CYBER WARS CONTINUED

 CYBER WARS CONTINUED

The US is hacking China and China is hacking them in return and somehow the  “biggest government hack ever” got past the Feds and the "multi billion-dollar intrusion detection and prevention system that stands guard over much of the federal government's Internet traffic". By the time the federal authorities finally detected an ongoing remote attack targeting the United States' Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computer systems, the hack was completed. 

During the first hack, some  4.2 million federal workers’ information was stolen, and during the second hack between 21 million to 25 million federal workers and contractors was stolen. But a even larger theft took place in 2006, when over 26 million files were stolen from from the Department of Veteran Affairs when US government data networks was breached. 

This hack may have spanned several months, before the White House  made it public, however it is believed that the attack bears the hallmark of Chinese state-sponsored espionage but no direct evidence has been provided. The add insult to injury OPM has also confirmed that 19.7 million background investigation forms and 1.1 million fingerprint records were stolen not to mention Edward Snowden  exposing NSA surveillance practices and records.

Famous Hacker - Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante)

Two Russian computer hackers  Alexey Ivanov, 20, and Vasiliy Gorshkov, 25, were arrested by the FBI for  victimizing banks and 40 US businesses in 10 states and the theft of credit card numbers in a cross-border hacking case. They were lured to the United States and snared in a cyber-sting.  The case against them is built on reverse hacking by the FBI who accessed the Russian's computers.

According to the charges by government lawyers, the pair may be linked to hundreds of crimes, including the theft of 15,700 credit card numbers from Western Union in Denver in September. The breached US computers servers were running Microsoft software, who  acknowledged that security holes exist in some versions of Windows NT and offered to fix  them at no charge for at least two years. 

Associate professor Robert Morris at MIT (creator of Internet's first worm virus)

Apparently Russia has been cyberspying on the United States, several countries throughout Europe and Asia for more than seven years.  It is believed that a large  hacking crew known as "the Dukes" is spying for the Russian government since  all the signs point back to Russian state sponsorship.   Other reports confirmed that the Kremlin is behind cyber-espionage attacks and Regin seems to be their malware of choose. 

Russian hackers also penetrated U.S. industrial control networks that run critical infrastructures like the electrical grid and its been disclosed   that Moscow has formed a special cyber military  hacker unit as part of preparations for future cyber warfare. US  intelligence agency also singled out China, Iran, and North Korea as the primary nation states capable of conducting sophisticated cyber attacks and espionage stating that Politically motivated cyber attacks are now a growing reality. 

Infosec expert - Mark Abene (Phiber Optik)

US Statistics on cybercrime show a huge disparity between the number of attacks reported and the number of people who actually get caught. Based on this more and more computer savvy people are turning to hacking starting out with the firm intention of not getting caught. 

However, hackers like Kevin Mitnick, Eric Bloodaxe, Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante), "Data Stream". "Knight lightning", Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Paul Stira (Scorpion), Elias Ladopoulos (Acid Phreak), Robert Morris, who are worth their weight in gold have been caught and served time.