As the furor over thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables intercepted and spread to news organizations by WikiLeaks continues, the corporate IT world is surely looking inward for lessons to be learned.

The site was accessible again on Tuesday, reportedly going through a rented server in the U.S. after it came under apparent attack from hackers who blocked it in the U.S. and Europe.

‘Attack on International Community’

Former President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in on the fallout Monday.

In a webcast discussion with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Bush said “leaks are very damaging, and people who leak ought to be prosecuted.” And Clinton said the disclosure of documents by WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange in 2006 and owned by the Sunshine Press, “is not just an attack on America’s foreign-policy interests [but] an attack on the international community — the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations, that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity,” according to USA Today.

The Obama administration has ordered a review of all government communication procedures and vowed to prosecute anyone who leaks classified information.

But what can private IT teams do to safeguard their internally classified information from some future corporate WikiLeaks?

Not much, according to Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity school in Bethesda, Md.

“You cannot simply say ‘Don’t trust the users,’” Paller said. “I suppose the best advice is that data-leakage and data-transfer monitoring is worth the money — much like a security camera — to raise the chance that a thief could get caught.”

Guard Your PDFs

Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-It, said the real lesson of WikiLeaks, which exposed thousands of documents on the wars in Iran and Afghanistan last summer in the biggest security breach in U.S. history before this month’s diplomatic cable release,…

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The United States on Saturday responded with counter proposals to a letter from WikiLeaks requesting information about the persons mentioned in the thousands of documents set for release by the website.

Citing WikiLeaks’ request for information regarding individuals who may be at “significant risk of harm” in a letter to U.S. Ambassador Louis B. Susman, U.S. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh wrote back, “We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. government classified materials.”

“As you know, if any of the materials you intend to publish were provided by any government officials, or any intermediary without proper authorization, they were provided in violation of U.S. law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action,” Koh continued.

“It is our understanding from conversations with representatives from The New York Times, The Guardian [newspaper of Britain] and Der Speigel [newspaper of Germany], that WikiLeaks also has provided approximately 250,000 documents to each of them for publication, furthering the illegal dissemination of classified documents,” the State Department noted.

The State Department asked WikiLeaks to: “1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from WikiLeaks’ databases.”

On Wednesday the U.S. admitted preparations for another WikiLeaks release of classified U.S. documents that could harm relations with friendly countries around the world.

Stating that the release is believed to offer sensitive classified documents, P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman, told journalists then, “We’ve known all along that WikiLeaks has in its possession State Department cables. We are prepared if this upcoming tranche of documents includes State Department cables.”

The U.S. diplomatic missions are informing other countries to do damage control as Crowley admitted, “We are in touch with our posts around the world. They have begun the process of notifying governments that release of documents is possible in the near future.”

Typical diplomatic cables contain analyses of situations, as well as records of discussions between U.S. diplomats and foreign officials in what Crowley called “diplomacy in action.”

“Inherent in this day-to-day action is trust that we can convey our perspective to other governments in confidence and that they can convey their perspective on events to us,” Crowley said at a short off-camera briefing, adding, “And when this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television and radio it has an impact.”

Crowley also informed the journalists that the State Department would be informing U.S. lawmakers about the situation arising out the leaks, saying, “Many of you are aware, we have had similar conversations with members of the Hill to let them know what we are prepared for. This is going to be unhelpful.”

The WikiLeaks release is expected to be the largest leak ever of classified documents.

In October, WikiLeaks published nearly 400,000 classified U.S. military documents related to the war in Iraq, but WikiLeaks said on Twitter last Sunday that the next one will be seven times the size of the Iraq War logs.

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Cairo, Egypt (TML) – How many Egyptians are there? Do they have enough hospitals and doctors to serve them? How many kilometers of paved roads cover the country? How many children will start school next year?

National statistics are the foundation of government policy and planning. But the quality of Egypt’s statistical data is so poor that officials are in many cases driving blindfolded, a government think tank says.

“Information Gaps in Egyptian Statistics and the Quality of Basic Data,” a report released by the Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), argues that policy makers are unable to use locally published data to analyze and devise social and economic policies.

