Toggle light / dark theme

The European Union’s new ambitious approach to cyber challenges could be a game-changer for its cyber posture as well as for the transatlantic and neighbourhood relations, concludes this analysis by Tomáš Minárik and Siim Alatalu of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, the NATO-affiliated cyber defence think-tank. Nevertheless, the EU could make better use of existing expertise in NATO and individual Member States.

The following analysis does not represent the official views of NATO.

On 13 September 2017, the European Commission and the High Representative issued a Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council [JOIN(2017) 450 final], bearing the title Resilience, Deterrence and Defence: Building strong cybersecurity for the EU. It introduces an ambitious and comprehensive plan to improve cybersecurity throughout the EU. The Commission and the High Representative (HR) proposed a broad range of measures, divided into three areas – resilience, deterrence and defence:

Read more

South Korea is ‘almost 100 per cent certain’ that North Korean hackers have stolen the blueprints for their warships and submarines.

The despotic regime is thought to have taken the documents after hacking into Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd’s database in April last year.

North Korea has often been implicated in cyber attacks in South Korea and elsewhere but Pyongyang has either ignored or denied accusations of hacking.

Read more

Israel notified the NSA, where alarmed officials immediately began a hunt for the breach, according to people familiar with the matter, who said an investigation by the agency revealed that the tools were in the possession of the Russian government.

Israeli spies had found the hacking material on the network of Kaspersky Lab, the global anti-virus firm under a spotlight in the United States because of suspicions that its products facilitate Russian espionage.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security instructed federal civilian agencies to identify Kaspersky Lab software on their networks and remove it on the grounds that “the risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security.” The directive followed a decision by the General Services Administration to remove Kaspersky from its list of approved vendors. And lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering a governmentwide ban.

Read more

Introducing: GPS attacks. “By creating a false signal it is possible to fool a system into thinking it’s in a different place.” Russian oligarchs undertaking piracy? Check.

“Spoofing is currently used in Russia. Around the Kremlin, GPS devices typically show the location 20 miles away,” says Nathan Brubaker, head of the cyber-physical intelligence unit at FireEye.

Read more

The grants focus on improving grid resiliency during a cyberattack and speeding recovery.

The Energy Department announced a roughly $33 million investment Tuesday in seven projects aimed at securing the electric grid against cyberattacks, physical attacks and weather disasters.

The projects are designed both to make grid systems more secure against cyberattacks and to improve their ability to withstand a cyberattack, according to a department fact sheet.

Read more