headlines

January 31, 2012

New Podcast Released
Protecting the internet and its users against cyber attacks requires a significant increase in the number of skilled cyber warriors.

January 26, 2012

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The Entry "Insider Threat Control: Using a SIEM signature to detect potential precursors to IT Sabotage" has been posted.

January 20, 2012

Spotlight On: Malicious Insiders and Organized Crime Activity
This TN is the fifth article in the Spotlight On quarterly series published by the CERT Insider Threat Center.

January 16, 2012

CERT Program Improves Security in C Programming Language Standard
The CERT Secure Coding team made key contributions to the newest ISO/IEC C language standard.

January 5, 2012

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "CNAME flux" has been posted.

December 22, 2011

Using Defined Processes as a Context for Resilience Measures Technical Note Released
This technical note describes how implementation-level processes can help organizations define measures of operational resilience.

December 20, 2011

New Podcast Released
Electronic health records bring many benefits along with security and privacy challenges.

December 19, 2011

Standards-Based Automated Remediation 2011 Update Released
This report updates the development of standards for remediation of vulnerabilities and compliance issues on Department of Defense networked systems for 2011.

December 15, 2011

Insider Threat Control Released
Insider Threat Control: Using a SIEM Signature to Detect Potential Precursors to IT Sabotage presents a technique for detecting potential insider sabotage over an organization's network.

December 15, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Preparing for Negative Workplace Events - Managing Employee Expectations" has been posted.

November 16, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Controls" has been posted.

October 17, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Data Exfiltration and Output Devices - An Overlooked Threat" has been posted.

October 14, 2011

CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java Book Published
The CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java has been published by Addison-Wesley Professional.

October 12, 2011

New Insider Threat Demonstration Series Launched
The CERT Insider Threat Center has released the first video in a series of insider threat demonstrations.

October 12, 2011

Insider Threat Control Technical Note Released
This technical note describes how organizations can use Splunk to detect insider theft of intellectual property.

October 6, 2011

Agenda Now Available for Upcoming Workshop
The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) and the CERT Program will present the workshop "Cyber Security CPR: Coordinated Private Response to Computer Security Incidents" in Arlington, VA on October 12-13. See the web page for a link to the agenda.

October 4, 2011

New Podcast Released
Measures of operational resilience should answer key questions, inform decisions, and affect behavior.

September 29, 2011

Community College Education Report Published
The fourth volume in the Software Assurance Curriculum Project focuses on community college courses for software assurance.

September 23, 2011

2010 CERT Research Report Published
The CERT Program is internationally known for developing practices and technologies to protect, detect, and respond to attacks, accidents, and failures on networked systems. This report describes progress in our innovative research projects and activities.

September 23, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "Challenges in Network Monitoring above the Enterprise" has been published.

September 6, 2011

New Podcast Released
Use of Domain Name System security extensions can help prevent website hijacking attacks.

September 6, 2011

Registration Open for Webinar and Workshop
The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) and the CERT Program will present the workshop "Cyber Security CPR: Coordinated Private Response to Computer Security Incidents" in Arlington, VA on October 12-13. There is a pre-event webinar on September 8. See the workshop web page for links to online registration forms.

August 15, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "The CERT Insider Threat Database" has been posted.

August 15, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "The CERT Insider Threat Database" has been posted.

August 11, 2011

Keeping Your Family Safe in a Highly Connected World
As our world becomes highly connected where endless data is just a click away and using networked devices has become almost a necessity, protecting your personal information and family privacy is of great concern.

August 5, 2011

Measures for Managing Operational Resilience Technical Report Published
In this technical report Resilient Enterprise Management (REM) team members suggest a set of top ten strategic measures for managing operational resilience.

August 2, 2011

New Podcast Released
Depending on the service model, cloud providers and customers can monitor and implement controls to better protect their sensitive information.

July 21, 2011

Standards-Based Automated Remediation Special Report Released
This report describes the development of standards for remediation of vulnerabilities and compliance issues on Department of Defense networked systems.

July 21, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Theft of Intellectual Property and Tips for Prevention" has been published.

July 13, 2011

Request for Proposal - SEI Code Review Process
The SEI is issuing a Request for Proposal seeking interested organizations with experience performing web penetration and source code audits in systems developed in C#, Java, Ruby, Perl, Python, JavaScript, and PHP.