“We asked researchers, businessmen and decision makers whether the information they receive suits their needs,” Muhammad Ramadan, executive director of IDSC, told The Media Line. “The producers of statistics always say there is no problem, but clearly there is.”

Egypt is ruled by a sprawling bureaucracy organized in 37 ministries and scores more agencies, but the armies of officials often ail to deliver on basic services. The World Economic Forum annual competitiveness report ranks Egypt 79th among 139 countries worldwide for excessive regulation and 68th for government transparency.

The report’s authors questioned 51 local experts in fields such as economics, management and statistics working in both the private and government sectors. It was the first time anyone questioned the users of statistical information, rather than the people who produce them.

The experts criticized not only the low quality of available data, but also the legal and bureaucratic difficulties in obtaining official information.

The information gap in Egypt runs very deep indeed. According to the report, no reliable data exist on Egypt’s population; with some government studies claiming there are as few as 80 million and others estimating it at 85 million. The World Bank, for instance, claims that Egypt’s population is 83 million, while the United Nations World Health Organization puts it at just under 77 million.

The Egyptian health sector seems to be a statistical black hole. No reliable information exists on the spread of disease throughout the country, on the prevalence of public health risks such as AIDS, or the effectiveness of government-funded health services, the report notes.

In many cases, experts must rely on data provided by international organizations such as the UN, since official Egyptian statistics are often kept from the public on national security grounds. Sometimes, government clerks demand exorbitant amounts of money for disclosing information, the report said.

“We believe in evidence-based policy making,” Muhammad Ramadan the Media Line. “Without reliable information, it is impossible to make good decisions.”

The new report revealed three major information deficiencies: it is often out of date, its quality is low and the public has limited access to it.

“We should treat information production as any other industry,” Ramadan said. “The number of companies producing statistics in Egypt is very small. Government should encourage the private sector and universities to produce more statistics.”

Walid Kazziha, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, said he wasn’t surprised by the finding, which he said indicated a deep-rooted cultural problem.

“Egyptian society is in a deep crisis,” Kazziha told The Media Line. “Having a government without statistics means we could end up with a semi-failed state.”

Kazziha said government policies were often flawed, not only because of bad data but also because people don’t provide reliable information to government survey takers. He added that Egyptians didn’t give much weight to statistical information.

“People need to become more responsible,” he said. “They need a sense of purpose and more satisfaction with their job. We don’t have this in Egypt right now.”

However, not all sectors in Egypt suffered from information deficiency, Kazziha said.

“The security apparatus seams to be very aware and alert,” he said. “I don’t think we’re going to have a 9/11 in Egypt.”

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London, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – Officials of the Thames Valley District School Board ordered a tightening of internet security over the weekend after the passwords of 27,000 high school students were exposed.

The students’ passwords, grades and schedules were made available on a page on popular social networking site Facebook. After the incident, which took place Wednesday, the board temporarily shut down the website the following day.

The computer system upgrade is expected to be finished in a few weeks. The upgrade would encrypt the passwords and webpages for students.

Valerie Nielsen, superintendent of education responsible for information technology of the board, advised students who use the same passwords in their other accounts, such as private emails or other social networking sites, to change their password information as soon as possible.

Police from London, Ontario, are probing how the hacking was done.

