#PJNET ALERT: State Department and White House Networks Hacked at the Same Time

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Aliya SternsteinNextgovNovember 16, 2014

The email system was compromised in recent weeks, at the same time as a White House network, and officials took the State system offline Friday, according to department officials

Aliya Sternstein reports on cybersecurity and homeland security systems. She’s covered technology for more than a decade at such publications as National Journal's Technology Daily, Federal Computer Week and Forbes. Before joining Government Executive, Sternstein covered agriculture and derivatives ...Full Bio

The maintenance has disrupted email traffic of State employees and the ability to access public websites, a senior department official told Nextgov on Sunday afternoon. State expects systems to be back up soon.

It is believed hackers backed by a nation state, likely Russia or China, infiltrated the White House system in September or October. Officials were still working to suppress abnormal behavior on that network as recently as late October.

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New Malware Attacks 600 Merchants By Donna TapelliniPublished

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By Donna Tapellini

Published July 31, 2014

Consumer Reports

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Retailers, restaurants, and other businesses have a new form of malware to fight, called Backoff. This latest form of cybercrime attacks remote-desktop applications that are used by point-of-sale systems, picking up credit cards and other consumer information along the way.

Details about Backoff were released today in a report by the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service. The malware is so new that anti-virus programs don't yet have the signatures to detect it.

About 600 brick-and-mortar businesses, large and small, were affected by the malware, according to Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager for Trustwave, a security company that helped uncover the malware. Names of the businesses have not been released yet, since a criminal investigation is ongoing

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/07/31/new-malware-attacks-600-merchants/