July 12, 2011

New Podcast Released
Analyzing malware is essential to assess the damage and reduce the impact associated with ongoing infection.

July 8, 2011

New CERT PGP Key
CERT has updated its PGP key. We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information.

June 27, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Deep Dive: Theft of Intellectual Property" has been posted.

June 9, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "Signed Java and Cisco AnyConnect" has been posted.

June 3, 2011

A Preliminary Model of Insider Theft of Intellectual Property Technical Note Published
This technical note presents research findings on insider theft of intellectual property.

June 2, 2011

CERT Used XNET for Forensics Challenge
This article describes the role that XNET played in the CERT Forensics Challenge, designed for the 2011 National Security Agency Cyber Defense Exercise.

May 19, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "Effectiveness of Microsoft Office File Validation" has been published.

May 10, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat and Physical Security of Organizations" has been published.

May 5, 2011

New Podcast Released
Over 100 electric power utilities are accelerating their transformation to the smart grid by using the Smart Grid Maturity Model.

May 3, 2011

New CERT Blogs Index
This main index page displays the ten most recent entries across all of our blogs. You can reach this page through the blogs link in the bottom navigation.

April 29, 2011

Trusted Computing in Embedded Systems Workshop Released
This SEI Special Report describes the November 2010 Trusted Computing in Embedded Systems Workshop held at Carnegie Mellon University.

April 28, 2011

Software Security Measurement and Analysis Presentation Released
Cyber Security Engineering researchers at CERT have released a presentation describing their Security Measurement and Analysis (SMA) Project.

April 26, 2011

SPREE Workshop
SPREE Workshop registration is now open. You can register by using this form (pdf).

April 13, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "A Security Comparison: Microsoft Office vs. Oracle Openoffice" has been published.

April 7, 2011

CERT Staff Presenting at SEPG Europe 2011
To reinforce the "Global Excellence in Software and Security" theme, CERT staff members are presenting tutorials on a variety of security topics.

April 6, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Best Practices from Industry" has been published.

March 29, 2011

New Podcast Released
Business leaders must address risk at the enterprise, business process, and system levels to effectively protect against today's and tomorrow's threats.

March 4, 2011

2011 CyberSecurity Watch Survey Released
The 2011 CyberSecurity Watch Survey press release and data sample have been released.

February 28, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "Announcing the CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework 2.0" has been published.

February 28, 2011

Function Extraction (FX) Research for Computation of Software Behavior Technical Report Released
This technical report discusses use of algorithms to compute overall malware behavior.

February 23, 2011

Risk and Resilience: Considerations for Information Security Risk Assessment and Management
Julia Allen and Jim Cebula gave this presentation at RSA Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California.

February 23, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threats in the Software Development Lifecycle" has been published.

February 22, 2011

New Podcast Released
Scenario-based exercises help organizations, governments, and nations prepare for, identify, and mitigate cyber risks.

February 21, 2011

New Insider Threat Presentation Published
"Combat IT Sabotage: Technical Solutions From The CERT Insider Threat Lab," presentated at RSA Conference 2011 in San Francisco, California, is now available.

February 21, 2011

An Analysis of Technical Observations in Insider Theft of Intellectual Property Cases Technical Note Published
This technical note provides an overview of techniques employed by malicious insiders to steal intellectual property.

February 16, 2011

Integrating the MSwA Reference Curriculum into the MSIS Model Curriculum Technical Note Published
This technical note examines how the MSwA Reference Curriculum recommendations might be integrated into the model curriculum recommendations for a MSIS degree.

February 14, 2011

New CERT/CC Blog Entry
The entry "'Network Monitoring for Web-Based Threats' released" has been published.

February 11, 2011

Changes to Vulnerability Analysis Blog
To allow for expansion into other technical areas, the Vulnerability Analysis Blog has been converted to the CERT/CC Blog.

February 10, 2011

Network Monitoring for Web-Based Threats Report Published
This report models the approach a focused attacker would take in order to breach an organization through web-based protocols and provides detection or prevention methods to counter that approach.

