–Documents Reveal U.S. Government Launched 231 Offensive Cyber Operations in 2011 (31st August)

Classified budget documents released by Edward Snowden to the Washington Post reveal that the U.S. government launched 231 offensive cyber operations in 2011. The documents provide details of a budget aimed at breaking into foreign networks so that they can be put under the control of the U.S. The top countries targeted are China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.  The documents outline that the NSA develops most of its software, but that it has devoted US$25.2 million for the “additional covert purchases of software vulnerabilities” from private research companies. According to an emailed statement from the NSA to the Washington Post “The Department of Defense does engage” in computer network exploitation but “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/us-spy-agencies-mounted-231-offensive-cyber-operations-in-2011-documents-show

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=15494

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/black-budget/

 –Indian Government Considers Ban on Gmail for Official Use (30th August) In what appears to be a reaction to the alleged Internet snooping by U.S. government agencies on users of U.S. based email services, the Indian government is said to be planning a ban on the use of U.S. based email services for official government use. The ban will force government workers to use only official Indian government email servers for official use. Many workers, including some government ministers, use hosted email accounts as they are easier to use and have better features than official email systems.  India’s IT minister, Kapil Sibal, said there is no evidence of the U.S. accessing any Internet data from India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Cyberspying-Government-may-ban-Gmail-for-official-communication/articleshow/22156529.cms

http://www.zdnet.com/in/india-will-reportedly-ban-use-of-us-e-mail-services-7000020059/

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-30/news/41618948_1_google-india-us-national-security-agency-government