UK.gov to train up 11-year-old cyberwarriors

British schoolkids as young as 11 will be trained in cyber security as part of a new drive to protect the UK from digital threats.
The government will produce learning materials designed to get 11- to 14-year-olds up to speed on cyber security.
If the kids show a willingness to strap on a keyboard and fight in some foreign corner of the internet, they will be able to take part in higher-level and advanced cyber-security apprenticeships.
The scheme was announced in a report entitled "Cyber Security Skills: Business Perspectives and Government’s Next Steps" which is published today.
Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said: "Today countries that can manage cyber security risks have a clear competitive advantage.
"By ensuring cyber security is integral to education at all ages, we will help equip the UK with the professional and technical skills we need for long-term economic growth."
The plans in the new report were directly inspired by chats with business leaders.
As well as "UK employer-led cyber security higher and advanced level apprenticeship schemes", there will be special lessons aimed at Key Stage Three (age 11-14) pupils.
A Massive Open Online Course will be set up for interested pupils, whilst an educational scheme called Secure Futures will roll out in London and Manchester.
Sir David Pepper, of the Cyber Security Skills Alliance, said: "We warmly welcome this report and the actions it proposes. It is clear from this and our own research that the national shortage of cyber skills is a key issue for businesses and government in the fight against the growing threat from cyber crime.
"We will work closely with the government and industry in support of this programme, in particular to help establish career paths in cyber security and improve recruitment and training."

Ethical hacker backer hacked, warns of email ransack

he IT security certification body that runs the Certified Ethical Hacker programme has itself been hacked.
The EC-Council said the same hackers who ran the DNS poisoning attack that resulted in the defacement of its website in late February had also managed to access the control panel for its website after breaking into the systems of a third-party registrar. This compromised access allowed the miscreants to circumvent security controls and get into the security organisation's email system, as a breach notice from the EC-Council to its members explains.

EC-Council uses a cloud service provider for enterprise email. Once the domain privilege was attained, the hacker then issued a password reset request to the email service provider. This circumvented EC-Council's best practices of using complex passwords and 2-factor authentication. We have informed the service provider of this password reset policy vulnerability and are hopeful that they have already rectified it for the benefit of the IT community in general. With administrative access to the email service provider, the hacker was able to compromise a small number of email accounts before the EC-Council security team was able to respond to the breach.This resulted in unauthorized access to messages in those specific email boxes for a short duration of time.

The investigation into the breach is still ongoing and it's unclear which member data, if any, has been exposed. Credit card transactions are run through a different system that wasn't exposed by the attack but any private information sent by email might have been compromised, although this is uncertain.
"As a precautionary measure, we are writing to notify members that have sent any personally identifiable information to EC-Council via email that there is a possibility that these may have been exposed through email," the breach notification from the EC-Council explains. "No credit card data was compromised."
The US-based EC-Council runs the Certified Ethical Hacker programme, C|EH and other certifications. The organisation – whose tagline is Hackers are here. Where are you? – asks members to submit sensitive data such as passport details as part of its registration process. The leak of this data is obviously the main concern raised by the breach.
In response to the incident, the EC-Council has promised to tighten up its security procedures.
The organisation said in a statement on the breach that went out on yesterday:

EC-Council strives to set a very high bar for how they serve their community, and this incident is upsetting. EC-Council has since transferred their domain to another registrar, changed policies on management of personal information, improved existing data retention policies, introduced two-factor authentication for member portals, and improved security procedures and systems. ®

Bootnote

A shout-out to Mark, an infosec contractor going for CEH accreditation, who tipped us off about the EC-Council's breach notification to its members.