The Americas Security News.- Michael J. "Mike" Rogers

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), said Sunday that recent reports about Chinese hacking show the U.S. is losing a global cyber war. “We get [hit] every single day by a whole series … of attacks, everything from criminals trying to get into your bank account or steal your identity, to nation states like China who are investing billions and hiring thousands,” he said. READ MORE HERE

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Computer users are being advised by security experts to disable Oracle Corp.’s widely used Java software after a security flaw was discovered that they say hackers are exploiting to attack computers.

“Java is a mess. It’s not secure,” said Jaime Blasco, Labs Manager with AlienVault Labs. “You have to disable it.”

Java, which is on hundreds of millions of PCs around the globe, is a computer language that lets programmers write software using just one set of code that will run on virtually any type of computer.

It lets Web developers make sites accessible from browsers running on Microsoft Corp. Windows PCs or Macs from Apple Inc.

Computer users access those programs through modules, or plug-ins, that run Java software on top of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. READ MORE HERE

The Americas Post - US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is looking for some neighborly support

During his trip to Colombia, Brazil and Chile this week, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta emphasized the role of those three neighbor countries as military partners in a region where U.S. influence is being challenged by China. And as the military relationships grow, defense officials say it can only help U.S. economic and political ties across the continent.

Panetta’s meetings with defense officials from the three nations also focused on how the US can support their military efforts, including those directed at the expanding threat of cyberattacks, according to several senior officials.

U.S. officials left the region hoping that South Americans may help train Afghan forces after NATO troops leave at the end of 2014. Officials provided no details on which nations might eventually be willing to take on some of the training mission, which will be in need of advisers as other NATO nations pull their troops out.

With the U.S. shifting away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s new strategy places more importance on the Asia Pacific region, where North Korea is a continued threat and China is growing in political and economic influence.

The Pentagon is prepared to move more forces to the Pacific region, including Australia. The U.S. has long provided training, equipment, assistance and a security umbrella for many of the Asia Pacific nations. With coming budget cuts that will reduce the size of the military, the U.S. is looking to South American countries to be more active global partners.

“The United States, just like other countries, are facing budget constrictions — which are going to affect the future,” Panetta said to reporters at a news conference in Brazil. “And what we believe is that the best way to approach the future is to develop partnerships, alliances, to develop relationships with other countries, share information, share assistance, share capabilities, and in that way we can provide greater security for the future.”

Panetta would also like to see the South American countries use their greater military capability to train some of the Central American countries that are not as advanced.

All three defense chiefs — Juan Carlos Pinzon of Colombia, Celso Amorim of Brazil and Andres Allamand of Chile — mentioned cyber threats as a major concern for their countries, including incidents of hacker attacks and data thefts, said U.S. defense officials flying home from Chile, their final stop on the trip.

The three countries, said one of the officials, are requesting help from the U.S. to harden computer networks against hackers and improve their technological skills. The official said there is a recognition of how vulnerable they are, and they want to learn more about the nature of the threat and how to combat it.

That threat, however, is also likely to involve China, which is steadily gaining as a top trading partner and economic developer in South America.  The Asian powerhouse now surpasses the U.S. in trade with Brazil, Chile and Peru, and runs a close second in Argentina and Colombia.

For the first time, U.S. intelligence officials publicly named China late last year as a significant cyber threat. While they did not directly tie attacks to the Beijing government, they said the Chinese systematically steal American high-tech data for their own profit. The unusually forceful public statement seemed to signal a new, more vocal U.S. government campaign against the cyberattacks, which could also involve helping other nations combat similar threats.

The US National Security Agency is an acknowledged world leader in cyber technologies. And U.S. officials have been struggling to work out ways for the government to help other nations as well as the private sector in the United States shore up critical networks.

So far, however, countries around the world have failed to achieve detailed agreements on how to work together. Cyber issues are fraught with legal and political challenges, including conflicting laws and the lack of broadly accepted international guidelines for Internet oversight.

Panetta made it clear as he traveled across the continent that cybersecurity was “a whole new arena” that all the nations are concerned about. He also encouraged the South American nations to expand their security efforts to other regions, including Africa.

