Top 10 Stories

SC Magazine - North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency (NORCOM), a company that provides emergency communication services to the public, fire and police agencies, had a server breached in late December.        

Register - A US appeals court has ruled that net neutrality measures put in place by America's Federal Communications Commission are invalid. The FCC's latest attempt to compel ISPs to treat all traffic on an equal basis suffered a significant blow, after the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said: "ven though the commission has general authority to regulate in this arena, it may not impose requirements that contravene express statutory mandates."...

Infosecurity - As the US president prepares his response to the independent task force investigation into the NSA surveillance programs, a new report from the New America Foundation analyzes the actual effect of surveillance on 225 terrorism-related arrests since 9/11 and finds it to be minimal. President Obama is due to announce his proposals following publication of the task force recommendations on the NSA surveillance programs this Friday. He is expected to modify but not materially...

Forrester - Google’s acquisition of Nest has stirred a lot of interest and reaction, some of it misguided. After talking to lots of reporters, here are ten quick thoughts on why Google bought Nest and what it means    

Sophos Naked Security - A US court in the state of Virginia ruled on 7 January that anonymous users aren't covered by First Amendment protection of free speech if a review "is based on a false statement". Joe Hadeed, the owner of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, which is based in Virginia, told the court that seven Yelp users had left anonymous, negative feedback about his business on the review service.

The globe and mail - The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world — but not in the United States — that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to...

Net-Security - Prolexic Technologies reported that mobile applications are being used in DDoS attacks against enterprise customers. The prevalence of mobile devices and the widespread availability of downloadable apps that can be used for DDoS is a game changer,” said Stuart Scholly, president of Prolexic. “Malicious actors now carry a powerful attack tool in the palm of their hands, which requires minimal skill to use. Because it is so easy for mobile device users to opt-in to DDoS...

Koreajoongangdaily.joins.com - The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning warned yesterday that North Korean hacking attempts have been detected recently at small and midsize IT companies and institutions that deal directly with national security.   The companies, especially those under contract with government agencies, were affected by recent hacking due to their relatively poor security, the ministry said

Softpedia - The website of the Syrian Electronic Army (sea.sy) and the leaks subdomain (leaks.sea.sy) have been defaced by Turkish hackers of the group Turkguvenligi. The attackers have apparently compromised the SEA’s website through its hosting provider. The attack appears to come in response to the Syrian Electronic Army’s attacks against Turkey. “You imbecils will attack our country with fake phishing emails and we'll accept your lies and dont do anything ? That is the end you deserve:...

TechWeek Europe - Internet domain registrar and Web hosting company GoDaddy has teamed up with Microsoft with a long-term strategic partnership. The partnership will offer Office 365 as GoDaddy’s exclusive core business-class email and productivity service to its small-business customers.