating Up Amid New Cold War? A recent influx of reports about Russian electronic espionage activity has prompted fresh concerns that the Kremlin may be gunning for a cyberwar with the West. Not everyone is convinced: Russian IT analysts interviewed by The Moscow Times were more inclined to blame the spike in attack reports on media hype and cybersecurity companies exploiting clients' fears. But Russia's leading expert on domestic security services, Andrei Soldatov, said the pattern of the attacks indicated that the Russian government may be mounting a covert Internet offensive. Experts could not say, however, whether heavy guns with the FSB electronic espionage agencies have been deployed. "All government-linked attacks so far have been carried out by people on the market: the cyber-mercenaries," Soldatov, editor-in-chief of the Agentura.ru website, said Wednesday. Read more here.
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By jdleasure corporate espionage espionage Indistrial Espionage spying
FBI Warns of Rise in Disgruntled Employees Stealing Data Wall Street Journal (09/23/14) Barrett, Devlin The FBI said Tuesday that it has seen a spike in the number of disgruntled employees who steal company information, sometimes as part of an effort to extort money from previous employers. There have been cases in which individuals used their access to destroy data, steal software, obtain customer data, make unauthorized purchases, and gain a competitive edge at a new job, the FBI said. A common way to steal information, the FBI noted, is to use cloud storage accounts and personal e-mail. Sometimes, terminated employees still have remote access to the company's system. Organizations that have recently been victimized by data theft have suffered losses of $5,000 to $3 million. The FBI reports that some employees have attempted to extort their employer by restricting access to company...
By jdleasure Cyber TSCM eavesdropping espionage it risk management
Cyber TSCM – A Vital Part of Your Overall IT Espionage Prevention Plan Corporate espionage is one of the most rapidly growing challenges corporations of all sizes must contend with. Corporate espionage, often referred to as industrial espionage, is espionage conducted for commercial benefit. It includes all manner of confidential information collection by illicit means including electronic eavesdropping/technical surveillance, HUMINT intelligence, cyber collection and related information collection by a person(s), entity(s) or country(s) for financial or other gain. Trade secret theft costs businesses throughout the world billions of dollars each year. The loss figures are staggering particularly in consideration of the current economic climate in the US, and subsequently the world at large. And, when the economic climate is challenging, trends indicate corporate espionage increases as businesses scramble to remain viable. Challenging economic climates make it increasingly more difficult to set aside resources...
NSA Spying Scandal: Waiting For the Next Shoe to Drop FORTUNE -- Thursday night, after the Guardian broke news of Verizon's involvement in a massive domestic spying operation by the National Security Agency, the Washington Post and the Guardian both revealed the existence of a program called PRISM -- a means by which the government gained access to the servers of big technology companies. How big? Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Google, AOL, and PalTalk (a chat service popular in the Arab world) were all listed, and Dropbox, a popular cloud-storage service, was noted to be coming on board the PRISM program "soon." The companies have all, in turn, professed shock, confusion, and denial at the implication that they knowingly aided the NSA in its efforts to collect an astonishing array of our data, from emails, audio, video, photos, documents attached to emails, and even the connection logs that leave a trail of breadcrumbs...
By jdleasure cyber espionage
Sudden Death of U.S. Engineer in Singapore Linked to Cyber Espionage? For years, the U.S. intelligence community has warned that cyber attacks from China and other countries are the biggest threat to our national security. Now, some are wondering whether the death of an engineer from California could be linked to cyber espionage. In 2010, 29-year-old Shane Todd moved to Singapore for an engineering job with a government research firm called the Institute of Micro Electronics or IME. "He was a young man that wanted an adventure and thought it would be super-cool to live in a foreign country and he really liked it when he first got there," Mary Todd, his mother, recalled. But 18 months later in June of 2012, Shane Todd was found dead inside his apartment. Police and the coroner believe Todd hanged himself in the bathroom, leaving two suicide...