Top 10 Stories

TechCrunch: In the wake of criticism that the USA FREEDOM Act had been so neutered that it has lost sight of its initial goals of limiting NSA mass-surveillance, the Obama Administration todaystated that it “strongly supports” its passage in the House. Citing “strong bipartisan effort,” the White House says that the bill “ensures our intelligence and law enforcement professionals have the authorities they need to protect the Nation,” while also prohibiting “bulk collection through the...

Reuters: Silent Circle, a company that sells mobile phones and apps designed to thwart government surveillance, said on Wednesday it has raised $30 million in financing in a round led by Ross Perot Jr. and private investment fund Cain Capital LLC. The company sells apps for Apple Inc's iOS and devices using Google Inc's Android operating systems that encrypt phone calls and texts. It also offers secure video conferencing for machines running Microsoft Corp's Windows software.

The Register: Microsoft has decided not to fix an IE 8 zero-day first identified seven months ago, instead telling users to harden up their browsers. The vulnerability allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on computers running the older Internet Explorer version 8 through drive-by and phishing attacks.

ZDNet: The last day of Cisco Live is closing out on the networking giant's biggest bet for long-term growth while also giving its security arm another boost. Mala Anand, senior vice president of software and service platforms at Cisco, took the opportunity at Wednesday's keynote to clarify the difference (at least from Cisco's perspective) between the Internet-of-Things and the Internet-of-Everything.  

  Arstechnica: eBay officials are taking flak for burying news of the password reset issued in response to a hack on the company's corporate network that exposed sensitive data for millions of users. More than seven hours after eBay published an advisory that was five clicks removed from end users, the company still made no mention of the breach, said to affect 145 million customers, in e-mails, on its front page, or when users log...

Hacksurfer: The US government’s processes and huge amounts of red tape cause it to lag behind the private sector when it comes to keeping up defenses against cyber threats. Kristina Harrington, director of the signals intelligence directorate at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), believes that a new approach is necessary in order for the US to be able to keep up.

The National: Countries must share their intelligence with the United Nations to tackle the growing threat from cybercrime, experts say.  

Arstechnica: The number of drive-by malware attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Silverlight application framework may be surpassing those that abuse Oracle's Java framework, according to a recent analysis of one popular hack-by-numbers tool kit.  

Register: A London-based developer claims he was accidentally given the keys to US broadcaster NBC Universal’s websites – thanks to a username mix up on GitHub.  

Reuters: A sophisticated hacking group recently attacked a U.S. public utility and compromised its control system network, but there was no evidence that the utility's operations were affected, according to the Department of Homeland Security.