Security Strategy, Plan, Budget

After much speculation, President Obama confirmed Friday that a new White House office will be dedicated to coordinating digital security efforts, to be led by a yet unnamed "cybsersecurity coordinator."

After last week's phishing attacks on social networking sites, yet another round has struck Twitter.

Research In Motion on Tuesday issued a security software update to address multiple vulnerabilities that exist in the PDF Distiller of the BlackBerry Attachment Service component in BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Because of these vulnerabilities, an attacker could create a malicious PDF file, which when opened on a BlackBerry smartphone, could corrupt memory or execute arbitrary code on the computer that hosts the BlackBerry Attachment Service, RIM said in its advisory. — AM

Spam levels rose again in May -- and there is no sign of a slowdown, according to a new report.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced Tuesday that President Obama will release the highly anticipated 60-day review of federal government cybersecurity initiatives on Friday. The report was developed by Melissa Hathaway, who started investigating federal cybersecurity infrastructure and policies during February, and delivered the finished document in April. Gibbs called the report is an important first step toward securing the nation's cyberinfrastructure. — CAM

The U.S. military is developing and testing several new offensive and defense cyberdevices, including a system that would enable non-expert military personnel to launch a cyberattack, a defense and aerospace industry publication reported last week.

A number of security organizations are offering tips to deal with the Gumblar drive-by exploit, which is growing ever more pervasive.