“The United States must remain a global power,” Panetta said during a speech in Brazil. “But … more and more nations are making and must make an important contribution to global security. We welcome and encourage this new reality because frankly it makes the world safer and all of our nations stronger.”

The Americas Post - Suddenly on-line game titles like "Modern Warfare" take on a whole new meaning

Forensic experts report that pedophiles are increasingly using gaming systems to prey upon children, while terrorists are now utilizing them for online communication. With this in mind, on April 5 the United States Naval Supply Systems Command contracted a San Francisco company called Obscure Technologies for the research and development of “hardware and software tools that can be used for extracting data from video game systems.”

In response to the growing practice of owners “jailbreaking” consoles in order to play pirated games, gaming companies have fought back with hard-to-break encryptions. As a result, data extraction is a highly complex process which the Department of Homeland Security believes can only be achieved by Obscure Technologies. For the small computer diagnostics and forensics company, with annual sales below $500,000 and less than five employees, the contract award of $177,235.50 is not insignificant.

“Analysis of the game systems requires specific knowledge of working with the hardware of embedded systems that have significant anti-tampering technology. Obscure Technologies has substantial experience in working with such systems. Obscure Technologies has the ability to do cradle-to-grave turnkey servicing of complete hardware systems design,” the contract states.  But the government’s main attraction to this company is most likely its lead engineer’s ability to reverse engineer Microsoft’s Xbox.

According to Foreign Policy, which first broke the story, law enforcement agencies came to the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate requesting a system that can extract data from game consoles. The DHS then delegated responsibility for leading the research and executing the contract to the Naval Postgraduate School.

With the multi-function nature of modern consoles, including access to social networking profiles, the Internet and peer-to-peer messaging, there’s plenty of interest to law enforcement, but it’s difficult to access. Under the impression that game console data is impervious to being hacked and therefore safe from authorities, pedophiles have in fact been using consoles as a haven for exploitation. In 2008, the FBI announced that Xbox Live was being used by pedophiles for luring and communicating with children at an alarming rate.

Aware of related privacy issues, the contract explicitly states that Obscure Technologies will only crack consoles purchased outside the United States for the duration of the research. As for the data to be extracted from the overseas consoles, the DHS plans on making their research and data publicly available at conferences and academic journals, but under the “constraints of the Common Rule (CFR 46) governing the use of human subject data.” In other words, any identifiable information pertaining to the owner of the consoles will be scrubbed.

The Americas Post - Shawn Henry says we're in for big trouble. Photo Credit: FBI

A high-ranking official retiring from the Federal Bureau of Investigation has grim words about public and private attempts to block cyberattacks on corporate targets: “We’re not winning.”

Shawn Henry, the FBI’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, told the Wall Street Journal that the government and private companies are incapable of protecting sensitive data from hackers. He described current tactics as “unsustainable,” saying that cybercriminals penetrate defenses with relative ease.

Henry, now departing the FBI after twenty years, gave his pessimistic appraisal as Congress tries to deal with the problem via two competing measures aimed at improving security at power plants, nuclear reactors and other infrastructure.

One Senate bill, in an attempt at bipartisanship, strips away a controversial Internet “kill switch” and makes other concessions. The authors stress the desperate need for a new cybersecurity plan at a time when major data breaches and denial-of-service attacks are increasingly making the headlines, however, several Republican senators have raised concern with the bill and have urged Senate leaders to allow time for other committees to weigh in.

Henry, who is departing the FBI for a cybersecurity job at an unnamed Washington firm, advocates companies make major changes to persistently vulnerable networks.

“I don’t see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo it’s an unsustainable model. Unsustainable in that you never get ahead, never become secure, never have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

On the congressional front, the bill introduced last month in the Senate, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, calls on the Department of Homeland Security to consolidate cybersecurity programs into one office — the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications.

At the heart of the bill is a requirement that the federal government identify the most critical components of the country’s cyber-infrastructure and require them to meet certain security standards. This would cover everything from the nation’s power to water to transportation services.

The bill would require DHS to look at systems that could, among other scenarios, severely damage the economy or cause widespread casualties if they were disrupted in a cyberattack. Operators would work with DHS to secure those systems.

The Americas Post - Software from Hitachi Hokusai can scan 36 million biometric faces per second and find target almost instantly.

