The US Department of Homeland Security warns of an increased risk of cyber attacks against infrastructure. Experts continue to assess the international threat, with a familiar focus on Russia and China.
Syria's Internet connectivity has been restored; the government blames the outage on "terrorism," but few credit this.
Various minor hacks surface, but today's most interesting news is legal. US prosecutors have indicted eight people alleged to have committed ATM debit card thefts that netted them $45M. Seven of those indicted are now in custody. The eighth was murdered two weeks ago in the Dominican Republic. The gang operated out of Yonkers, New York, but the two banks they targeted (via card processing centers in the US and India) were the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah PSC in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman.
The attack was bankrolled by well-financed criminal syndicates, enabled by hackers, and carried out by mules who withdrew cash from ATMs. The attack is called "unlimited" because the hackers disabled the automated limits on withdrawals designed to minimize the consequences of fraud. Doing so required that the criminals not only penetrate the banks' cyber perimeters, but gain administrative access as well.
(Compare the apparently unrelated prosecution of Algerian hacker Hamza Bendelladj, who allegedly made his money not by stealing, but by selling the means to do so—the SpyEye Trojan.)
Citing security concerns, India joins the US and Australia in preparing to impose restrictions on import of Huawei and ZTE hardware.