Tag Archive for: creates

University of South Australia creates CISO role – Training & Development – Security

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The University of South Australia (UniSA) is recruiting its first ever chief information security officer.

The Adelaide-based university kicked off its search to find an “an exceptional leader” to ensure UniSA’s digital and information assets stay protected.

UniSA chief information officer Paul Sherlock told iTnews the new role was added to boost the university’s cyber security focus.  

“The role is all about taking our existing cyber security framework and strategic plan forward and developing investment plans going forward that we can implement,” Sherlock said.  

UniSA experienced its own cyber attack in May, forcing the school to disable desktop computer access and a number of systems, including staff email and remote access.

Sherlock said the university was able to resolve that incident “very well”.

“We invoked our cyber incident response plan and we came out of that incident very well in terms of no lost data and no data exfiltration,” he said.

Sherlock said the creation of the new CISO position was not in response to the May incident.

Rather, he said, the general threats around cyber security had increased during the pandemic, requiring a stronger response.

“I think it’s on everybody’s radar,” he said. “Criminals are more active… it’s a big business.

“Cyber is a big money-making business for criminals and so it’s getting bigger and more sophisticated all the time.”

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Valley News – Column: Data is immensely powerful, and it creates immense vulnerabilities

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America created cyberspace in its own image — free, open, decentralized, distributed and self-governing. If the internet had been created in China or Russia, its architecture would have been very different. Unfortunately, its very openness and freedom have become the source of its vulnerabilities.

Authoritarian nations find the freedom of cyberspace very threatening. They build firewalls to protect their societies from freedom. For geopolitical reasons, they also use cyber weapons to attack others.

A most attractive feature of cyberspace is that its entrance threshold is so low that an ingenious, self-taught person can create apps and new platforms and become rich; or become a hacker and get into infrastructure, financial or military systems without leaving a trace. Rogue states and well-organized digital terrorist groups use footloose hackers to steal intellectual property and pry into diplomatic and strategic plans.

Cybersecurity attacks are stealthy and insidious. There are no rules of the road to protect cyberspace, the domain in which all our activities — military, economic, commercial, political and cultural — are being done now. Power grids, financial systems and defense networks could be brought down, not only by hostile states but also by nonstate actors, alone or in collusion with their governments. Last October, a cyberattack shut down the electrical grid of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, plunging millions into darkness. The New York Times suggested that it was a Chinese cyberattack — a warning that China could not only fight India in the Himalayas, but also in its financial hub.

The May 7 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, one of America’s largest fuel suppliers, was carried out by affiliates of a criminal hacking group, DarkSide. The attack crippled Colonial’s computer system, for which it had to pay the ransom in cryptocurrency — 75 bitcoins, or nearly $5 million, according media reports. Cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology is a possible future for global finance. Ransom in cryptocurrency cannot be traced at present.

One of America’s most precious assets, intellectual property, is under constant threat. Chinese hackers have been…

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Ransomware Attack Creates Dutch Cheese Shortages – Threatpost

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Ransomware Attack Creates Dutch Cheese Shortages  Threatpost

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Team of Panther engineers creates break-through technology to detect illegal Bitcoin mining on everyday users’ computers | FIU News

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Cryptocurrencies may be the way of the future. At least, that’s what many are betting on.

Entrepreneurs and companies are buying, selling and investing funds in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Some retailers are accepting payments in cryptocurrency already. And, most recently, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez proposed that the city begin using Bitcoin for some of its financial transactions, including for employee salaries.

The popularity of cryptocurrencies is attracting a number of people – including hackers. Hackers are currently finding low-cost ways to “mine” Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency illegally by tapping into everyday people’s computers and using those machines’ resources without their consent. The result? Hackers make millions mining cryptocurrency using other people’s computers. Meanwhile, the victims often find their computers slow down and become impossible to use without realizing what’s going on.

This form of hacking – called “cryptojacking” – is happening across the world at astonishing rates. Miners have not only hacked into regular folks’ computers, but they’ve also hacked into major businesses, retailers and governmental agencies to use their servers and machines.

Faraz Naseem ’18, MS ’20 is working to find a solution. Naseem works at FIU’s Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab, part of the College of Engineering and Computing. Under the supervision of the lab’s director Selcuk Uluagac, Naseem, postdoctoral researcher Ahmet Aris, researcher and lab member Leonardo Babun ’15, MS ’19, PhD ’20 and current electrical and computer engineering master’s student Ege Tekiner, created a novel software to address the problem.

The team created a first-of-its-kind software that detects cryptojacking happening in real-time with an accuracy rate of nearly 99 percent.

“We are one of the first in the world to identify cryptojacking,” says Uluagac, who is also an eminent scholar-chaired associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences. “As Bitcoin technology becomes more prevalent, we will need these types of protections. Miami is already in the…

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