January 31, 2011

Security and Privacy Engineering (SPREE) Workshop Scheduled for June
The SPREE Workshop will be held at Carnegie Mellon University on June 15-16, 2011. Discussions will focus on security and privacy challenges associated with developing and maintaining software as data-driven technology continues to advance.

January 26, 2011

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Case Trends of Technical and Non-Technical Employees" has been published.

January 25, 2011

New Podcast Released
Technical controls may be effective in helping prevent, detect, and respond to insider crimes.

January 21, 2011

Trust and Trusted Computing Platforms Technical Note Published
This technical note examines the capabilities and limitations of hardware-based trusted platforms in general, and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) from the perspective of trusted applications in particular.

January 17, 2011

Deriving Candidate Technical Controls and Indicators of Insider Attack from Socio-Technical Models and Data Technical Note Published
This paper demonstrates how to extract and map technical information from previous insider crimes.

January 4, 2011

Software Supply Chain Risk Management Technical Note Published
This technical note considers current practices in software supply chain analysis and suggests foundational practices.

January 3, 2011

CERT Resilience Management Model Book Published
The CERT Resilience Management Model (CERT®-RMM) Version 1.1 has been published by Addison-Wesley Professional.

December 29, 2010

A Taxonomy of Operational Cyber Security Risks Published
This technical note presents a taxonomy of operational cyber security risks that attempts to identify and organize the sources of operational cyber security risk.

December 29, 2010

Source Code Analysis Laboratory (SCALe) for Energy Delivery Systems Report Published
The Source Code Analysis Laboratory (SCALe) is an operational capability that tests software applications for conformance to one of the CERT secure coding standards.

December 22, 2010

CERT Approach to Cybersecurity Workforce Development Report Published
This report presents a new, continuous approach to cybersecurity workforce development.

December 21, 2010

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Case Trends for Employee Type and Employment Status" has been published.

December 9, 2010

How Resilient Is My Organization?
Use the CERT Resilience Management Model (CERT-RMM) to help ensure that critical assets and services perform as expected in the face of stress and disruption.

December 6, 2010

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Upcoming Insider Threat Presentations" has been published.

December 3, 2010

CERT Career Fair Scheduled for January
Representatives from CERT will be in Arlington, VA on January 26-27 to meet with candidates interested in job opportunities. Applicants must submit resumes in advance for this appointment-only event.

December 3, 2010

Best Practices for National Cyber Security: Building a National Computer Security Incident Management Capability
This special report is the first in a series of best practices information that interested organizations and governments can use to begin to develop a national incident management capability.

November 30, 2010

New Podcast Released
Government agencies and private industry must build effective partnerships to secure national critical infrastructures.

November 19, 2010

Measuring Operational Resilience Using the CERT Resilience Management Model
This Technical Note is the first in a series of publications designed to start a dialog on the topic of meaningful measurement.

November 1, 2010

New CERT PGP Key
CERT has updated its PGP public key. We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information.

October 26, 2010

New Podcast Released
Knowledge about software assurance is essential to ensure that complex systems function as intended.

October 25, 2010

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Interesting Insider Threat Statistics" has been published.

October 22, 2010

FloCon 2011 Keynote Speaker Announced
John Stewart, vice president and chief security officer of Cisco, will deliver one of the keynote addresses at FloCon 2011.

October 22, 2010

FloCon 2011 Registration Open
Registration for FloCon 2011 is now open. The early bird registration fee will begin at $660.00 until November 22, 2010. Please use discount code FLOCONNEB when registering on or before November 22, 2010.

October 11, 2010

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "A Threat-Centric Approach to Detecting and Preventing Insider Threat" has been published.

October 7, 2010

Participation Opportunities for FloCon 2011 Published
The call for presentations, a description of sponsorship opportunities, and the sponsorship agreement have been released.

October 6, 2010

Integrated Measurement and Analysis Framework for Software Security Technical Note Published
This report is the first in a series that addresses how to measure software security in complex environments using the Integrated Measurement and Analysis Framework (IMAF) for software security.

October 1, 2010

Security Requirements Reusability and the SQUARE Methodology
R-SQUARE incorporates reusable security goals and requirements into a variant of Security Quality Requirements Engineering (SQUARE).

September 30, 2010

Building Assured Systems Framework Report Published
The BASF addresses the customer and researcher challenges of selecting security methods and research approaches for building assured systems.

