Free Republic

The North Korean Internet has gone dark.  Meanwhile the United States has demanded that Korea pay compensation to Sony for the damage they have caused.First of all, Congratulations to the Obama administration.  After bumbling on this issue for more than a week, it seems they may have got up enough gumption to slam the North Koreans.Even more importantly, the sordid threats to destroy the White House, Pentagon and other American institutions, perhaps with suicide attacks –all of this coming from North Korea and its inexperienced leader– are dangerous threats. Hitting back sends a message that statements of this kind are...

Outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Friday the U.S. is "going toward bloodshed" and "getting into the arena of major" acts of cyber terrorism. "There can be an attack on the electrical system of the United States, on airport computers of the United States," she said. "We're getting into the arena of major attacks. Right now, it has to do a great deal with private industry. But the cost for private industry is now in the trillions of dollars. And it has to be stopped." Feinstein's comments came after President Obama said Sony Pictures "made a...

If there is one salient fact that emerges from the now infamous Sony hack it is that the bad guys won.  The bad guys won because there they paid no price for the damage inflicted.  In the Sony case the hackers are outside and beyond the law, so their backers and sponsors are encouraged to cause even more damage in future. To stop cyber attacks, particularly those sponsored by foreign governments, we need to respond to attacks now. Sony is a movie company, a major cog in the entertainment industry.  Whether Sony rises or falls has little or nothing to...

FBI Director James Comey says an agent impersonated an Associated Press reporter during a 2007 criminal investigation, a ruse the news organization says could undermine its credibility. In a letter to the Justice Department last week, the AP requested Holder's word that the DOJ would never again misrepresent itself as the AP and asked for policies to ensure the DOJ does not further impersonate news organizations. In a letter Thursday to Comey and Holder, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked the agency for full disclosure about the incident. "The utilization of news media as a cover for...

A Chinese intelligence unit carried out a massive cyber espionage program that stole vast quantities of data from governments, businesses and other organizations, security analysts who uncovered the operation said Thursday. The activities of the Chinese unit called the Axiom group began at least six years ago and were uncovered by a coalition of security firms this month. Cyber sleuths traced Axiom attacks to the 2009 cyber operation against Google in China and other U.S. companies known as Operation Aurora. The group was also linked to a Chinese hacking program that targeted dissidents and opposition groups known as GhostNet. More...

The NSA cyberwarfare program, called MonsterMind, uses software to look for traffic patterns indicating possible foreign cyberattacks, according to Snowden, quoted in a lengthy profile in Wired. MonsterMind could automatically block a cyberattack from entering the U.S., then retaliate against the attackers, according to the Wired story. Snowden, when he was working as an NSA contractor, was concerned that MonsterMind could lead to misdirected counterattacks. "These attacks can be spoofed," he told Wired. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting...

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

The threat of cyber terrorism poses a major risk to aircrafts' systems every time they enter an airport, a senior Boeing executive has said. Boeing was the focus of a cyber security scare in 2008 when an analyst claimed the firm’s flagship 787 Dreamliner passenger jet had a serious weakness in its on-board computer networks which could allow passengers to take control of the aircraft. A report by US authorities found that a network in the cabin designed to give passengers Internet access could be used to access the aircraft’s control, navigation and communication systems. Boeing claimed the problem had...

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals. The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) "can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging".

Several months ago, the Pentagon's network and e-mail system fell victim to computer hacking. After an internal investigation, Pentagon officials declared that the hack was perpetrated by the Chinese military. In particular, officials said the attack "was by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and that it led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates." Now, a Chinese company with ties to the country's military, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger.According to a story in the Washington Times, Huawei Technologies...

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

The Pentagon for the first time used its annual report on China to directly assert that Beijing’s government and military have conducted computer-based attacks against the U.S., including efforts to steal information from federal agencies. In a new report on the Chinese military, the Defense Department goes a small step further than it has gone in the past, when it said that cyber-attacks originated in China and may be linked to Beijing’s use of civilian experts in clandestine attacks against American companies. But over the past year, U.S. government officials and private cyber-security experts have increasingly stepped up accusations that...

