International Cyber Defense Workshop (ICDW) June 4 - 8 2012

Mr. Mike Coomes, U.S. DoD CIO’s International Cybersecurity Program Director invites you to participate in the 12th International Cyber Defense Workshop (ICDW) June 4 - 8 2012.
The ICDW is a virtual workshop for military information assurance specialists and computer science practitioners. Attendees will interact with instructors while participating in live, web-based workforce development activities including attack and defense exercise components and instructor-led training and briefings. The ICDW will be conducted over the Internet, will be unclassified and workshop exercises will be conducted in a secure and isolated information assurance range.
Visit the ICDW Portal at https://icdw.iaportal.navy.mil to set up a
registration account and take advantage of Additional Resources such as industry whitepapers, reports, blogs, podcasts, webcasts and links to events and instructional videos.
To register and more information, please contact Ms. Johanna Vazzana at vazzana_johanna@bah.com

Another icky Cybersecurity Bill on Capitol Hill

Another Cybersecurity Bill Runs Into Trouble on Capitol Hill

A U.S. Senator's bill to broaden cybersecurity intelligence gathering is in trouble after other legislators question whether proposed protections comes at the expense of citizens' privacy.....

UAT welcome Rear Admiral Sanders - Thursday, March 29th

Please join us for this event if you can…

The University of Advancing Technology (UAT) is proud and honored to welcome Rear Admiral Sanders to our campus. RADM Sanders will address students, faculty and guests on the topic of 'Maritime Strategy' at 2:00 pm on Thursday, March 29th. RADM Sanders' visit is part of Navy Week, a program targeted at increasing the understanding of the American Navy, as well as, its mission and relevance to national security.
The outreach program is designed to facilitate participation in a myriad of events ranging from building houses with Habitat for Humanity, visiting sick children in the hospital in Caps for Kids, and in meeting with educational and community leaders. Through UAT's commitment to cyber defense and national security, RADM Sanders' visit to campus serves to reaffirm both this commitment and our existing partnerships and collaborations with the United States Armed Forces and respective government agencies (Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation and more).

Read more about RDRM Sanders by visiting: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=385

Low Orbit Server Stations

File sharing has been seeing a lot of legal action taken against in in the past few months. Kim Dotcom of Megaupload was arrested and many other bit torrent websites suffer federal investigation daily. The Pirate Bay is the most widely known file sharing website and is often times one of the biggest targets on the Federal radar. Legal precedents are evolving in order to combat the file sharing age, but a majority of the sites still remain. The site operators are constantly evolving themselves in order to keep their website and technological ideals standing strong. Just yesterday TPB posted on their blog about a new concept called LOSS, Low Orbit Server Stations. The underlying plan for these server drones is to host their content in the sky and not on land. This they believe will force the Feds to have to take down the plane which would be an act of war. This is an interesting and daring concept but will the tech to pull 100Mbps wirelessly from over 50 km away, its not too far fetched. So perhaps in the next few months we will be browsing sites that are quite literally hosted in “the cloud.”

http://thehackernews.com/2012/03/pirate-bay-plans-low-orbit-server.html

NSA opening center in HAWAii !!

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL SECURITY SERVICE

Everyone is talking about the NSA Spy Lab in Utah.

http://rt.com/news/utah-data-center-spy-789/

but.... the I want to work in in Hawaii!

NSA/CSS Unveils New Hawaii Center which is designed to boost intelligence integration and collaboration.

PRESS RELEASE: 6 January 2012

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2012/a4_hawaii_final.shtml

Sabu, Traitor or Hero

Sabu has been recognized as one of the leading members and contributors to both LulzsSec and Anonymous. He's an icon to many hackers for the numerous justified hacks he performed for a variety of popularly favored motives. However, it has been released today that Sabu had been caught by the Feds months ago and was now aiding them in the take down of the remaining LulzSec leaders. 5 were charged in the LulzSec conspiracy indictment ranging anywhere from Chicago to London. This was definitley a major win for the Feds, but how will Sabu's image change? He was a leading icon for both major hacker groups and now a traitor in the eyes of many of his online followers. He seemed to be fighting to save his own behind from long jail time, but in turn sacrificed many talented minds that help keep the world's enemy's in check. His twitter has yet to provide any comment on the topic.
The article is below for your personal reading and judgment.

http://thehackernews.com/2012/03/anonymous-sabu-was-working-for-fbi-to.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHackersNews+%28The+Hackers+News+-+Daily+Cyber+News+Updates%29

UAT warmly welcomes Ward Cunningham

UAT warmly welcomes Ward Cunningham – Inventor of the Wiki

I am most excited for the events tomorrow as Mr. Cunningham visit UAT. I need some CyberSec students to make sure he gets to see our cave.

Mr. Cunningham will be in the theater at UAT from 2:30pm to 4:30pm on Wednesday March 7th .
Come out to see him talk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham

Evil Gooey Mirco Brownie

Evil Gooey Mirco Brownie

In a 12 oz coffee mug whisk together:

2 T Vegetable oil

2 T Water or coffee

1/4 tsp. Vanilla extract

Add and whisk:

dash salt

2T Unsweetened cocoa powder or hot chocolate mix

2 - 4T Granulated sugar

4T Flour

Microwave for 45 - 70 seconds makes a molten evil gooey brownie. Center should be molten.

