Cyber Insecurity

Some veddy interesting news on the cybersecurity front has reared its ugly head the last couple days.

First, VMware confirmed via CRN yesterday that proprietary source code from its ESX server hypervisor (server virtualization software) had been posted online, but in a blog post about the incident, the director of VMware’s Security Response Center said the posted code was created sometime in 2003 and 2004.

That raises questions as to relevance, according to CRN, with VMware explaining that “the fact that it has been made public does not necessarily put VMware customers at risk.”

Yet given the large number of providers that run vSphere, it could have “a broad and widespread impact.”

Here’s the blog post from VMware — for those potentially impacted, one to keep an eye on.

This just as the Obama Administration comes out against the current House cybersecurity bill entitled the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act,” or “CISPA,”  a law proposed last November by U.S. Rep. Michael Rogers (R-MI) and 111 co-sponsors that would allow the voluntary sharing of attack and threat information between the U.S. Government and security cleared technology and manufacturing companies to try and ensure the security of networks against patterns of attack.

CISPA was reported out of committee on December 1, 2011, but has yet to be debated or brought to a vote.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also come out against the bill, concerned that the bill’s broad warnings would leave little protection for individual consumers and not provide effective judicial oversight for the types of monitoring the bill would allow.

If, in the meantime, you’re looking for some industry thought leadership on the topic of security, IBM’s own Marc Van Zadelhoff, the director of strategy for IBM’s still relatively new Security Solutions Division, look no further than this podcast interview (MP3, 17:45 minutes, 10.2 MB) where Marc provides extensive insight into IBM’s approach to security intelligence and compliance. You can also read a transcript here. (36.4KB, PDF)

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down…

What a week.  I spent most of it either in meetings or on airplanes (save for that happy detour to Fenway Park, which still has a smile on my face).

Speaking of which, it’s April 20, 2012 — the official anniversary of the 100^th year of Fenway’s existence.  Happy birthday to all my friends in Boston, and to people everywhere who adore Fenway Park — of which I now count myself a happy one.

FYI, for the hardcore Fenway fanatics, Sports Illustrated is offering up a very nice tome about the history of Fenway for $21.00 US.  You can find it here.

But boy, what a week otherwise.  The jokes about today being 4/20 aside (a point which many marketers are taking advantage of…for example, the Magnolia bio-documentary about Bob Marley, entitled simply “Marley,” is out today…And Austin is unveiling the new Willie Nelson statue today at 4:20 PM this afternoon.  Coincidence?)

You can read all about the marketing advantage being taken of on this date from none other than the Wall Street Journal.

No, I was more referring to the bummer news about Dick Clark and Levon Helm.  Helm, of course, was the drummer in Bob Dylan’s original backing band, “Levon and the Hawks,” before going on to co-found the band named, appropriately enough, “The Band.”

Helm died of throat cancer earlier this week, and in recent years had been most known for his “Midnight Rambles” at his studio in Woodstock, NY, which earned him three Grammys in recent years.  But of course, “The Band” fans remember classics like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up On Cripple Creek.”

Bob Dylan had this to say about his old friend and former band-mate on his own website: “He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation. This is just so sad to talk about. I still can remember the first day I met him and the last day I saw him. We go back pretty far and had been through some trials together. I’m going to miss him, as I’m sure a whole lot of others will too.”

Surely we will.

But we’ll also miss Dick Clark, a radio and TV personality who’s “American Bandstand” helped grow generations of music fans, and helped launch or boost the careers of an endless stream of renowned musicians, ranging from first guest Elvis Presley (who used to sign my mom’s arm during his Louisiana Hayride performances!) to Smokey Robinson to the Talking Heads…the list of musical acts featured on “Bandstand” goes on and on and on.

And never mind us welcoming Dick Clark into our homes, and the subsequent New Year, every New Year’s Rockin’ Eve starting in 1972.

We’ll miss you both terribly, Dick and Levon.  May you both continue to find the musical beat in the Great Beyond.

How fitting, then, that the very same week, the friends who brought you some of the great hack attacks of the late 2000s, Anonymous, announce they’re putting together a social music platform, one that pulls up songs streaming from all around the Internet (including from the likes of YouTube), and lets anonymous users put them into playlists and share them — all while intending to shield the service from being shut down by lawsuits.

Ladies and germs, welcome to “Anontune.”  This short video (featured on Wired’s Web site) indicates it will focus on “information about the music.”

We’ll wait and see if Anontune makes it past the first “bridge,” but my read on the situation is that this move could revitalize Hilary Rosen’s career (CEO of the RIAA from 1998-2003, Rosen led the organization in its successful efforts to bring down Napster).

A Hacker’s Nervous Breakdown

How ironic that here I am at Pulse 2012, where we’re talking about Internet and other related security matters, and then this headline: EXCLUSIVE: Infamous international hacking group LulzSec brought down by own leader.

Wow.

Apparently, law enforcement agents on two continents arrested five members of the infamous hacking group, Anonymous, early this morning. Furthermore, they were apparently acting on information and evidence gathered by the organization’s leader, who apparently had been cooperating with the government for months.

Doh!

Anonymous and its various offshoots — LulzSec, AntiSec, etc. — Are believed to have caused billions of dollars of damage to the government, banks, and corporations around the world.

The New York field office of the Federal Bureau of investigation released a press statement which indicated that five computer hackers in the United States and abroad were charged today, and six pled guilty, for computer hacking and other crimes.

The six hackers identified themselves as aligned with the group anonymous, which is a loose confederation of computer hackers and others, and/or offshoot groups related to Anonymous.

The now unsealed indictment revealed the perps were charged with hacks including of Fox Broadcasting Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and the Public Broadcasting Service. Included in the indictment were that of Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka “Sabu” and “Leon” and “Xavier DeLeon,” who pled guilty last August 15th to a 12-count information charging him with computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes, and who apparently has been cooperating with the government to bring several of the others to justice.

According to the New York Times’ coverage of the story, Mr. Monsegur ran his schemes out of a public housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

So was he the head of the Anonymous snake? Now that the indictments are out, I suspect we’ll be finding out very, very soon.