News you may have missed #517
June 9, 2011 Leave a comment
- New Zealand to launch new cybersecurity agency. The new National Cyber Security Centre will protect high-risk government agencies from attacks by cyber spies and criminals. It will also take on the functions of the Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection, which helps protect critical national infrastructure such as the computer networks of banks and power companies.
- New book on China-US spy wars. An extensive review by Joseph Goulden (author of SpySpeak: The Dictionary of Intelligence) of David Wise‘s new book, Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China, which has been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
- Over 1,000 cyber attacks against UK MoD last year. Criminals and foreign spy agencies launched more than 1,000 cyber attacks on Britain’s Ministry of Defence last year in an effort to steal secrets and disrupt services, Britain’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox has revealed.
intelNews.org 
Massive IMF cyberattack ‘was state-backed’, say sources
June 13, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment
IMF seal
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A massive and sophisticated cyberattack that targeted the computer systems of the International Monetary Fund last month was “linked to a foreign government”, according to sources familiar with the incident. The IMF, an international institution which oversees financial crises around the world, revealed the security breach in an internal email sent last week, but has yet to make a public announcement about the incident. Although the cyberattack was not publicly announced, it was revealed last weekend by The New York Times, which cited a “security expert […] familiar with the incident”. The paper notes that IMF’s computer databases function as “a repository of highly confidential information about the fiscal condition of many nations”, and that they contain “potentially market-moving information”. British daily The Independent adds that “internal political opponents and foreign intelligence services could […] find [in the IMF databases] explosive information about government dealings with the fund”. Intriguingly, the attack occurred in the weeks prior to the arrest of the Fund’s Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was detained on American soil on charges of sexually assaulting a female worker at his luxury New York hotel. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with computer hacking, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, David Hawley, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, economic espionage, FBI, financial warfare, International Monetary Fund, New York, News, United States