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President Barack Obama has ordered the shoring up of sanctions that the US could use against individuals and nations that attack the country with cyber tools and threats. No new sanctions have been created, but Obama is keen to see existing measures applied with more force and frequency. The US has used these tools before, and they were raised during discussions about the alleged North Korea attack on Sony Pictures. The president presents his actions as a reaction to the real menace that is growing in scale and capability and continues to hurt US firms like Home Depot. "I find that the increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities originating from, or directed by, persons located, in whole or in substantial part, outside the US constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the US. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat," he said. The response is a greater use of sanctions, and an increase in the powers available to the government, according to a White House blog post. "We are at a transformational moment in how we approach cyber security. The actions we take today will help ensure that the internet remains an enabler of global commerce and innovation," said Lisa Monaco, US homeland security advisor to president Obama. "We need to deter malicious cyber activity and to impose costs in response to the most significant cyber intrusions and attacks, especially when those responsible try to hide behind international boundaries. "Effective incident response requires the ability to increase the costs and reduce the economic benefits from malicious cyber activity. We need a capability to deter and impose costs on those responsible for significant harmful cyber activity where it really hurts - at their bottom line." Businesses such as the US Postal Service have been attacked with greater frequency over the past year and, while international entities are not always blamed, China is a regular suspect. Sanctions can be imposed against a nation or an individual, and they are expected to be used only at times when US assets and infrastructure are under threat. Source

Encrypted communications solutions provider Silent Circle said on Thursday that it has agreed to buy out a joint venture that it has with Geeksphone, giving Silent Circle a 100 percent ownership stake in SGP Technologies and full ownership of the privacy and security focused “Blackphone”. SGP Technologies was formed specifically to create the Blackphone, a smartphone that aims to protect users against snooping governments, industry rivals and hackers. The news comes shortly after the January appointment of F. William "Bill" Conner as Silent Circle's President and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board. Conner previously served as Entrust President and CEO and President of Nortel. Silent Circle was co-founded by Mike Janke, former Navy SEAL and security expert; PGP creator Phil Zimmermann; and Jon Callas, creator of Apple's whole disk encryption and co-founder of PGP Corporation. Silent Circle Logo "Silent Circle has brought tremendous disruption to the mobile industry and created an integrated suite of secure enterprise communication products that are challenging the status quo," said Janke, who serves as Executive Chairman of the Silent Circle Board. "This first stage of growth has enabled us to raise approximately $50m to accelerate our continued rapid expansion and fuel our second stage of growth." "As the nature and volume of data breaches increase, institutional trust is eroding," said Conner. "There are companies that have been hacked and there are those that don't know about it yet, which means that security in the traditional sense has failed us. With the number of employees connecting to an enterprise's network using their own devices rapidly rising, organizations need a different solution. In short, in a post-Sony and Gemalto world, security breaches have been made both enterprise and personal so it's no longer an issue affecting just the boardroom," said. " In a statement, Conner said the company would introduce new devices, software and services as part of an “enterprise privacy ecosystem” built from a fundamentally different mobile architecture. In May 2014, Silent Circle announced that it had raised $30 Million in funding and had decided to move its global headquarters from the Caribbean island of Nevis to Switzerland. In 2013 Silent Circle shut down its encrypted email service to avoid becoming a target after the US government subpoenaed the records of a similar secure e-mail provider called Lavabit. Source: securityweek.com

+Vid US President Barack Obama has come out forcefully in favour of strong encryption despite the opposition of his intelligence establishment. Encryption has been a hot topic over recent weeks with Western law enforcement and intelligence agencies complaining about encryption-by-default in modern communication tools such as smartphones. Prime Minister David Cameron recently began pushing the idea of banning crypto products that UK spies are unable to access, an idea he first floated in a recent speech before lobbying US President Barack Obama on the issue, seemingly unsuccessfully. In an interview with Re/code, Obama said that he’s a ”strong believer in strong encryption," adding, "I lean probably further on side of strong encryption than some in law enforcement”. “Ultimately everybody, and certainly this is true for me and my family, we all want to know that if we’re using a smartphone for transactions, sending messages, having private conversations, that we don’t have a bunch of people compromising that process,” Obama explained. “There’s no scenario in which we don’t want really strong encryption.” The president went on to claim that public concern about stymieing terrorism investigations is behind legislators' concerns about encryption. “Where there is a situation in which we’re trying to get a specific case of a possible national security threat — is there a way of accessing it? If it turns out it’s not, then we’re really gonna have to have a public debate,” Obama said. “And, you know, I think some in Silicon Valley would make the argument that the harms done by having any kind of compromised encryption are far greater.” Obama also conceded that the ongoing Snowden disclosures have affected relations between Silicon Valley and the US government. “The Snowden disclosures were really harmful in terms of the trust between the government and many of these companies, in part because it had an impact on their bottom lines. A transcript of the full interview, which also covered cyber warfare and a variety of other hi-tech topics, can be found here. A video clip of a segment of the interview where Obama talks about encryption can be found at the top of this story. Despite the furore over the recent megahack on Sony, which the US government blames on North Korea, Obama dismissed the NORKs as no great shakes when it came to offensive cyber warfare, while stating that “China and Russia are very good [and] Iran is good.” Source