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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...

It started as a fairly predictable digital conflict, mimicking the one in the real world and displaying no shortage of “conventional” cyberwarfare: Web pages were attacked, comments were erased, and photos were vandalized. A typical prank on the Georgian Foreign Ministry’s Web site visually compared Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili with Adolf Hitler. As Russian tanks lumbered southward over mountainous Ossetian terrain, Russian netizens were seeking to dominate the digital battlefield. But sophomoric pranks and cyberattacks were only the first shots of a much wider online war in which Russian bloggers willingly enlisted as the Kremlin’s grass-roots army. For Russian netizens,...

Security researchers claim to have uncovered evidence pointing to a link between Russian state-run businesses and cyber-attacks against Georgia. Denial of service attacks against Georgian web-sites started a day before Georgian and Russian military units began fighting over the disputed region of South Ossetia. SecureWorks researcher Don Jackson said that logs showed that portions of the attack were run from command and control servers located on the networks of Russian state-operated firms Rostelecom and Comstar. These servers were not linked to previous botnet activity. "We know that the Russian government controls those servers theoretically, if they have not been 'pwned'...

Bombs and bullets are not the only things flying around in the Russia-Georgia war that broke out over the weekend. There is a flurry of battling electrons as well. According to a news story first reported in The Telegraph, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that a "cyberwarfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs." How these contributed to the country's crushing defeat and the extent of deliberate Russian "cyber-warfare" remains to be determined. This incident, however, is the latest reminder that Washington needs to get serious about...

The Hunt for American al Qaeda The United States is turning up the heat in the hunt for the California boy turned al Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, who has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. If caught and convicted, Gadahn could face the death penalty. The State Department along with the Department of Diplomatic Security announced the beginning of a publicity campaign in Afghanistan urging locals to provide any information on Gadahn's whereabouts, with a reward if the information leads to his capture. Radio advertisements with information concerning the $1 million reward have...

The Indian media are reporting sustained internet-based attacks from China against Indian networks. These attacks, they say, are not just isolated incidents and are sophisticated and broad in scope. Government officials have confirmed off the record that the cyber warfare threat from China is much more serious than attacks carried out from other countries. They believe the Chinese attackers have been scanning and mapping India's networks for around one and a half years. They are primarily using bots – approximately 50,000 of which are currently installed on Indian systems, key loggers and network topology mapping, which allows information to be...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Congress passed legislation this week requiring the Pentagon to report on China's growing computer-warfare capabilities when producing assessments of Chinese military power. The fiscal 2008 National Defense Authorization Act, passed yesterday by the House, contains a provision requiring the annual Military Power of the People's Republic of China report to include a new section on Beijing's "efforts to acquire, develop and deploy cyberwarfare capabilities" in its assessments of China's "asymmetric" warfare capabilities

This week, The New York Times reported that in a series of "sophisticated attempts" against the U.S. nuclear weapons lab at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Chinese hackers were able to "remove data."[1] The story illustrates an alarming fact: China's cyber spies are now a part of America's computer network, literally. It is time for U.S. authorities to be open with the American people about the escalating threat posed by China to America's science and technology secrets. Continuous Attacks U.S. Strategic Command Chief General James E. Cartwright told Congress in March 2007 that "America is under widespread attack in cyberspace." During fiscal...

Recent revelations of China's state-sponsored cyber attacks on U.K. financial institutions underscores that strategic financial power is high on Beijing's list of priorities. Moreover, these attacks are consistent with "Unrestricted Warfare," a white paper published in 1999 by two PLA Air Force colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, in which they argue that future wars will be fought on many fronts, and that in fact economic and financial warfare will become an increasingly necessary and accepted form of conflict. Whether Unrestricted Warfare represents today's official view of China's strategic outlook is unclear. What is clear, however, is that from a...

National Security: China continues to develop its cyberwarfare capabilities and hacks into the computer systems of foreign governments and corporations. So why are we considering a deal to show them how? The London Times over the weekend reported that Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic spy agency, sent a letter last week to 300 British executives and security chiefs at major corporations warning them they were under attack from "Chinese state organizations" over the Internet. These attacks involved Chinese "trojans" or software designed to hack into computer systems and feed back confidential data. It is the latest example...

The US Air Force established a provisional Cyber Command Tuesday as part of an expanding mission to prepare for wars in cyberspace, officials said. The move comes amid concerns over the vulnerability of the US communications and computer networks to cyber attack in a conflict, as well as the military's desire to exploit the new medium. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne announced the creation of the new command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where the air force's existing cyber warfare operations are centered. Officials said the provisional command will pave the way within a year for the creation...

China's military buildup is moving beyond countering Taiwan to global operations from the Middle East through Southeast Asia, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of Chinese military power. "China's military acquisitions and strategic thinking suggests Beijing is also generating capabilities for other regional contingencies, such as conflict over resources or territory," the report to Congress said. The statement, released yesterday, contradicts assessments of some pro-China analysts and intelligence officials who have said the nation's military buildup is relatively benign and limited to resolving the sovereignty issue of Taiwan, which was separated from China in 1949 during a civil war. China...