September 30, 2010

Upcoming IEEE Smart Grid Survivability Workshop
This workshop will take place October 13-14, 2010 in Arlington, Virginia

September 28, 2010

New Podcast Released
Organizations can benchmark their software security practices against 109 observed activities from 30 organizations.

September 22, 2010

Custom Insider Threat Workshop for Executive Management Teams Now Offered (pdf)
The CERT Insider Threat Center is now offering a custom insider threat workshop for executive management teams.

September 22, 2010

New Vulnerability Analysis Blog Entry
The entry "CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework Update" has been published.

September 22, 2010

New Insider Threat Blog Entry
The entry "Insider Threat Deep Dive: IT Sabotage" has been published.

September 14, 2010

New CERT PGP Key
CERT has updated its PGP public key. We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information.

September 8, 2010

Insider Threat Blog Released
The first entry in our new insider threat blog has been published.

September 3, 2010

FloCon 2010 Proceedings Available
Proceedings from FloCon 2010 have been released.

September 1, 2010

Software Assurance Curriculum Materials Available
A Master of Software Assurance Reference Curriculum and undergraduate course outlines are now available for download.

August 31, 2010

New Podcast Released
Internet-connected mobile devices are becoming increasingly attractive targets.

August 27, 2010

FloCon 2011 Announced
FloCon 2011 will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah, January 10-13, 2011.

August 19, 2010

New Podcast Released
A national CSIRT is essential for protecting national and economic security, and ensuring the continuity of government agencies and critical infrastructures.

August 2, 2010

Technical Note on Adapting the SQUARE Process for Privacy Requirements Engineering Published
This technical note explores the use of a disciplined approach to identifying privacy requirements, primarily how the Security Quality Requirements Engineering (SQUARE) process, which was developed for security requirements engineering, can be adapted for privacy requirements engineering in software development.

July 29, 2010

Spotlight On: Insider Threat from Trusted Business Partners Published
This article focuses on cases in the CERT Insider Threat Center database in which malicious insiders were employed by a trusted business partner of the victim organization. These cases involve outsourcing as well as individual contractors and consultants.

July 27, 2010

New Podcast Released
Securing systems that control physical switches, valves, pumps, meters, and manufacturing lines as these systems connect to the internet is critical for service continuity.

July 8, 2010

CERT/CC Enhancing Collaboration Between National CSIRTs
The CERT/CC has created both a wiki and an operational mailing list for authorized technical staff at national CSIRTs. These tools will promote collaboration and information exchange about technical projects and other relevant work.

July 2, 2010

Upcoming SEI Webinar on the CERT Resilience Management Model
On July 28, 2010, Rich Caralli will present "Transforming Your Operational Resilience Management Capabilities: CERT's Resilience Management Model" as part of the Software Engineering Institute's webinar series.

June 29, 2010

New Podcast Released
Complex, distributed, multi-year investigations of computer crimes require sophisticated methods, techniques, and tools.

June 9, 2010

National CSIRTs to Meet in Miami
On June 19-20, the CERT/CC is hosting a meeting of CSIRTs with national responsibility in Miami, Florida. Attendees will discuss the unique challenges facing national CSIRTs and will share information about projects and solutions.

June 9, 2010

Fuzz Testing Tool Available
The CERT Basic Fuzzing Framework (BFF) is a Linux-based tool for fuzz testing software that runs on Linux. This free tool is now available for download.

June 7, 2010

Java Concurrency Guidelines Report Published
The CERT Oracle Secure Coding Standard for Java provides guidelines for secure coding in the Java programming language. This report documents the portion of those Java guidelines that are related to concurrency.

June 7, 2010

Second Edition of Specifications for Managed Strings Report Published
This report describes a managed string library for the C programming language.

June 2, 2010

Survivability Analysis Framework Technical Note Published
The technical note describes the Survivability Analysis Framework (SAF), which can be used to examine the elements of an operational process and evaluate the survivability of an organization.

May 25, 2010

New Podcast Released
To help identify and eliminate security vulnerabilities, subject all software that you build and buy to fuzz testing.

