MIIS Cyber Initiative

10/02/2015

Experian got hit, exposing 15 million people who applied for T-mobile phones.
"names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers and/or drivers’ license numbers, as well as additional information used in T-Moblie’s own credit assessment."

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/10/experian-breach-affects-15-million-consumers/

Kicking off National Cybersecurity Awareness Month with a bang, credit bureau and consumer data broker Experian North America disclosed Thursday that a breach of its computer systems exposed approximately 15 million Social Security numbers and other data on people who applied for financing from wire…

10/01/2015

https://www.europol.europa.eu/latest_news/iocta-2015-europol-annual-report-cybercrime-threat-landscape-published

09/11/2015

Things always seem to get worse... Ashley Madison made security architecture mistakes that have resulted in 11 million of their 15 million password hashes being cracked in the last few days, the rest are likely forthcoming. http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/ashley-madison-password-crack-could-spell-trouble-across-the-internet/

Rampant password reuse means compromise could spill to other sites.

09/09/2015

Understanding China's "Great Cannon" DDOS tool.
https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci15/workshop-program/presentation/marczak

On March 16th, 2015, the Chinese censorship apparatus employed a new tool, the “Great Cannon”, to engineer a denial-of-service attack on GreatFire.org, an organization dedicated to resisting China’s censorship. We present a technical analysis of the attack and what it reveals about the Great Cannon’…

09/04/2015

The Declining Half Life of Secrets
https://static.newamerica.org/attachments/4425-the-declining-half-life-of-secrets/Swire_DecliningHalf-LifeOfSecrets.f8ba7c96a6c049108dfa85b5f79024d8.pdf

08/27/2015

London Calling: Two-Factor Authentication Phishing From Iran
https://citizenlab.org/2015/08/iran_two_factor_phishing/

This report describes an elaborate phishing campaign using two-factor authentication against targets in Iran’s diaspora, and at least one Western activist.

08/18/2015

The “dark web” is a part of the world wide web that requires special software to access. Once inside, web sites and other services can be accessed through a browser in much the same way as the normal web.

08/12/2015

MIIS Cyber's Senior Distinguished Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Lin Wells represents MIIS at Black Hat 2015.

08/11/2015

The launch of Global Knowledge Network Initiative: “Towards A Smart Century: Global Partnerships for Innovative Learning and Leader Development” will take place on 16-17 September 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland. This event is co-hosted by the Global Challenges Forum and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in cooperation with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and MIIS Cyber. To register for the event through UNITAR, go to: http://www.unitar.org/event/towards-smart-century-global-partnerships-innovative-learning-and-leader-development. For more information, please visit: http://sites.miis.edu/cyber.

07/30/2015

Middlebury ranks #2 on Forbes list of most entrepreneurial colleges!

Small liberal arts colleges are reinventing themselves as entrepreneur hatcheries--both for billion-dollar startups and social change makers.

06/25/2015

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538726/nano-satellites-work-with-ground-sensors-to-offer-new-eye-on-disaster-relief-and/

A swarm of small satellites could give critical infrastructure an Internet connection that never goes down.

06/25/2015