Tag Archive for: Lead

(LEAD) U.S. not seeing weapons proliferation from N. Korea: O’Brien

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(ATTN: UPDATES with additional remarks in last 4 paras)
By Byun Duk-kun

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (Yonhap) — North Korea is not currently engaged in proliferation of weapons at any significant level, U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said, adding such activity would mean crossing the “red line.”

“It would be an extraordinarily risky venture for Kim Jong-un to get into the proliferation business when it comes to nuclear weapons. It’s something that I am hoping won’t happen. We don’t see it on the WMD side -– we don’t see that happening at this point,” O’Brien said in a recent interview with U.S. online magazine 19FortyFiv, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

“I think the North Koreans understand that if they started proliferating on a significant scale — either ballistic missiles or delivery systems or in the worst-case scenario weapons of mass destruction especially on the nuclear side or biological or chemical as well — that would really be crossing a red line with not just the United States but the international community,” he was quoted as saying.

North Korea has maintained a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests since November 2017.

However, the country unveiled a new and longer-range intercontinental ballistic missile at an October military parade, indicating its continued development of weapons despite its recent lack of weapons testing.

O’Brien warned it would be “extraordinarily unhelpful” for North Korea to engage in proliferation activities.

“We have real concerns on the ballistic missile proliferation side of the ledger but on the weapons of mass destruction side, it’s something that would take the crisis to a whole other level,” he said.

The top security adviser also underscored threats posed by the North in the cyber realm.

“North Korea has a very sophisticated cyber capability and cyber warfare capability. That’s something we take seriously,” said O’Brien, according to the online report published Monday.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, O’Brien said Pyongyang has yet to report a mass outbreak of the new coronavirus.

He noted the U.S. will likely be willing to assist the impoverished North if asked for help.

“On humanitarian…

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Cyber Security Today – US, Canada among top countries for data theft, careless employees lead to data exposure, and watch out for signs of cyber espionage

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US, Canada ranked among top countries for data theft, more careless employees lead to data exposure and watch for this possible sign of cyber espionage

Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday December 2nd. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com. To hear the podcast click on the arrow below:


Cyber Security Today is brought to you by the new Cisco Security Outcomes Study, where we surveyed 4,800 cybersecurity and IT professionals.

Visit https://cisco.com/go/SecurityOutcomes to read the results.

 

You might expect the United States is the country affected most by data theft in the past seven years. A British consumer website called USwitch came up with that nugget by calculating the amount of publicly-announced data stolen per 100,000 of a country’s population. In second place, South Korea. And number three: Canada. The United Kingdom was in fourth place, followed by Australia. That ranking gives weight to big data thefts rather than the number of breaches. Canada has a lot fewer data breaches than the U.S., but many of them were big — for example last year’s hack of medical laboratory LifeLabs led to the exposure of personal data belonging to 15 million people in Ontario and B.C. The hack in 2015 of the Toronto-based adult dating website Ashley Madison exposed personal data of over 30 million people in several countries.

Employees are still being careless with corporate data. Here’s two of the latest examples: Reporters at the TechCrunch news site recently found unprotected data on a server holding thousands of patient records and lab reports for American psychiatrists and therapists. The data belonged to a customer of NTreatment, a San Francisco-based provider of a cloud-based medical practice management software suite. Not only was the database not password-protected, the data wasn’t encrypted. After being alerted NTreatment said the server was being used for general purpose storage by the user.

Meanwhile The Register reports that a Cayman Island investments fund left its entire data backups open to anyone after failing to properly configure data left on Microsoft Azure, a cloud-based storage service. The fund’s…

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