Cybersecurity

A file released by the FBI on Steve Jobs, who was being considered in the late 1980s for a seat on a presidential council, reveals that friends and acquaintances of the late Apple co-founder discussed his past drug use and at least one claimed he had a "tendency to distort reality," according to the Huffington Post.

The Internet community's success in shelving controversial anti-piracy legislation is complicating efforts to pass unrelated cybersecurity legislation because some lawmakers fear doing anything that might anger Internet activists, The New York Times reports. Read National Journal's latest coverage of the cybersecurity legislation here.

As it works to exit from bankruptcy, Kodak plans to phase out its digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frame division and focus on digital printing, Bloomberg reports.

AT&T says mobile customers should not be too worried that they could be snagged by the wireless firm's policy of slowing down its biggest data users, The New York Times reports.

Oracle announced plans to buy Dublin-based cloud provider Taleo for $1.9 billion, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

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A hacker who demanded $50,000 from Symantec to not release stolen computer code from the computer security firm says the company was tricked into offering the bribe and has since released some of the stolen code, The Washington Post reports.

The New York Times says one of the reasons why the two sides in the debate over online piracy legislation are having trouble finding a compromise is that they have yet to agree on the scope of the problem.

Sprint says it is close to shutting down parts of the Nextel network that have proved to be a costly distraction since the two companies merged seven years ago, CNET reports.

The wireless industry group CTIA in a blog post examines whether it's legal for political campaigns to call voters on their cell phones.

Fox News details why wireless carriers really don't like the iPhone.

In its first earnings report since going public, the online deal provider Groupon says it lost money in the last quarter of 2011, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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A Commerce Department agency has been hacked, The Washington Post reports.

Internet security provider VeriSign has acknowledged that it was attacked multiple times in 2010 by hackers, according to PCWorld.

Facebook's move to file documents for an initial public offering helped lift the stocks of other Internet firms that recently went public including game maker Zynga and online coupon provider Groupon, the Associated Press reports.

Federal authorities announced a new crackdown on illegal sports streaming websites, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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A House subcommittee kicked off this year's cybersecurity agenda by approving a bill designed to protect "critical infrastructure" from cyberattacks, even as a Senate bill waits in the wings.

Leaders in both the Senate and the House, as well as President Obama, have said they want to pass broad cybersecurity legislation this year. Senate leaders had been expected to introduce their version as soon as this week, but a Senate aide now say that's unlikely.

Senate staffers are working to forge agreement on a comprehensive bill, while the House is pursuing, smaller, separate pieces of legislation.

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee approved H.R. 3674, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 (The PrECISE Act), with a voice vote.

The bill would task the Homeland Security Department with determining what "critical infrastructure" like the power grid or financial systems, need federal oversight from existing agencies. The bill would also would establish a National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to coordinate federal cybersecurity efforts.

"Government should enable and facilitate the private sector in this effort by providing threat information, standards and best practices," said the bill's sponsor, subcommittee chairman Dan Lungren, R-Calif. "In this way, we ensure that owners and operators are in the strongest position to protect their critical infrastructure."

More on the House bill can be found on our Tech page.

The Senate could move ahead with a broad-ranging cybersecurity bill in as little as a week, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the annual State of the Net Conference, Tommy Ross, Reid's senior intelligence and defense adviser, said the Senate is on track to meet Reid's goal of eventually bringing the legislation to the floor in the next three to four weeks.

While the bill, currently being developed by working groups, will not be truly comprehensive, Ross said it will cover a "pretty broad waterfront."

He said there are no insurmountable disagreements, despite years of wrangling over the specifics of cybersecurity legislation.

"What comes to the floor will reflect wide agreement," Ross said. If the bill does eventually clear the Senate, its future in the House remains murky.

Republican leaders in the House have decided to develop separate, smaller cybersecurity bills in as many as nine different committees.

One of those bills, being developed in the House Homeland Security Committee, addresses cybersecurity authority among federal agencies, and outlines ways to protect "critical infrastructure" such as power grids and water systems from cyber attacks.

But the committee's senior counsel, Kevin Gronberg, said it is unclear what will happen to the legislation if it is approved by the committee.

