Top 10 Stories

ZDNet: The security issues around the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology are taking centre stage, as Apple reportedly prepares to introduce its 'smart home' system and Google is rumoured to be considering new acquisitions to round out its web-enabled home device offering. The emergence of the IoT could lead to the biggest security threat to the IT landscape, according to Armando Dacal, Australia and New Zealand regional director for enterprise security provider, Palo Alto...

Reuters: China has told its state-owned enterprises to sever links with American consulting firms just days after the United States charged five Chinese military officers with hacking U.S. companies, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. China's action, which targets companies like McKinsey & Company and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), stems from fears the firms are providing trade secrets to the U.S. government, the FT reported, citing unnamed sources close to senior Chinese leaders.

The Register: eBay punters rushing to secure accounts could be selecting the world's worst passwords after the online tat bazaar was found accepting the most common and weakest passwords in contravention to its stated policy. eBay has been slowly asking its users to reset account passwords after it admittedlast week that unknown criminals made off with names, dates of birth, addresses, and proprietary hashed passwords.

HackSurfer: Cyber Squared Inc. announced today that ThreatConnect™, the leading threat intelligence platform, has launched a European Community of Interest. The private industry community will bridge together public organizations and private corporations across Europe to share threat intelligence data and collaborate within a secure environment. This new private community includes organizations from Aerospace, Defense, Government, Banking and Finance, Manufacturing, Oil and Natural Gas, Medical/Pharmaceutical, Telecommunications, and Energy/Utility/Transportation industries across Europe. Vetted members can immediately begin working with...

Venture Beat: Network hardware and software vendor F5 has bought Defense.net, a security startup with cloud-based service for blocking distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that hit lots of servers and can bring down websites. As a result of the deal, F5 will bolster its software lineup, which includes software for staving off DDoS attacks that hit companies’ on-premises data centres.

Arstechnica: The House passed legislation Thursday—ironically called the USA Freedom Act—that continues to allow the National Security Agency the ability to sift through the phone metadata of every phone call made to and from the United States. The so-called "reform" measure comes a year after the Guardian revealed the snooping program with documents supplied by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Civil rights advocates withdrew their support for the package, H.R.3361, after the Obama administration pressured the Republican leadership to...

Guardian: eBay came under pressure on Thursday over a massive cyber attack, as three US states began investigating the e-commerce company's security practices. Connecticut, Florida and Illinois said they were conducting a joint investigation of the matter. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman requested eBay provide free credit monitoring for everyone affected, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Techcrunch: The Snowden Effect, that mix of consciousness raising and potential legal reform of government surveillance, has another side to it: the impact of Snowden’s revelations on those revealed. The Guardian secured heavily redacted parts of a Pentagon report on the matter, two elements of which are worth reviewing. The report does not detail the impact of what Snowden revealed in relation to “SIGINT,” a term meaning “signals intelligence.” The NSA, the report notes, is reviewing that “separately.”

Arstechnica: eBay has finally stopped burying its own advisory to change passwords following a major hack on its corporate network by adding an important password update to the top of its home page. Now, engineers should turn their attention to flaws on the site’s password reset page that may prevent users from choosing passcodes that are truly hard to crack. Chief among the imperfections is eBay's meter that labels chosen passwords as "weak," "medium," or "strong"...

Tweaktown: Lastline Labs co-founder Engin Kirda isn't impressed by anti-virus software and their overall ability to defend against malware attacks. Security experts cannot seem to agree whether or not anti-virus software today is adequate to defend against sophisticated malware attacks, with another industry leader saying most anti-virus simply isn't effective. Lastline Labs researched malware samples for one year from May 2013 to May 2014, using 47 anti-virus signatures, and found that no solution detected every malware...