Cisco okayed for UK government comms

Cisco has had a bunch of products certified as secure by the GCHQ's information security arm, the Communications & Electronics Security Group (CESG).
The certification only covers the products to handle information up to the UK government's “Official” classification – that is, most government information.
However, as the company's product certification engineer Clint Winebrenner writes, “This award represents the first Foundation Grade IPsec VPN product capable of supporting both the CESG interim and PRIME cipher suites, enabling public sector customers to take full advantage of the very latest cryptographic algorithms.”
Winebrenner also notes that the classifications in the UK – Official, Secret and Top Secret – were rejigged in April this year with the aim of letting off-the-shelf products handle data at the lowest classification. That means, presumably, that there will be a lot of similar certifications being granted in the future.
“This model includes two grades of assurance; Foundation Grade and High Grade. Foundation Grade products are COTS products designed to provide protection against threats to information classified as OFFICIAL and certification is achieved through the completion of either a Common Criteria or Commercial Product Assurance (CPA) evaluation,” Winebrenner writes.
The certification covers deployments of IPsec VPN technologies both between government sites, and for remote access. Cisco also has its AnyConnect client currently going through certification for mobile access applications.
The certification includes IPsec security gateway products in Cisco's ASA v9.1 family – hardware models 5505, 5510, 5520, 5540, 5550, 5580, 5512-X, 5515-X, 5525-X, 5545-X, 5555-X and 5585-X.

SEA hacks Reuters website widget DESPITE 2FA security

Hacktivists with the Syrian Electronic Army have hit news agency Reuters again.
Surfers intending to catch up with the latest news were briefly redirected to a page run by the Syrian Electronic Army. The page (screenshot via HotforSecurity here) berated Western media reports about the conflict in Syria.
The SEA has previous form for attacking Reuters on the web. It hijacked the news agency's Twitter feed last July.
The latest attack is a tad more subtle and involved exploiting systems at Taboola, a third party ad network ‪used by the news agency.‬ Reuters, like many other outlets, embedded Taboola's recommended content widget on its site.
In a statement Taboola admitted the hack, which it said was carried out using a phishing attack, without going into details. Sophisticated multi-stage phishing attacks are the SEA's favourite hacking technique.

Today [Sunday], between 7AM - 8AM EDT, an organization called the “Syrian Electronic Army” hacked Taboola’s widget on Reuters.com. The intruder was redirecting users that accessed article pages on reuters.com to a different landing page.
The breach was detected at approximately 7:25am, and fully removed at 8am. There is no further suspicious activity across our network since, and the total duration of the event was 60 minutes.
While we use 2-step authentication, our initial investigation shows the attack was enabled through a phishing mechanism. We immediately changed all access passwords, and will continue to investigate this over the next 24 hours.

Taboola's other media clients include TMZ, Time, the BBC, and USA Today. The attack was limited to Taboola's widget on Reuters.
Hacktivists at the SEA posted screenshots to support claims that they had also broken into Taboola's PayPal account. Taboola made no comment on this point.
The Taboola attacks are similar to an attack against content recommendation site Outbrain by the SEA last August. The breach meant surfers to popular websites such CNN, The Washington Post and Time magazine were confronted by a pro-Assad propaganda instead.