Showing posts with label Cyber espionage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cyber espionage. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Monday, January 18, 2010

Companies Fight Endless War Against Computer Attacks

~~ The Internet was in its youth carefree fun. Now it is an angry adolescent that needs serious discipline and constant oversight , as Google just learned -- AGAIN !!-- in China.

We can only hope the Internet matures well-- and remains useful and open,
Click the labels on these topics for more from me on this ~~
January 18, 2010

Companies Fight Endless War Against Computer Attacks

http://www.nytimes.com

The recent computer attacks on the mighty Google left every corporate network in the world looking a little less safe.

Google’s confrontation with China — over government censorship in general and specific attacks on its systems — is an exceptional case, of course, extending to human rights and international politics as well as high-tech spying. But the intrusion into Google’s computers and related attacks from within China on some 30 other companies point to the rising sophistication of such assaults and the vulnerability of even the best defenses, security experts say.

“The Google case shines a bright light on what can be done in terms of spying and getting into corporate networks,” said Edward M. Stroz, a former high-tech crime agent with the F.B.I.who now heads a computer security investigation firm in New York.

Computer security is an ever-escalating competition between so-called black-hat attackers and white-hat defenders. One of the attackers’ main tools is malicious software, known as malware, which has steadily evolved in recent years. Malware was once mainly viruses and worms, digital pests that gummed up and sometimes damaged personal computers and networks.

Malware today, however, is likely to be more subtle and selective, nesting inside corporate networks. And it can be a tool for industrial espionage, transmitting digital copies of trade secrets, customer lists, future plans and contracts.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/technology/internet/18defend.html?em

Saturday, December 12, 2009

U.S. and Russia Open Talks on Limits to War in Cyberspace

~~ About time !!
Actual Cyber Warfare would have serious consequences ~~


December 13, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/science/13cyber.html?_r=1&hp

U.S. and Russia Open Talks on Limits to War in Cyberspace

The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace.

American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia’s overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race.

In the last two years, Internet-based attacks on government and corporate computer systems have multiplied to thousands a day. Hackers, usually never identified, have compromised Pentagon computers, stolen industrial secrets and temporarily jammed government and corporate Web sites. President Obama ordered a review of the nation’s Internet security in February and is preparing to name an official to coordinate national policy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/science/13cyber.html?_r=1&hp

Friday, July 31, 2009

Cyber attack seen as emerging threat for London 2012

~~ Cyber Wars are now a daily fact. Every single gov't , biz , org., or person must be continually on guard for cyber attack. We tend to forget how much of our national security , industrial base and electrical/energy grid, is all very venerable to gifted hackers of ill intent.
Cyber Security is among the foremost issues of our times. Good Jobs there for gifted computer geeks for millennium to come!
If I was in high school or college and looking for a good economically safe career,
Cyber Security Network Admin seems a good bet. ~~~~


Cyber attack seen as emerging threat for London 2012
Tue Jul 21, 2009 3:53pm BST
By Avril Ormsby


http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE56K3TM20090721

LONDON (Reuters) - Olympic organisers are "very alive" to the threat of a cyber attack on the London 2012 Olympics, made more challenging because of its evolving nature, senior Home Office officials said on Tuesday.

Ticketing systems, the transport network and hotel bookings as well as security are among potential targets.

Olympic security officials are also planning for the possible diversion of aircraft to protect airspace around the venues from terrorist attacks, the officials said.

The greatest threat to security at the Games is international terrorism, the government's latest "Safety and Security Strategy" report said.

"There's no current evidence of a terrorist threat to 2012," one of the Home Office officials said.

"But if you look at precedents for sporting events, and to some degree about Olympic events, it would not be beyond the point of imagination to imagine a terrorist threat to 2012 nearer the time."

Sunday, June 14, 2009

"CYBERWAR Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan"

~ We are at war.

A Government run Cyber Defense is needed.

The internet is a public forum that I choose to enter.

Am I willing to surrender some my cyber rights to enter cyberspace -- to surrender my internet privacy in the name of American national self defense?

I know for me I already personally-- but not politically-- censor myself online. Unlike others who really do completely open their life to the internet, I post almost nothing about my private life , or at least nothing shocking.