New Big Brother story. A new CCTV camera technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of archived camera footage instantly, and find any face which has ever walked past it. The camera ‘processes’ faces as it records, so that all faces which pass in front of it are recorded and stored instantly as a searchable biometric record. The software can scan through days of CCTV footage almost instantly.

Hitachi boast that it can scan 35 million faces per second.  Having this technology, if a government has your passport photo or your Facebook photo, they can find you instantly.

When the police – or anyone else – want to search for a particular individual, they’re searching through a gallery of pre-indexed faces, rather than a old fashioned library of photos.

This system is suitable not only for security organizations,  airports , railways, power companies, law enforcement, large stores, etc.., but also for individuals who want to find somebody in the crowd, to find wanted criminals, kidnappers, .  The company aims to make the system available within the next tax year, according to a report in DigInfo.

The system does have some  limitations – it scan faces that are in front of the CCTV camera, and faces have to be at least 40×40 pixels in size to be indexed by the system.

The Americas Post - The alleged Chilean spy is the one wearing the Jack Daniels t-shirt

Peru’s government said Wednesday it is investigating an alleged Chilean spy arrested in the vicinity of a military airbase in the north, in a case that could cast a shadow over relations between Lima and Santiago.

Defense Minister Alberto Otárola, said when Luis Maximiliano Seraín was arrested he had in his possession a CD,  a USB memory stick and “some writings” that are being investigated by the local public prosecutor.

“From what we know he is a Chilean citizen who was arrested near the barracks of El Pato military base in Talara.  I can not provide or confirm more details because I repeat is in full investigation,” Otárola told journalists.

In 2009, Peru and Chile engaged in a diplomatic row after the arrest of a Peruvian Air Force officer, who was accused of sending classified information to Chile.  After a year of research, a military court in Peru convicted the officer, formerly employed in the Peruvian Embassy in Santiago, to 25 years in prison.

This new espionage case involving Chile, a major investor in Peru, comes at a time when both South American countries are in international court disputing differences in their maritime boundaries.

Chilean government spokesman Andrew Chadwick said in Santiago they are fully confident that the person arrested in Peru has no link with Chilean state activities.

“We are absolutely clear on the country’s foreign policy in relation to our neighbors.  We never want to risk any type of situation that could harm our relations,” he said.

“As a government we deal with these situations calmly and wisely,” he added.

Relations between Peru and Chile, both major mineral exporters, have gone through ups and downs since they fought a war in the late nineteenth century.  Despite the friction, trade links and business between the two countries have grown rapidly in recent years.

The high court ruling was a defeat for the Obama administration, which had argued that a warrant was not required to use global positioning system devices to monitor a vehicle on public streets.

The justices unanimously agreed with a precedent-setting ruling by a U.S. appeals court that the police must procure a warrant before using a GPS device for an extended period of time to covertly follow a suspect.

The high court ruled that placement of a device on a vehicle and using it to monitor the vehicle’s movements was prohibited by U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence.

There are no precise figures on how often police in the United States use GPS tracking in criminal investigations. But the Obama administration told the court last year it was used rarely by federal law enforcement officials.

The American Civil Liberties Union rights group praised the ruling as an important victory for privacy. “While this case turned on the fact that the government physically placed a GPS device on the defendant’s car, the implications are much broader,” Steven Shapiro of the ACLU said.

“A majority of the court acknowledged that advancing technology, like cell phone tracking, gives the government unprecedented ability to collect, store, and analyze an enormous amount of information about our private lives,” he said.

The Americas Post Security News. U.S. Armed Forces, including this fighter, shift operations to the cloud. Photo Credit iStockPhoto

To defend the U.S. military’s information assets, Pentagon leaders say defense computers must be tied to the cloud — meaning an online environment that can be centrally locked down. Yet it’s difficult to police parts of that environment manufactured or even housed in countries that stand accused of cyberespionage, experts say.

The shift of military operations to the cloud  will require protecting electronics manufactured in Asia from supply chain tampering, say some private security auditors. But that won’t necessarily mean inspecting every network component made in China

“Our clouds are running off of hardware that’s built in China,” said…READ MORE HERE