U.S. Department of Homeland Security – Computer Security Articles

U.S. Govt. Makes it Harder to Get .Gov Domains

March 17, 2020 admin .gov, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, John Levine, Other, The Internet for Dummies, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, u.s. general services administration

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2020 15:01:21 +0000

The federal agency in charge of issuing .gov domain names is enacting new requirements for validating the identity of people requesting them. The additional measures come less than four months after KrebsOnSecurity published research suggesting it was relatively easy for just about anyone to get their very own .gov domain. In November’s piece It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name, an anonymous source detailed how he obtained one by impersonating an official at a small town in Rhode Island that didn’t already have its own .gov.

Independent Krebs

Dangerous Domain Corp.com Goes Up for Sale

February 8, 2020 admin Active Directory, corp.com, dns name devolution, jas global advisors, jeff schmidt, Latest Warnings, Microsoft Corp., microsoft windows, mike o'connor, namespace collision, The Coming Storm, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 17:32:04 +0000

As an early domain name investor, Mike O’Connor had by 1994 snatched up several choice online destinations, including bar.com, cafes.com, grill.com, place.com, pub.com and television.com. Some he sold over the years, but for the past 26 years O’Connor refused to auction perhaps the most sensitive domain in his stable — corp.com. It is sensitive because years of testing shows whoever wields it would have access to an unending stream of passwords, email and other proprietary data belonging to hundreds of thousands of systems at major companies around the globe.

Independent Krebs

It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name

November 26, 2019 admin cisa, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, dotgov bill, dotgov.gov, exeterri.gov, John Levine, The Coming Storm, town.exeter.ri.us, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, u.s. general services administration, Web Fraud 2.0

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2019 02:08:55 +0000

Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a .gov domain versus a commercial one ending in .com or .org. But a recent experience suggests this trust may be severely misplaced, and that it is relatively straightforward for anyone to obtain their very own .gov domain.

Independent Krebs

Secret Service Investigates Breach at U.S. Govt IT Contractor

September 9, 2019 admin Dana Deasy, data breaches, Hold Security, Julius Patterson, Miracle Systems LLC, National Institutes of Health, Perceptics, Sandesh Sharda, trickbot, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Secret Service

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2019 16:47:56 +0000

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a breach at a Virginia-based government technology contractor that saw access to several of its systems put up for sale in the cybercrime underground, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. The contractor claims the access being auctioned off was to old test systems that do not have direct connections to its government partner networks. In mid-August, a member of a popular Russian-language cybercrime forum offered to sell access to the internal network of a U.S. government IT contractor that does business with more than 20 federal agencies, including several branches of the military. The seller bragged that he had access to email correspondence and credentials needed to view databases of the client agencies, and set the opening price at six bitcoins (~USD $60,000).

Independent Krebs

A Deep Dive on the Recent Widespread DNS Hijacking Attacks

February 18, 2019 admin A Little Sunshine, APNIC, Bill Woodcock, Cisco Talos, Comodo, CrowdStrike, data breaches, DHS, DNSpionage, dnssec, EPP, extensible provisioning protocol, Farsight Security, FireEye, Frobbit, ICANN, John Crain, Key Systems, Lars Michael Jogbäck, LetsEncrypt, Netnod, Packet Clearing House, Patrik Fältström, PCH, SecurityTrails, The Coming Storm, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 13:51:01 +0000

The U.S. government — along with a number of leading security companies — recently warned about a series of highly complex and widespread attacks that allowed suspected Iranian hackers to siphon huge volumes of email passwords and other sensitive data from multiple governments and private companies. But to date, the specifics of exactly how that attack went down and who was hit have remained shrouded in secrecy. This post seeks to document the extent of those attacks, and traces the origins of this overwhelmingly successful cyber espionage campaign back to a cascading series of breaches at key Internet infrastructure providers.