Here in the Netherlands, we’ve seen a proposal for new legislation regarding Cybercrime pop up occasionally for well over a year now. It is coming up for a formal vote by the Senate (Eerste Kamer) on October 7th and was topic for debate on the 24th of September. The proposed law “Wet Computercriminaliteit III” in…
As published on Tripwire’s State of Security: The revelations regarding the extensive digital intelligence gathering programs of the American National Security Agency by Edward Snowden won’t have escaped your notice. Since the first reports around June 5th of 2013, the hits have not stopped coming; each consecutive unveiling being of…
When Edward Snowden published information on PRISM – a rather drastic intelligence gathering program in which several (assume All) government agencies such as the FBI and the NSA draw intelligence from major tech companies such as Microsoft, Skype and Facebook – he was immediately revered and reviled by the general…
With all the attention pointed towards PRISM, another interesting publication was virtually overlooked. Earlier last month, a taskforce belonging to the US DoD’s Defense Science Board (DSB) released a final report titled “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat” [PDF], that reports on the findings of an 18-month research…
If you don’t live in the Netherlands or don’t happen to have a Dutch bank account, you can certainly be forgiven for not having caught wind of the major banking woes that have been plaguing the Dutch. For weeks now, massive DDoS attacks (linked article in Dutch) have brought low…
Early in February of 2013, many news outlets came out with articles about the US Government having a ‘secret legal review‘ on the use of its cyber-arsenal. This legal review concluded that the US government could launch a cyber attack against a threatening nation if the country needed to defend…
Recently I received a most interesting link from a friend, about a tiny city that was actually a perfect working model of a real-life city built by the SANS Institute. It had real banking networks, power grid networks, public transit systems, a hospital, a military complex, you name it. It’s…
In December of last year, the German public prosecutors’ office had declared that there was no legal basis for the use of the so-called “Bundestrojaner” spyware, which was used to spy on German citizens. On top of it being illegally used, it was also found to be of very poor…
I recently had a very interesting conversation with Dave Hyman of Checkmarx, who asked me how I saw the future of cyber security (or information security, take your pick). Now, as I’m sure you´ll agree with me, that’s a fairly abstract question that can go a lot of ways. My…
Recently a research project by the Amsterdam University [PDF Alert] revealed that US law allows for the US government to access information stored in the Cloud, by (ab)using the PATRIOT act. Multiple Dutch politicians have started asking questions from state secretary Teeven of the Justice department as to whether he…