May 24, 2010

Resilience Management Model Report Published
The CERT®-RMM report describes the key concepts, components, and process area relationships of the model, which is an innovative way to approach the challenge of managing operational resilience in complex, risk-evolving environments.

May 21, 2010

Technical Report About Network Behavior Published
The report, Identifying Anomalous Port-Specific Network Behavior, describes a method for detecting behavior that may be a precursor to internet-wide attacks.

April 27, 2010

New Podcast Released
Organized criminals recruit unsuspecting intermediaries to help steal funds from small businesses.

April 5, 2010

2009 CERT Research Annual Report Published
CERT is developing theoretical foundations and engineering methods to help ensure the security of critical systems and networks. This report describes progress in CERT research projects and opportunities for collaboration.

April 5, 2010

New Insider Threat Presentation Published
"The Key to Successful Monitoring for Detection of Insider Attacks," presentated at RSA Conference 2010 in San Francisco, California, is now available.

March 30, 2010

New Podcast Released
Being able to respond effectively when faced with a disruptive event requires that staff members learn to become more resilient.

March 5, 2010

New CERT PGP Public Key
CERT has updated its PGP public key. We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information.

March 2, 2010

New Podcast Released
CISOs must leave no room for anyone to deny that they understand what is expected of them when developing secure software.

February 25, 2010

2010 Vulnerability Discovery Workshop Held
On February 1, 2010, CERT held a workshop with vulnerability researchers and software vendors to discuss ideas, tools, and techniques used to find vulnerabilities.

February 18, 2010

MITRE CWE and CERT Secure Coding Standards
This paper describes the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and the CERT secure coding standards and explains the relationship between them.

February 18, 2010

Instrumented Fuzz Testing Using AIR Integers Published
This paper presents the as-if infinitely ranged (AIR) integer model, which provides a largely automated mechanism for eliminating integer overflow, truncation, and other integral exceptional conditions.

February 12, 2010

Results of 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey Released
This survey, a cooperative effort of multiple organizations, collected answers from more than 500 respondents, including business and government executives, professionals, and consultants.

February 2, 2010

New Podcast Released
Students learn how to combine multiple facets of digital forensics and draw conclusions to support full-scale investigations.

January 20, 2010

New CERT PGP Public Key
CERT has updated its PGP public key. We strongly urge you to encrypt sensitive information.

January 12, 2010

New Podcast Released
The SGMM provides a roadmap to guide an organization's transformation to the smart grid.

December 22, 2009

New Podcast Released
Addressing privacy during software development is just as important as addressing security.

December 4, 2009

SQUARE Tool Is Now Available
A free tool is now available for download that you can use to support Security Quality Requirements Engineering (SQUARE).

December 1, 2009

New Podcast Released
Network defenders and business leaders can use NetSA measures and evidence to better protect their networks.

November 17, 2009

CERT Tactical Response and Analysis Challege Tests Cybersecurity Skills
Twenty-nine competing teams from 20 countries participated in the Tactical Response and Analysis Challenge (TRAC) conducted by the SEI's CERT Program as part of the weeklong International Cyber Defense Workshop (ICDW), which concluded November 13, 2009.

November 10, 2009

New Podcast Released
Providing critical services during times of stress depends on documented, tested business continuity plans.

November 9, 2009

Spotlight On: Insider Theft of Intellectual Property inside the U.S. Involving Foreign Governments or Organizations
This report is the third in the quarterly series, Spotlight On, published by the Insider Threat Center at CERT and funded by CyLab. This article focuses on insider theft of intellectual property inside the U.S. involving foreign governments or organizations.

October 27, 2009

Deadline for FloCon Abstracts Extended
The deadline to submit abstracts for presentations and demonstrations for FloCon 2010 has been extended to Monday, November 9.

October 23, 2009

Secure Design Patterns
This newly updated technical report describes a set of secure design patterns, which are descriptions or templates describing a general solution to a security problem that can be applied in many different situations.

October 20, 2009

New Podcast Released
A defined, managed process for third party relationships is essential, particularly when business is disrupted.

September 29, 2009

New Podcast Released
The smart grid is the use of digital technology to modernize the power grid, which comes with some new privacy and security challenges.

September 8, 2009

New Podcast Released
Electronic health records (EHRs) are possibly the most complicated area of IT today, more difficult than defense.