Obama orders review of cyber security

Barack Obama has ordered a review of America's cyber defence strategy, opening the possibility of a wholesale change to the country's approach to online security. At the moment, a wide spread of agencies are involved in protecting the US from attack over the internet, including the Department of Homeland Security, National Security Council and the various branches of the military. That situation could be simplified, according to the results of the 60-day review announced by the White House yesterday. "The national security and economic health of the United States depend on the security, stability, and integrity of our nation's cyberspace, both in the public and private sectors," said John Brennan, Obama's assistant for counterterrorism and homeland security, in a statement. "The president is confident that we can protect our nation's critical cyber infrastructure while at the same time adhering to the rule of law and safeguarding privacy rights and civil liberties." The review will be overseen by Melissa Hathaway, a former consultant who was a high-ranking cyber security adviser to the Bush administration. She will temporarily take on the role of senior director of cyberspace until the completion of her work in April. The appraisal intends to measure precisely what online security measures are being taken, as well as point towards possible changes. It could eventually mean the White House is more involved in cyber security decisions – as well as bringing more power to national security adviser General Jim Jones. Online security is a growing concern for governments around the world, particularly as critical infrastructures such as communications, finance and transport become more reliant on the internet to work. According to former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell, the potential for chaos caused by an online attack on the US is enormous. "If you get in our systems and you're trying to destroy banking records or electric power distribution or transportation, it could have a debilitating effect on the country," he told reporters recently.

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Obama orders review of cyber security

Michael Cross on Wales’s Individual Health Record system

In an echo of his predecessor John F Kennedy, Barack Obama has set his nation a massive technological challenge. In his first weekly presidential broadcast, he pledged: "We'll computerise the nation's health record in five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives." Compared with Kennedy's 1961 ambition to send a man to the moon "before the decade is out", the goal of computerising health data may seem unheroic. However, in many ways it is a more daunting challenge. The moon programme was a triumph of human endeavour, but it was based on rock-solid principles: in 1961, scientists knew exactly where the moon would be nine years hence and roughly how they would go about getting there. Moving target Experts planning the computerised health record enjoy no such certainty. The "nation's health record" does not even exist as an entity today and it would be foolhardy to predict what it will look like in five years' time. For a lesson in how to manage the programme, Obama might do well to look across the Atlantic. Not to the NHS in England, where a £13bn-programme is this year reeling from its latest parliamentary battering, but to Wales. Earlier this month, Edwina Hart, the Welsh assembly's health minister, approved a plan to extend a system called the Individual Health Record (IHR) across the country. The decision comes seven years after the equivalent announcement in England, but no one need apologise for the delay. The Welsh IT team says that, by eschewing political deadlines and working with the NHS rather than trying to impose technology, it has created an electronic medical record that is not only more useful than its English equivalent but will cost a fraction of the price. The secret, says Gwyn Thomas, chief executive of the agency Informing Healthcare, is to listen to users. The contrast with the gung-ho English programme, now enervated by contractual rows and political grandstanding, is graphic. In the latest report, the chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, Edward Leigh MP, said: "Essential systems are late, or, when deployed, do not meet expectations of clinical staff; estimates of local costs are still unreliable; and many NHS staff remain unenthusiastic." Wales and England started off with the same goal - to make computerised medical records available where they are needed. However, the two countries went about it in wildly different ways. In England, the NHS took it for granted that the right technology was available and that staff were enthusiastic about adopting it. The central challenge was seen to be procuring the technology on the best terms, and implementing it to timetable

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Michael Cross on Wales's Individual Health Record system

Philips ad pokes fun at George Bush

Electronics brand Philips has capitalised on the inauguration of Barack Obama as US president with a national press campaign featuring George W Bush and its "Power4Life" electronic charger with the strapline "For whenever you lose power". The ad, a one-off tactical campaign timed to coincide with Obama's presidential inauguration in Washington DC, is running in national newspapers across the UK today. Philips' ad, created by ad agency DDB London, features a head shot of Bush who looks as if it has only just dawned on him that he no longer holds the most powerful job in the world. "To focus on Bush losing power while everyone is witnessing Obama gaining it, gives us huge impact," said Neil Dawson, global creative director on the Philips account at DDB London. "It was a tactical opportunity that was too good to miss." The ad promotes Philips' Power4Life "all-in-one portable charger" that allows users to power up devices, such as iPods and mobile phones, from one point. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Philips ad pokes fun at George Bush

