Free Republic

ecurity is being increased at Baltimore’s municipal buildings after a former employee, fired for having alleged hacking tools on his city computer, managed to gain “unfettered access” to sensitive areas... Cumming’s latest report said the fired employee told investigators he went to his old workplace to see former colleagues. However, Cumming’s office found the visit was not sanctioned — and was the result of a cascade of security lapses. The incident occurred one day before the ransomware attack crippled the city’s computer network.

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress. Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 1o that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.” When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang...