Author: admin

Understanding behavior and interactions critical during incident response, according to RSA session speakers

Disconnect between security and business leaders remains a concern

Online manuals linked to right-wing extremist

Ministry of Defence reportedly seals deal with Orca Computing

Scott Register outlined the challenges and solutions to help improve the current state of IoT security

Researchers from BlackBerry and Intezer discovered a Linux malware “nearly impossible” to detect

Sabre and Travelport had to report the weekly activities of former “Cardplanet” cybercriminal Aleksei Burkov for two years, info that eventually led to his arrest and prosecution.

Latest episode – listen (or read) now!

Neat video.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

Interesting article about civilians using smartphones to assist their militaries in wartime, and how that blurs the important legal distinction between combatants and non-combatants:

The principle of distinction between the two roles is a critical cornerstone of international humanitarian law­—the law of armed conflict, codified by decades of customs and laws such as the Geneva Conventions. Those considered civilians and civilian targets are not to be attacked by military forces; as they are not combatants, they should be spared. At the same time, they also should not act as combatants—­if they do, they may lose this status.

The conundrum, then, is how to classify a civilian who, with the use of their smartphone, potentially becomes an active participant in a military sensor system. (To be clear, solely having the app installed is not sufficient to lose the protected status. What matters is actual usage.) The Additional Protocol I to Geneva Conventions states that civilians enjoy protection from the “dangers arising from military operations unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.” Legally, if civilians engage in military activity, such as taking part in hostilities by using weapons, they forfeit their protected status, “for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities” that “affect[s] the military operations,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the traditional impartial custodian of International Humanitarian Law. This is the case even if the people in question are not formally members of the armed forces. By losing the status of a civilian, one may become a legitimate military objective, carrying the risk of being directly attacked by military forces.