TaoSecurity Blog

Longtime readers know that I have no problem with foreign countries replacing American vendors with local alternatives. For example, see Five Reasons I Want China Running Its Own Software . This is not a universal principle, but as an American I am fine with it. Putting my computer network operations (CNO) hat on, I want to share a few thoughts about the intersection of the anti-American vendor mindset with the recent Spectre and Meltdown attacks . There are probably non-Americans, who, for a variety of reasons, feel that it would be "safer" for them to run their cloud computing workloads on non-American infrastructure. Perhaps they feel that it puts their data beyond the reach of the American Department of Justice. (I personally feel that it's an over-reach by DoJ to try to access data beyond American borders, eg Microsoft Corp. v. United States .) The American intelligence community and computer network operators, however, might prefer to have that data outside Am...

On Friday the Obama administration secured its second win toward establishing a new norm in cyberspace. The  Joint Fact Sheet  published by the White House includes the following language: "no country should conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or other confidential business information with the intent of providing competitive advantages to its companies or commercial sectors ;" (emphasis added) This excerpt, as well as other elements of the agreement, mirror words which I covered in my Brookings piece To Hack, Or Not to Hack ? I recommend reading that article to get my full take on the importance of this language, including the bold elements. It's likely many readers don't think of South Korea as an economic threat to the US. While South Korean operations are conducted at a fraction of the scale of their Chinese neighbors, ROK spies still remain busy. In January Shane Harris wrote a great story titled  Our ...

I just read Justice Department trains prosecutors to combat cyber espionage by Sari Horowitz, writing for the Washington Post. The article makes several interesting points: Confronting a growing threat to national security, the Justice Department has begun training hundreds of prosecutors to combat and prosecute cyber espionage and related crimes, according to senior department officials. The new training is part of a major overhaul following an internal review that pinpointed gaps in the department’s ability to identify and respond to potential terrorist attacks over the Internet and to the rapidly growing crime of cyber espionage, the officials said, describing it for the first time. In recent weeks, Justice has begun training more than 300 lawyers in Washington and nearly 100 more across the county in the legal and technical skills needed to confront the increase in cyber threats to national security... Under the reorganization, teams of specialized lawyers within NSD in Wa...

Thanks to the show Asia Biz Today I learned of an industrial espionage case involving South Korea, Israel, and China. In brief, agents of the South Korean branch of an Israeli company stole technology from two South Korean companies, and passed the loot to Chinese and Taiwanese companies. On June 27th the Yonhap news agency in South Korea reported the following: Key technologies to manufacture advanced flat-panel displays at Samsung Mobile Display and LG Display have been leaked by an local unit of an Israeli company, local prosecutors said Wednesday, raising concerns the leakage could pose a major threat to the national interest. The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office indicted under physical detention three employees at the local unit of an Israeli inspection equipment supplier, including a 36-year-old man surnamed Kim, on charges of leaking key local technologies used to produce active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays and white organic lig...

Thanks again to the latest SANS NewsBites , I learned of an interesting trade secret theft case . From the CNET News story : "John O'Neil, former CEO of Business Engine Software, pleaded guilty in a San Francisco federal court on Wednesday to conspiracy to download and steal the trade secrets of software competitor Niku over a 10-month period... From October 2001 until July 2002, Business Engine used the passwords to gain unauthorized access to Niku's systems more than 6,000 times and downloaded over 1,000 confidential documents containing trade secrets, the complaint alleged. The stolen documents included technical specifications, product designs, prospective customers, customer proposals, client account information and pricing. Niku discovered the break-in after a Business Engine salesman made an unsolicited call to one of Niku's prospective clients, a Nike employee who happened to be related to Niku's chief information officer, Warren Leggett. The call raised...