Enjoy with a spoon and a scoop of ice cream. Warning: Brownie will be HOT!

Crowd Sourced Pentesting

Google is hosting its Pwn2Own competition again and offering 1 million dollars in total prizes for those that can remotely commandeer a full patched Chrome browser running on Windows 7. Finding a "Full Chrome Exploit," obtaining user account persistence using only bugs in the browser itself will net the $60k prize. Using webkits, flash, or a driver-based exploit can only earn the lesser amounts.

Without major flaws the Chrome developers have a harder time finding where the browser needs to be improved. It is a pretty cool concept and opportunity. Not only are they open to anyone taking a stab at their browser, they'll reward you hansomly as well. Not to mention it would be a great bullet point on a resume ;)

source:
http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/60000-for-exploiting-google-chrome.html

CDFAE

The DoD CyberCrime Center is creating a institutional certification much like the CAE/IA. The

National Centers of Digital Forensics Academic Excellence Program

is affectionately known as CDFAE (C D Fay). UAT is exploring this as a forensic credential. Check out the mission and the website at:

Develop a partnership between academia and the government to establish standards and best practices for digital forensics practitioners, educators, and researchers to advance the discipline of Digital Forensics and increase the number of qualified professionals to meet the needs of law enforcement, counterintelligence, national defense and legal communities.

http://www.dc3.mil/cdfae/

What is a System and Network Administrator?

I only wish my mother understood this excerpt because it would make my life sooooo much easier.

An excerpt from the book preface of

The Practice of System and Network Administration

What Is an SA?

If you asked six system administrators to define their jobs, you would get seven different answers. The job is difficult to define because system administrators do so many things. An SA looks after computers, networks, and the people who use them. An SA may look after hardware, operating systems, software, configurations, applications, or security. A system administrator

influences how effectively other people can or do use their computers and networks.

A system administrator sometimes needs to be a business-process consultant, corporate visionary, janitor, software engineer, electrical engineer, economist, psychiatrist, mindreader, and, occasionally, a bartender.

As a result, companies calls SAs different names. Sometimes, they are called network administrators, system architects, system engineers, system programmers, operators and so on.

This book is for “all of the above.”

We have a very general definition of system administrator: one who manages computer and network systems on behalf of another, such as an employer or a client. SAs are the people who make things work and keep it all running.

The book "The Practice of Network and System Administration" on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/product-description/0321492668

Syrian President's Email Compromised

So i was in my cloud computing class the other day when i over heard one of my friends talking about the Syrian Presidents email being hacked. I thought, wow... must have been some elaborate hack to pull that off. But then i remembered the hacker that compromised Sarah Palin's email not too long ago via a simple wiki search and figuring out her secret question. I decided to look into it and as it turns out, it was certainly not an elaborate hack. The president of Syria had been using the password, '12345'

In our field it is common knowledge not to use such weak passwords but it seems some people still missed that memo. It was an interesting occurrence and im surprised it took this long to reveal that a nations president had such little focus on his communications security. I guess this is a good example of job security for us :)

http://www.techspot.com/news/47364-anonymous-hacks-syrian-presidents-email-reveals-weak-password.html

I love TED Talks ...

I love TED Talks ... Have you seen this one?

The speaker is Misha Glenny - a British journalist who leaves no stone unturned in his underworld investigations of criminal globalization. AND he loves HACKERS!

...from the TED Talk abstract: Despite multibillion-dollar investments in cybersecurity, one of its root problems has been largely ignored: who are the people who write malicious code? He tells the stories and profiles several convicted hacker/coders from around the world and reaches a startling conclusion.

njoy!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/misha_glenny_hire_the_hackers.html

NatGeo: Inside the NSA: America's Cyber Secrets

“Inside the NSA” aired on National Geographic on Monday, 30 JAN at 2100 (9:00pm). The camera crew was out at the NSA filming last year. I had several reports from UAT alumni that saw them walking around the buildings and filming.
Below is the link to the trailer to Nat Geo TV special
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/all-videos/av-11592-11792/ngc-welcome-to-the-nsa/
The National Geographic TV special “Inside the NSA” seems to be running regularly on the Nat Geo TV. Below is the excerpt from the Nat Geo TV site.

Inside the NSA: America's Cyber Secrets

For decades, the U.S. government refused to acknowledge the very existence of the National Security Agency (NSA). And its still considered one of the most secretive intelligence agencies in the world. But thats about to change. With the first access given to a documentary film crew since 9/11, National Geographic goes Inside the NSA for a new one-hour special to demystify the modern-day spy agency.

ISSA UAT Scholarship

Great news for UAT CyberSecurity students!
Last week UAT was honored at the Phoenix ISSA quarterly chapter meeting with $2000 scholarship. This year Phoenix ISSA generously doubled their Spring scholarship contribution.
This means more Phoenix ISSA scholarship opportunity for the UAT CyberSecurity Students.

UAT loves ISSA!!

phoenix.issa.org

Look to the UAT foundation for how to apply for the scholarship.

Best
Shelley