US

About 1,000 federal and provincial officials were victimized by December's vast cyber-theft of five million emails and other customer data from a private U.S. global intelligence firm, according to a federal memo obtained by Bloomberg News. 

Almost 900 federal workers and 109 Ontario government officials were affected when computers owned by Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Inc. were hacked, says the Jan. 9 Public Safety Canada memo obtained under Access to Information.

Not a fan of CISPA? Fear not. President Barack Obama isn’t either. A Wednesday e-mail released by the Office of Management and Budget made very clear that should the bill reach the president’s desk in its current form, "his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill."

An Estonian man has been extradited to New York to face charges he was part of a hacking gang that infected more than 4 million computers with malware as part of a massive click-fraud scheme.

China National Electronics Import-Export Corporation (CEIEC) has denied that its systems were breached. But the hacker known as Hardcore Charlie, a supporter of the Anonymous ideal, insisted that the data he gained access to was legitimate, so he made available another set of documents, totaling 400 megabytes. 

The European Parliament on Thursday approved a controversial data transfer agreement with the U.S. that had sharply divided legislators.

A ruling handed up this week in a US appeals court found staff who violate their organisation's user policies do not violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

David Kosal, a former manager at executive search firm Korn/Ferry, beat charges that he convinced three of his former co-workers to use their valid login credentials to access and download customer lists and then transfer them to him so he could start a competing company.

A psychiatrist who once said Gary McKinnon would likely commit suicide if deported to the US to face charges of hacking into Nasa and the Pentagon has now apparently changed his tune and is saying the 46-year old is fit for extradition. 

In a 2009 evaluation commissioned by the McKinnon family, Professor Declan Murphy had warned "If Mr McKinnon is deported to the US, he will require - in my opinion - continual observation on a one-one basis during that time period, and for the rest of his incarceration. If this does not happen, he is likely to make a serious attempt at suicide."

The United States should worry more about North Korea's cyber attack capabilities than its nuclear arsenel, if the latest reports are any indication.

A Bloomberg report that cited Army General James Thurman, commander of US Forces in Korea, said Pyongyang has roped in hackers who possess cyber inflitration capabilities. "North Korea employs sophisticated computer hackers trained to launch cyber infiltration and cyber attacks," Thurman was quoted as saying. 

Richard Clarke, a former cybersecurity and cyberterrorism advisor for the White House, was a U.S. government employee for 30 years: between 1973 and 2003. He worked during the times of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush. 

Clarke now wants to warn us, urgently, that we are being failed again, being left defenseless against a cyberattack that could bring down our nation’s entire electronic infrastructure, including the power grid, banking and telecommunications, and even our military command system.

A study published by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) says an expansion to a 15 year old IT trade agreement could bring huge benefits to the US economy, including about 60,000 new jobs.

Adding new products to the 1996 Information Technology Agreement, could also increase US exports of information and communications technology by as much as $2.8 billion and could boost revenues of US IT firms by as much as $10 billion the report says.