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Background for this topic.
Government encompasses public institutions and the systems used to administer services, enforce laws, manage public funds, and protect classified or otherwise sensitive information. Its distinctive assets include identity and benefits records, tax and health data, diplomatic material, election infrastructure, and operational technology supporting utilities or emergency services. Availability and integrity can be as important as confidentiality: outages or altered records may disrupt essential services, public safety, or legal processes.
Security therefore spans citizen-facing portals, internal networks, remote access, contractors, and shared infrastructure, including systems that depend on legacy technology or tightly connected suppliers. Espionage, credential compromise, exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities, and disruptive attacks are material risks, though exposure varies by agency and system. Useful controls include strong identity management, network segmentation, encryption, privacy safeguards, prioritized vulnerability management, tested backups, and rehearsed incident response. Procurement rules, records obligations, and sector-specific compliance also shape how agencies collect, retain, share, and investigate data.
The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), a Canadian government enterprise and the country's largest beverage alcohol retailer, revealed that unknown attackers had breached its website to inject malicious code designed to steal customer and credit card information at check-out. [...]
A zero-day vulnerability in FortiOS SSL-VPN that Fortinet addressed last month was exploited by unknown actors in attacks targeting the government and other large organizations
No 'whiff of wrongdoing' here, says attorney fighting government The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued international law firm Covington & Burling for details about 298 of the firm's clients whose information was accessed by a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group in November 2020.…
Fortinet says unknown attackers exploited a FortiOS SSL-VPN zero-day vulnerability patched last month in attacks against government organizations and government-related targets. [...]
Government and military organizations in the Asia Pacific region are being targeted by a previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) actor, per the latest research
At least the penknives are still secure A supposedly secure messaging app preferred by the Swiss government and army was infested with bugs – possibly for a long time – before an audit by ETH Zurich researchers.…
Attacks targeting government agencies and military bodies in multiple countries in the APAC region have been attributed to what appears to be a new advanced threat actor that leverages custom malware to steal confidential information. [...]
A bit of sloppy JSON let security folk track, modify and delete Reviver's digital plates California's street-legal ink license plates only received a nod from the US government in October, but reverse engineers have already discovered vulnerabilities in the system allowing them to track each plate, reprogram them or even delete them at a whim.…
Advice follows embarrassing leak of audio from Prime Minister’s office Pakistan’s government has warned its agencies that the dark web exists, is home to all sorts of unpleasant people, and should be avoided.…
High-spec system is crucial to defending against the latest threats Two of the US government's leading security agencies are building a machine learning-based analytics environment to defend against rapidly evolving threats and create more resilient infrastructures for both government entities and private organizations.…
The Serbian government reports that it staved off five attacks aimed at crippling Serbian infrastructure.