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that the military should be doing more to reduce the number of Chinese cyber attacks. “I think we have to take action with China to stop the PLA from bombarding us hourly with these hack attacks,” Rogers said. “They’ve stolen all sorts of weaponry from us and research, even the F-35. And I would hope that the department would be much more aggressive on the cybersecurity front.” Hagel responded by noting the increased funding for cyber security in the 2014 defense budget and then called it “the greatest threat...

The Internet can be a dangerous place, and now you can see just how dangerous it gets — in real time, no less. Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications company, has developed a website that allows users to monitor cyberattacks as they happen. The almost unpronounceable Sicherheitstacho.eu (loosely translated as "security tachometer") displays events as they happen, giving the time of the attack, country of origin and the intended target. While watching the site can be quite hypnotic, its relevance for the everyday user is limited (unless your website or network is currently under attack, in which case, the site still...

The explosion in smartphone use is leaving businesses vulnerable to cyberattacks since almost half of their employees’ mobile phones can become a target, according to new research. The 2012 Cyber Security Risk Report—published by Hewlett-Packard at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco—found that mobile phone vulnerabilities rose significantly (68%) from 2011 to 2012, mirroring the growth of mobile applications and the use of smartphones. Of the mobile applications tested by HP, 48% of them were found to be vulnerable to unauthorized access. The European Council and Parliament are to consider a Commission-proposed cybersecurity strategy in the coming months....

Last week, the American computer security firm Mandiant released a detailed study shedding light on the secret cybercorps of the Chinese government. The “Shanghai Group,” or Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army, is believed to operate out of a nondescript 12-story building (above) on the outskirts of Shanghai. Over the past six years, Mandiant claims to have tracked thousands of attacks on American industry, business, government and military targets originating from that area. Given the ubiquity of information technology, the threat of cyberattacks will continue to grow. The scope of these assaults can range from accessing confidential information and...

The U.S. is vulnerable to cyberattacks that could shut down financial services or destroy information that companies need for daily operations, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday. Rep. Mike Rogers says 95 percent of private sector networks are vulnerable and most have already been hit. … Rogers tells CBS’ Face the Nation that the U.S. government has, essentially “set up lawn chairs, told the burglars where the silver is … and opened the case of beer and watched them do it.” …

Prepare For The Coming Cyber Wars: US Government To Launch Pre-Emptive Cyber Strikes Robert Richardson February 5th, 2013 Off Grid Survival For years we have warned our readers about the dangers that a full scale cyber-attack could have on our infrastructure; now those dangers are even higher as the Federal Government prepares to launch Pre-emptive cyber strikes against rogue nations. According to the New York Times, President Barack Obama has just concluded a secret legal review of the administration’s new cyber war guidelines. The guidelines give President Obama the power to order pre-emptive cyber strikes to protect national security interests....

The wave of distributed denial of service attacks that hit U.S. banks in October was next to nothing compared to what could happen if cybercriminals actually carry through with their plans for next year. According to a report released today by McAfee Labs, an impending attack on U.S. financial institutions—dubbed Project Blitzkrieg—isn’t only a possibility, it’s a “credible threat.” “McAfee Labs believes that Project Blitzkrieg is a credible threat to the financial industry and appears to be moving forward as planned,” the report reads. “Although Project Blitzkrieg hasn’t yet infected thousands of victims and we cannot directly confirm any cases...

A German power utility specialising in renewable energy was hit by a serious cyber-attack two weeks ago that lasted five days, knocking its internet communications systems offline, in the first confirmed digital assault against a European grid operator. “It was a DOS (‘Denial Of Service’) attack with a botnet behind it,” Boris Schucht, the CEO of 50Hertz told EurActiv on the fringes of a Brussels renewables conference. “It blocked our internet domains so that in the first hours, all email and connectivity via the internet was blocked.” DOS attacks involve thousands of requests being sent to a server each second...