The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking to Internet users for new ways of getting its cybersecurity message out. And before you ask, the agency says that the method chosen may under no circumstance create spam.

A new survey shows that cyber crime is increasingly becoming a major issue for chief security officers. CSO Magazine recently teamed up with Deloitte to find out who is worried about what.

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2010) University of Cincinnati researchers say the nation's cybersecurity is being threatened because an important element in establishing it is not being emphasized enough citizen awareness and participation.

Cyber crime is increasing in Brunei Darussalam not only among the youths but also amongst the adults. According to the Commercial Crime Division of the Royal Brunei Police Force from 2004 until 2008 there were already 51 cases of cyber crime.

    Shoring up U.S. cyberdefense should include educational programs that motivate private citizens to fight cyber threats through safer Web practices, much as school children were taught in the 1950s to hide under their desks and cover their heads in case of nuclear attacks, researchers say.

     A think-tank of defence interests is planning a a cyber attack on America’s infrastructure on February 16 to scare the country into buying their products.   Cyber ShockWave says the simulation aims to “provide an unprecedented look at how the government would develop a real-time response to a large-scale cyber crisis affecting much of the nation.”

     BEIJING — Deep inside a Chinese military engineering institute in September 2008, a researcher took a break from his duties and decided — against official policy — to check his private e-mail messages. Among the new arrivals was an electronic holiday greeting card that purported to be from a state defense office.

      Shockwaves rocked the tech world last week when it was learned that a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist cracked the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). A TPM is a hardware chip that provides a tiny secure vault of encryption capability. They can be found in millions of motherboards on laptops, desktops, Xbox 360 game consoles, TVs, satellite TV receivers and other devices.

    The team of cyber security experts investigating the cyber attack on Google has apparently established the identity of the Chinese programmer who created the sophisticated program that was used to hack into Google and other US companies. This fresh piece of evidence linking the Chinese government to the cyber attack comes days after the team of cyber investigators traced the spyware back to two well known educational institutes in China, with one of them having close ties with the Chinese military.

Security breaches of state computer systems in recent years Timeline

     2010 — The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission’s server containing more than 80,000 records, including casino employee information, is compromised.

     2008 — Officials notified about 500 students in the University of Iowa College of Engineering their personal information, including Social Security numbers, may have been exposed in a computer breach.

     2008 — The University of Iowa College of Engineering notified 216 former students that some of their personal information, including Social Security numbers, was exposed inadvertently on the Internet for several months.

     2007 — A contractor for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources acknowledged that a computer jump drive containing the names and Social Security numbers of 7,000 people was missing. The contractor believes the drive fell off a desk and into a garbage can.

     2007 — The University of Iowa notified 184 former and current students that their grade information was on a laptop computer stolen from a former teaching assistant who lived in Arizona.

     2007 — The University of Iowa sent letters to about 1,000 students and applicants to the Molecular and Cellular Biology program and 100 faculty members notifying them that Social Security numbers were on a Web database program that was compromised.

     2007 — Up to 600 files of people who have received GEDs were viewed when an Iowa Department of Education online database was hacked. Those filed included names, Social Security numbers, addresses and birth dates of GED graduates from 1965 to 2002.

     2007 — Users of the University of Northern Iowa’s Wellness/Recreation Center were notified of a breach when a computer server was compromised, although officials said they had no reason to believe UNI data stored on the machine was accessed.

     2006 — University of Northern Iowa officials informed almost 6,000 student employees and faculty members that a computer containing their W2s was accessed.

     2005 — A hacker breached a University of Iowa computer that contained up to 30,000 active credit card numbers.

Sources: Iowa Department of Administrative Services, University of Northern Iowa, news archives.

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