May 17, 2007 China's Quest for a Superpower Military by John J. Tkacik, Jr. Backgrounder #2036 The National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (PRC) announced on March 4, 2007, that it would increase the country's military budget by 17.8 percent in 2007 to a total of $45 bil­lion—by far the largest acknowledged amount that China has ever spent on its military.1 The Chinese government went out of its way to reassure the world that this spending hike was normal and need not worry anyone. "China is committed to taking a path of peaceful development and it pursues...

April 11, 2006: Cyber Criminals are developing weapons and tactics that are providing real-life examples of what Cyber War would be like. In the last few years, organized gangs have gotten into online crime in a big way, pushing aside the amateurs and part-timers who had dominated the scene for so long. The motivator is money, and the fact that 95 percent of online crimes never get punished. In the last year, the amount of software developed to steal money online has increased 500 percent. While spam is still a major source of this larcenous malware, most of it is...

Carpenter had never seen hackers work so quickly, with such a sense of purpose. They would commandeer a hidden section of a hard drive, zip up as many files as possible and immediately transmit the data to way stations in South Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan before sending them to mainland China. They always made a silent escape, wiping their electronic fingerprints clean and leaving behind an almost undetectable beacon allowing them to re-enter the machine at will. An entire attack took 10 to 30 minutes. "Most hackers, if they actually get into a government network, get excited and make...

SEOUL, Oct 4 (AFP) - North Korea has trained more than 500 computer hackers capable of launching cyber warfare against the United States, South Korea's defense ministry said Monday. In a report to the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, the ministry said that hackers from the impoverished Stalinist state were among the best in the world. "North Korea's intelligence warfare capability is estimated to have reached the level of advanced countries," the report said, according to Yonhap news agency. The military hackers had been put through a five-year university course training them to penetrate the computer systems of South...

August 15, 2004 -- With little fanfare, the Federal Reserve will begin transferring the nation's money supply over an Internet-based system this month — a move critics say could open the U.S.'s banking system to cyber threats. The Fed moves about $1.8 trillion a day on a closed, stand-alone computer network. But soon it will switch to a system called FedLine Advantage, a Web-based technology. Proponents say the system is more efficient and flexible. The current system is outdated, using DOS — Microsoft's predecessor to the Windows operating system. But security experts say the threat of outside access is too...

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week warned nuclear power plant operators to implement safeguards against the Slammer worm, which took systems at one such plant offline in January. The advisory details exactly how the Davis-Besse power plant in Ohio, operated by FirstEnergy Corp, had its "safety parameter display system" and "plant process computer" made unavailable for several hours by the worm. The news of the outage came to light after a report by SecurityFocus.com two weeks ago. It is particularly concerning as Slammer was preventable - it exploited a vulnerability in SQL Server that Microsoft Corp had issued a...

China has launched a systematic information warfare campaign against Taiwan, spreading Trojan-horse programs into private companies' computers as a means to break into government databases, the Cabinet said yesterday. "National intelligence has indicated that an army of hackers based in China's Hubei and Fujian provinces has successfully spread 23 different Trojan horse programs to the networks 10 private high-tech companies here to use them as a springboard to break into at least 30 different government agencies and 50 private companies," Cabinet Spokesman Lin Chia-lung (ªL¨ÎÀs) said yesterday. The government agencies invaded by the Trojan-horse programs include the National Police Administration,...

How vulnerable is the United States to attack from cyberspace? How imminent is the threat? Many experts believe the clock is already ticking, and that America is already fighting a Cyberwar... You can download and watch the whole show here. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/ Just click on "Watch the full program" at the top left.

Firing Leaflets and Electrons, U.S. Wages Information War--- By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT--- WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — Even before President Bush orders American forces to loose bullets and bombs on Iraq, the military is starting an ambitious assault using a growing arsenal of electronic and psychological weapons on the information battlefield. American cyber-warfare experts recently waged an e-mail assault, directed at Iraq's political, military and economic leadership, urging them to break with Saddam Hussein's government. A wave of calls has gone to the private cellphone numbers of specially selected officials inside Iraq, according to leaders at the Pentagon and...

WASHINGTON, Feb 12, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center warned that growing tensions between the United States and Iraq could lead to an increase in global computer hacking activities on both sides. "Regardless of the motivation, the NIPC reiterates such activity is illegal and punishable as a felony," the agency warned Wednesday on its Web site. "The U.S. government does not condone so-called 'patriot hacking' on its behalf. "Further, even 'patriotic hackers' can be fooled into launching attacks against their own interests by exploiting malicious code that purports to attack the other side...

<p>The White House reveals that the president signed a security directive in July ordering the government to develop rules for deciding when and how the United States would attack enemy computer networks.</p> <p>WASHINGTON -- President Bush has ordered the government to draw up guidelines for electronic attacks against enemy computer networks, the Washington Post reported on Friday.</p>