Mastermind of botnet nabbed

Cyber \'capture the flag\' contest will premiere at DefCon

Cybersecurity Update – Tune in weekdays at 30 minutes past the hour for the latest cybersecurity news on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Amy Morris (6-10 a.m.) and The DorobekInsider with Chris Dorobek (3-7 p.m.). Listen live at FederalNewsRadio.com or on the radio at 1500 and 820 AM in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

  • International authorities have arrested a computer hacker they think is responsible for creating malicious computer code that infected 12 million computers. According to the FBI, a 23-year-old Slovenian identified as Iserdo was snagged in Maribor, Slovenia. This followed an investigation by Slovenian Police, aided by the FBI and Spanish authorities. The Mariposa botnet appeared back in December 2008. It infected the networks of more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and at least 40 major banks. The Slovenian arrest comes months after Spanish police broke up a massive cyber scam, arresting three alleged ringleaders who operated the Mariposa botnet. Iserdo has been released on bond.
  • Are you the cyber-security weak link? Despite all the cyber-attacks, one of the easiest way to hack a system is by reaching out to you. It’s called social engineering. And a team next week is running a social engineering capture-the-flag competition at the Defcon cybersecurity conference. Chris Dorobek of the Dorobek Insider turned to the team behind a social engineering competition — Chris Hadnagy and Mati Aharoni of Offensive Security.

Check out all of Federal News Radio’s coverage of cybersecurity issues here.

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