Posted on 09/02/2008 5:14:19 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Army Colonel Gets Spyware From N.Korea
Amid lingering controversy over the arrest of a North Korean Mata Hari, a malicious North Korean e-mail has been sent to a colonel at a field army command. Military authorities have reportedly provided the entire army with updated anti-hacking software.
A military intelligence source on Monday said the e-mail was sent early last month to the colonel via China. The source added that the e-mail was programmed to automatically steal stored files if the recipient opened it.
But whether military secrets were actually stolen by way of this e-mail was not known. Military authorities are reportedly alive to the possibility that military secrets were leaked, considering that the recipient is in charge of the South Korean military's central nervous system -- Command, Control, Communication, Computer & Information (C4I).
Military investigators are trying to find out how North Korean authorities obtained the officer's e-mail address and sent the Trojan. The authorities are also trying to discover if his name card was among 100 of South Korean officers the North Korean spy delivered to a senior North Korean intelligence official stationed in China.
An official with the investigation team for the spy case said the woman, whose name is Won Jeong-hwa, “delivered 100 officers' name cards to a senior official from North Korea's Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department stationed in China, Some officers whose email addresses are on their name cards have suffered hacking attacks from China."
Ping!
If he were using a secure computer like this in the US, US military protocols would be to strip him of his security clearance.
That’s what I was thinking - in my small civilian office (20 workstations) we have an Accounting and a Marketing computer that are never connected to the web, ever, and we are not in any hyper-sensitive business (no more than others, just a business). We simply don’t want to take any risks at all with certain files in those departments.
I cannot begin to imagine how a supposedly highly secure computer could be allowed to receive emails from the rather unsecure Internet......
Any number of excuses come to mind, but the bottom line is the colonel wasn’t paying sufficient attention. As for getting his email, well, first.last@base.service.mil is always a safe bet. This is not a state secret...
Colonel, USAFR
Amid lingering controversy over the arrest of a North Korean Mata Hari, a malicious North Korean e-mail has been sent to a colonel at a field army command.
~~~Red~Flag~~~
I bet he opened the one that said :
“Me Luv Yoo Looong Time!”
I bet he’s Still waitin’ on his $$$$$ from Nigeria!!!
Now Where’s that MailMan ?...;0)
I understand at Los Alamos, they have tightened things up considerably since a breach. Besides not being on the Internet, there are no USB ports, floppy drives, CD writers or any other removable media output devices. The cases are locked, and the only network cards are fibre optic, to make it more difficult to intercept the signal.
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