Windows virus infects 9m computers

The number of Windows computers infected with the new "downadup" worm – also known as "Conficker" and "Kido" – has exploded to almost 9 million worldwide, from roughly 2.4m last Thursday, according to the computer security company F-Secure. The growth in the number of infected machines – which the company's researchers called " just amazing " – makes it one of the worst malware outbreaks of the past five years. The principal targets are corporate Windows servers belonging to small businesses who have not installed security updates released by Microsoft last October. F-Secure estimates that a third of all potentially vulnerable systems have not had the update. But antivirus researchers are still unsure of the precise purpose of the malware, which is spreading via the internet, through unpatched corporate networks and through USB memory sticks attached to infected computers. First discovered last October, downadup loads itself on to a computer by exploiting a weakness in Windows servers. Although the weakness was noticed and fixed by Microsoft last October , not enough people with vulnerable machines – including those running Windows XP and Vista – have installed it. The worm can infect USB sticks and any corporate laptop that gets infected could then launch attacks if it was later connected to a home network. The reason for the explosion in infected machines seems to be a new variant which appeared last week, updated by the hackers who wrote the original. The new one attempts to crack the passwords of machines on a network using the computing power of the infected machine to apply a "brute force" approach – so that passwords such as "admin", "password" or "123456" on potential target machines will quickly be broken. Once it has infected a machine, the software also tries to connect to up to 250 different domains with random names every day. Researchers reckon that one of them will be the intended "control" domain, and that when the computers connect to it they will download a fresh program that will take over the infected computer. "This makes it impossible and/or impractical for us good guys to shut them all down – most of them are never registered in the first place," the F-Secure team noted on its weblog

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Windows virus infects 9m computers

A decade later, maybe TechCrunch’s version of the WebPad could catch on

It's not often bloggers get into PC design, but TechCrunch has just updated us on what it's now calling the CrunchPad. It says: The idea is to get a new type of device into people's hands for as cheap as possible (we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic). It fits perfectly on your lap while you are sitting in front of the TV, so you can look up stuff on Wikipedia or IMDB as you channel surf. Fair enough, except for the bit about it being a "new type of device". It's actually an old type of device, tried previously in the Geode chip-based WebPad reference design and Microsoft's Windows CE-based Companion ideas. National Semiconductor was showing the reference design for its WebPad back in November 1998, which shows just how far TechCrunch is behind the times. In a feature in November 2000 , I wrote that: More recently there have been attempts to sell tablet computers as mobile "internet appliances" (IA). This trend started at Comdex two years ago, when National Semiconductor unveiled a reference design for the WebPad as a way of encouraging sales of its Intel-compatible Geode processor (see http://ia.national.com). It was continued last year, when Gates demonstrated "MSN companions" during his keynote speech, using a Compaq device.

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A decade later, maybe TechCrunch's version of the WebPad could catch on

Friday Afternoon Question - match celebs with gadgets

A significant proportion of the leftynet came grinding to a halt this week with the sacreligious news that US president-elect Barack Obama might own a Zune . "WTF Obama?" the hordes cried, weeping into their HOPE T-shirts. "Surely he's too cool to be a Zune guy?" It was almost an amusing little subversion of Apple's Mac v PC ads, in which you might expect Obama — who's worshipped for repackaging the obvious with a bit of flash — to play an iPod, while George W Bush would act out his part as Zune: the unloved puppet of an evil empire, and frankly the sort of thing that we'd prefer to forget ever existed in the first place. Hmmm. Which leads me, in a squiggly fashion, to this week's Friday Afternoon Question. Well, it's more of a challenge, I suppose. Describe a famous person as a gadget, and make it funny I'm hoping for some good ones. If you get stuck, feel free to stretch the definition of gadget to include anything geeky. Or the definition of "famous person". Best answer wins a picture of Obama looking cool . Gadgets Politics and technology guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Friday Afternoon Question - match celebs with gadgets

Foreign governments attack White House, Obama, McCain campaign systems

Hmm, anyone want to place bets on what "foreign entity" has been hacking into Obama and McCain campaign computers, as Newsweek reports?

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Foreign governments attack White House, Obama, McCain campaign systems

Rigged PDFs exploiting just-patched Adobe Reader flaw

Just three days after Adobe shipped a patch with fixes for a critical Adobe Reader vulnerability, hackers are using booby-trapped PDF files to fire exploits against Windows users. [ SEE: Heads up: Patch your Adobe Reader now ] The in-the-wild attacks, first spotted by...

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Rigged PDFs exploiting just-patched Adobe Reader flaw

‘Highly critical’ vulnerabilities in VLC media player

A pair of "highly critical" vulnerabilities in the cross-platform VLC Media Player could put millions of users at risk of remote code execution attacks, according to a warning from security researchers. The issues, reported in versions 0.5.0 through 0.9.5, could let hackers take complete control of compromised...

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'Highly critical' vulnerabilities in VLC media player

Obama community blog redirecting to malware

Hot on the heels of yesterday's Obama-related spam campaign comes the discovery that attackers are redirecting people from an official Barack Obama website to malware when they search for anti-virus to address the threat. During the course of follow-up research on the Obama malware blast, Sascha...

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Obama community blog redirecting to malware

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