Sophos Cloud Optix
Your daily round-up of some of the other security stories in the news
Obama warns Putin to ‘cut it out’ on hacking
President Obama told Vladimir Putin to “cut it out” when he raised the subject of Russian meddling in the US election, saying he warned the Russian leader that there would be “serious consequences” if he didn’t.
Obama told reporters in his final White House press conference that he’d confronted Putin during the G20 summit in China in September, and added that the US administration’s “goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you. But it is also important for us to do that in a thoughtful, methodical way. Some of it we do publicly. Some of it we will do in a way that they know, but not everybody will.”
While he stopped short of accusing Putin of directly meddling in the election, Obama went on to say: “Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin. This happened at the highest levels of the Russian government.”
China to return US drone
Meanwhile, officials in China and the US moved to soothe relations after China seized an underwater drone in the South China Sea, with Reuters reporting that China would return the drone “in an appropriate manner” following “unimpeded” talks.
The drone was seized in waters off the coast of the Philippines on Saturday in a move that some commentators said was in response to president-elect Trump’s unprecedented approach to Taiwan earlier in the month. Trump raised the temperature further over the weekend when he lashed out at the Chinese for their “unpresidented” actions, behaviour that prompted the China Daily newspaper to warn could “easily drive China-US relations into what Obama portrays as ‘full-conflict mode’.”
Lynda.com passwords breached
If you’re a lynda.com user, you should check your email: the company, a subsidiary of LinkedIn, has sent out warnings to some 9.5m of its users at the weekend warning that it had suffered the breach of a database that included the passwords of 55,000 users.
Lynda.com says it’s already reset the passwords of affected users, and adds that passwords are “cryptographically salted and hashed” – although there’s no indication on how they do that.
This is not great news for lynda.com’s parent, LinkedIn, which has just completed its $26bn sale to Microsoft. If you’ve got an account with lynda.com, the advice we gave Yahoo! users on Friday applies here, too.
Catch up with all of today’s stories on Naked Security
Kate- With all due respect, Obama has the un-mitgated gall to ‘threaten’ Russia after he, personally, threatened the Brits about voting for Brexit? And campaigned AGAINST Israeli’s PM, Netanyahu’s reelction? His rhetoric like Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, is nothing more than “A tale told by an Idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!” Why have his CIA, NSA and DHA ALL been hacked regularly and with impunity? Including their directors ‘Al Quds Brennnan’; Who Am I Clapper’ and Jeh Johnson? BY the way, WHERE is all the evidence pointing to Russia as the perpetrator?
USA4ever, just returning from Russia? I really doubt you read much that goes against your “tell me what to think” beliefs. I guess you want a private briefing from the security agencies. Did you believe them when Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
Lynda hacked? After the big LinkedIn breach you would have thought they would have learned to be more careful. I guess they don’t learn very quickly.
This is too funny. One story is about Obama warning Putin to stop hacking and another is about a US spy drone in China. Obama can’t spy or do anything else to other countries if he thinks he can tell Putin to knock it off. What a hypocrite.
Brian, the US marine drone was not “in China”. It was in international waters near the Spratly Islands, only 50 miles from the Philippine Islands and 600 miles from China.
Problem is the Spratly Islands are claimed as sovereign territory not just by China and the Philippines but also by Vietnam if I recall correctly. It’s a big mess.
Still given how far away the Spratly islands are from America got to wonder why they are bothering to drone the region to begin with.
Brian, where did you read “spy drone?” China has never said it was a “spy drone.” So, where did you get your specialized misinformation. If it was a “spy drone” don’t you think China would be the first to say so? Reading is fundamental to having an intelligent discussion.