Industry and government officials, including the White House, have called for legislation to address the growing threat of cyber attacks. Among the proposals being considered are measures to clarify and increase the authority of agencies like the Homeland Security Department to handle cyber threats; protection of non-government networks that may affect national or economic security; and increase penalties for cyber crimes.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., who chairs the Energy and Commerce subcommittee with jurisdiction over consumer privacy and security issues, wants Facebook to explain how hackers penetrated the social networking site, resulting in violent and pornographic images on some users' Facebook pages.

Mack, chairwoman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee, has asked Facebook for a briefing next week. She will be looking for details on how many users were affected, how the attack occurred, whether the vulnerability hackers used to penetrate Facebook could be used by others to gather personal data about users, and what the company is doing to prevent the incident from happening again, Bono Mack's spokesman Ken Johnson said Wednesday.

"The chairman is very concerned about what took place and wants to make certain - to the extent possible - that it doesn't happen again," Johnson said.

Bono Mack has been working on legislation that would set national standards for what actions companies must take to prevent and respond to data breaches involving consumer data.

Facebook explained the source of the images used in the attack. "During this spam attack users were tricked into pasting and executing malicious javascript in their browser URL bar, causing them to unknowingly share this offensive content," Facebook said in a statement. "No user data or accounts were compromised during this attack...We've built enforcement mechanisms to quickly shut down the malicious pages and accounts that attempt to exploit it."

A Facebook spokesman added that the company "looks forward" to briefing Bono Mack's subcommittee on the incident.

Despite a major overhaul, the federal government's jobs board, USAJobs.gov, has been ridden with problems, according to The Washington Post.

Reuters examines why few women seek jobs in cyber security and other tech fields.

The Huffington Post reports that hackers, possibly from China, attacked U.S. satellites via a ground station connected to the Internet.

The author of a new book on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told the Wall Street Journal that while Bezos is a "brilliant entrepreneur," he lacks the innovation that the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' possessed.

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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants an army of "cyber geeks," and she wants it now.

Napolitano made the plea during a Washington Post Live event Thursday morning, featuring former and current government officials and industry representatives.

When asked what she would do tomorrow to secure cyberspace if possible, Napolitano said she would hire every "cyber geek" who knows anything about hacking and securing computers.

DHS has been given authority to hire 1,000 new cybersecurity professionals, but budget constraints and a lack of trained people makes filling that order difficult, she said.
To help overcome the lack of resources and to help cover all the wide-ranging cyberthreats, the government must partner with the private sector, Napolitano said.

"The government has its capabilities but this will have to an area where everyone has a shared responsibility," she said. Hackers have "come close" to shutting down parts of American infrastructure that are connected to the Internet, Napolitano said.

Michael Hayden, former head of the National Security Agency and of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the NSA, the nation's largest spy agency, should be given a more active role in protecting American networks. The NSA has said it plans to hire an additional 3,000 cybersecurity employees by mid-2012.

Until given more authority and guidance, however, many government resources will remain "on the sidelines" because of the concerns over privacy and government overreach, Hayden, who is now with security consultancy Chertoff Group, said at Thursday's event.

Reuters reports that the National Security Agency is providing intelligence to Wall Street banks about possible cyber attacks aimed at financial institutions.

Microsoft and Mozilla are teaming up to offer a Firefox/Bing combo.

Netflix has cut more than a dozen jobs as it struggles to regain its footing after some big losses in subscribers, Bloomberg reports.

Apple is planning to build a big solar farm in North Carolina to power one of its data centers, according to the Charlotte Observer.

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The Defense Department announced a new top official on Tuesday to oversee its cyber programs.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta appointed Eric Rosenbach, a former Senate staffer and private security consultant, as deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs.

Rosenbach will oversee DOD efforts to develop and implement cyber-related policies, strategies, and plans. Over the summer, Robert Butler ended his two-year stint in the job.

Rosenbach previously worked for D.C.-based Good Harbor Consulting, as well as national security advisor for Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and as a staff member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

On Tuesday, members of the House Intelligence Committee called on government officials to do more to combat cyberthreats, especially alleged spying by China.