Nor do I visit any websites that I would want to later deny doing so.

For me there would be very little if any real impact on my personal internet use, in light of the proposed American Government measures of Cyber Defense.

I already guard my privacy online and do not visit sites of illicit or illegal activity.

Ido also do google myself often to find out what others could learn about me with a quick internet search. (With a little work one can mostly control their online presence.)

Now, I am still very much a civil libertarian when it comes to both private and mutually consenting personal interactions. I fully believe that the government has no right to regulate or monitor our private lives.

But again , I CHOOSE to go onto the Internet, with the understanding that it may be monitored and my online actions and interactions might be recorded by some government snoop, a snoop whose job it is to look for threats of violence against man or machine. But it is not his charge to monitor normal free speech, association, and/or political organizing. Those activities are fully protected rights in the USA.

My life online is not that exciting. And again purposely so. Privacy must be guarded by ones self, as only you can protect your own privacy. So I am careful what I post and write about myself on my various blogs.

When you drive the roads in your car there are traffic cops. On the internet too there does need to be a cyberpolice and I am willing to accept Government monitoring of the Internert in the name of Cyber National Security, as I for one do not see how it would change my techno cyber political behaviors in any way.

The First amendment of the US Constitution fully protects all my cyber activities. I have full free speech and free press rights here at TechnoPolitical. I post what I think and believe very freely and without constraint.

If I want or need Privacy I can turn the Computer Off.

We are at war. There are lunatics of all stripes out there who use the internet as a tool to further violence and terrorism. There has to be Government Cyber Security in the USA. The stakes are just too high.

Now below this post, there is another recent post about China's cyber crackdown attempt.

This is a different situation than the USA's, as China is working to suppress nonviolent speech and civil dissent. For there is no right to free speech and free association in China and the Chinese Government is quite totalitarian in its Electronic-Governance of Cyber Space.

The USA however is not looking suppress nonviolent speech and association, but to protect its citizens from Terrorism both domestic and foreign. Big difference.
~~
Posted from blackberry by technopolitical via AT&T.~~





"CYBERWAR Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan"


By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER



Published: June 13, 2009

mobile.nytimes.com



"WASHINGTON - A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries' computer networks.





President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties.




But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama's assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=376300&f=21

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

CYBERWAR: Cadets Trade the Trenches for Firewalls

~~ Warfare in the TechnoPolitical Age ~~ 



CYBERWAR: Cadets Trade the Trenches for Firewalls

WEST POINT, N.Y. — The Army forces were under attack. Communications were down, and the chain of command was broken.

Pacing a makeshift bunker whose entrance was camouflaged with netting, the young man in battle fatigues barked at his comrades: “They are flooding the e-mail server. Block it. I’ll take the heat for it.”

These are the war games at West Point, at least last month, when a team of cadets spent four days struggling around the clock to establish a computer network and keep it operating while hackers from the National Security Agency in Maryland tried to infiltrate it with methods that an enemy might use. The N.S.A. made the cadets’ task more difficult by planting viruses on some of the equipment, just as real-world hackers have done on millions of computers around the world.

--------------------------------

May 12, 2009

Tracking Cyberspies Through the Web Wilderness

For old-fashioned detectives, the problem was always acquiring information. For the cybersleuth, hunting evidence in the data tangle of the Internet, the problem is different.

“The holy grail is how can you distinguish between information which is garbage and information which is valuable?” said Rafal Rohozinski, aUniversity of Cambridge-trained social scientist involved in computer security issues.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/12cyber.html?ref=science

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Pentagon girds for cyber warfare

~~ These Cyber - Defense  issues are  daily news  in the "papers" now.    
Serious stuff .  ~~ 


Pentagon girds for cyber warfare

Attacks from well-funded nations, terror groups are biggest threats

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30630807/


By Lolita C. Baldor
updated 8:38 p.m. ET, Thurs., May 7, 2009

WASHINGTON - Cyber espionage and attacks from well-funded nations or terror groups are the biggest threats to the military's computer networks, a top officer said Thursday.

Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said he worries that foes will learn to disable or distort battlefield communications. Chilton told reporters that even as the Pentagon improves its network defenses against hackers, he needs more people, training and resources to hone offensive cyber war capacity.