Toronto-based security researchers have helped uncover a China-based cyber espionage network — Ghostnet 2.0 — that has stolen sensitive documents from the Indian government and visa information from Canadians.
Cyber spies used phishing e-mail attacks and a bot network — abetted by social media — to steal top secret Indian government documents and visa information from Canadian citizens.
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab worked with Ottawa-based security research computer SecDev Group and other American researchers to uncover an even more widespread cyber espionage operation. The total number of stolen documents is greater than 700.
The researchers released their findings yesterday. Read the full story at itbusiness.ca .
The Honourable Peter Van Loan, Minister of Public Safety was joined in Toronto on Friday October 2nd, by Tom Pownall, Officer In Charge of the RCMP Technological Crime Branch and Diane Brisebois, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Retail Council of Canada to kick off Cyber Security Awareness Month.
“As technology advances, criminal activity is moving online into the cyber world,” said Minister Van Loan. “This poses a real safety and security threat to individual Canadians, who can become victims. Cyber Security Awareness Month is an opportunity to inform individuals, families, and businesses of the risks we all face and how to stay safe online.”
Read the full press release, some key facts, as well as additional information on cyber security.
“The proposed legislation strikes an appropriate balance between the investigative powers used to protect public safety and the necessity to safeguard privacy and the rights and freedoms of Canadians.”
Another excerpt from the press release…
…”technologies have also provided new ways of committing crimes such as distributing child pornography. We must ensure investigators have the necessary powers to trace and ultimately stop crimes.”
Here are some thoughts from the Canadian Privacy Law Blog and the Gartner Blog on this legislation.
Your thoughts ?? Does it change things for you ? How does this affect your security policies ? Does it ?
Global Language Monitor, a US-based web monitoring firm, announced that the millionth English word is “Web 2.0″ !
The firm searches the web for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used at least 25,000 times, it is recognized as a word. This includes hybrid words in Chinglish (Chinese English), Hinglish (Hindi English), Spanglish (Spanish English), Hollywords (terms created by the film industry), computer jargon and words forged by the internet. (i wonder if those terms are official ‘words’ )
The five words leading up to the millionth clearly show how the language is influenced by current social trends.
The list included “Jai Ho!” an Indian exclamation signifying victory or accomplishment, and “slumdog,” popularized by the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” As well as, “Cloud computing” and “carbon neutral”… and last but not least my favourite.. a term used for newcomers to the gaming world… ”N00B”… with zeros for o’s. Obviously not a complimentary term.
On a bit of a trivia note.. the Web 2.0 conference in 2004 hosted by O’Reilly Media and Tim O’Reilly, was the same year that ‘Blogosphere’ and ‘Cybercrime’ officially became New Words in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary