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At the International Serious and Organised Crime 2010 event, the Australian Crime Commission’s (ACC) CEO, John Lawler, gave an excellent address on the topic of cyber security in today’s world and the many and varied threats affecting us all that are all too real. The entire talk called “The Fifth Estate: Organised Crime Goes Virtual” is available to read at the ACC’s website and makes for fascinating and sobering reading, delving into the deeply reaching tendrils of cloud computing which unify all kinds of information, the threat from mobile devices, new ways to police online crime, the sophistication of malware, the underground economy and much more. In the course of the address, Mr Lawler talked about threats from the mobile world, noting a Sydney Morning Herald article which “reported on the massive uptake of the iPhone particularly in the business market where it is the third most used system in the world and is being deployed or piloted by more than 70 per cent of Fortune 100 companies”, and followed this up by saying “Yet IT managers are swimming against the phone’s tide of popularity because they can’t centralise installation and security updates as with other software.” It’s true that phones such as the BlackBerry and those running Windows Mobile 6.5 have been much easier for IT admins to administer, but it has to be said that Apple has been dramatically improving enterprise support and interoperability with each version and must continue doing so to remain competitive and secure in a business environment. Mr Lawler continues: “This overwhelming desire for instant services at the expense of security safeguards is something I’ll return to in a moment. “But aside from the potential to facilitate traditional crimes using these devices, for example, by spreading spam, there is a growing criminal movement targeting such devices directly. “In May this year Italian customs agents broke up a phony iPhone ring selling fake Chinese-made iPhones having correctly predicted that organised crime groups would invest in such activities as a less risky way than drug trafficking to reap big revenues. “In August this year, London police arrested nine people and seized one thousand iPhones as they uncovered a criminal network that was using premium phone lines to launder profits and hide identities.” Continued on page two, please read on!

Mr Lawler makes a comment on the iMob game and what might be inspiring the game and who might be behind it. He then says: “So with the explosive uptake of personal communication devices, there are certainly already opportunities that appeal to organised criminals. “The future will undoubtedly bring even more opportunities, particularly as the buzzword is convergence and strategists predict that so much of our information, entertainment and even our body data, our emotions and senses could be streamed through one, individual and embedded device. “What will organised crime make of that?” There’s much, much more to John Lawler’s article, and it’s definitely worth reading. However it must be said that iPhone security should be much stronger than that of most competing devices. Unless an unpatched vulnerability is discovered and withheld so it can be used en masse against anyone online criminals want to target, as was possible with the iPad OS 3.2.1 and iPhone OS 4.0.x versions through a PDF vulnerability that could be exploited from a web page, unmodified iPhones only run software available from the Apple store, and not unknown third party sources. Unknown and unpatched vulnerabilities are popping up all the time in software, fixed through updates, so the chance that online criminals are finding these and exploiting them before they are patched is not only very high, it already happens – zero day threats are real, after all. There could be DNS cache poisoning to capture some information from iPhones connected to rogue Wi-Fi hotspots, but then any device could be vulnerable to such an attack, especially if VPN software isn’t being used on such a connection. After all, if a thief wants to break into your house, most fancy door locks won’t stand up to being ramraided with a 4WD car, even if they will stop a boot. But we can all still do things to have as much security as possible, such as not jailbreaking your iDevice, being aware of phishing and other social engineering tricks and running the latest Internet security software on platforms that need it. Jailbroken iPhones have been vulnerable in the past when default passwords weren’t changed, and there could easily be malicious unauthorised iPhone software out there targeting jailbroken devices, but these are not the majority of devices that are used in an unmodified fashion. So… online security is something that has not only become extremely important, but a vastly profitable battlefield for online criminals, and one that countries around the world are having to take extremely seriously. It’s not your phone, but every aspect of your digital life that you have to think of, because it’s not just governments and corporations that want to track you, but online criminals too, who can do a much better job of ripping you off and screwing around with your life than the various governments and corporations in our lives already do!

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Pentagon came out strongly on Friday denouncing the leakage of thousands of classified documents as WikiLeaks announced it on its website, “WikiLeaks released the largest classified military leak in history. The 391,832 reports (“The Iraq War Logs”), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army.”

“We deplore Wikileaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies.

“We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large,” said Geoff Morrell, chief spokesman for the Pentagon.

“Each is a ‘SIGACT’ or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout,” WikiLeaks noted in its release confirming the sensitive nature of documents.

“By disclosing such sensitive information, Wikileaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us,” Morrell adding, reiterating, “The only responsible course of action for Wikileaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their websites as soon as possible.”

According to WikiLeaks, the reports cited 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 “civilians”; 23,984 “enemy” (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 “host nation” (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 ‘”friendly” (coalition forces).

The document cited by WikiLeaks say that Iraq war is five times more lethal than Afghanistan as the “Afghan War Diaries,” previously released by WikiLeaks, covering the same period, detail the deaths of some 20,000 people.

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