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.

CYBER WARS

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THE INTERNET OF THINGS

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

ICT and Cybersecurity experts warned that companies need to pay greater attention to their computer networks' cybersecurity and add that Telecoms company TalkTalk got hacked because “it wasn’t paying enough attention to its cybersecurity,” and that the recent  Ashley Madison attack,  is just the “the tip of  iceberg”.  They add that the growing threat by hackers is very real and that the cyber attacks comparable to the 9/11 event can be expected but needs to be thwarted before they happen.  With the arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) a lot more devices are connected to the Internet and this number is constantly growing,  and provides new ways for hackers to gain access to private and confidential data. Experts recommend that network security must be part of a company’s core infrastructure because the few professional cybersecurity companies globally just aren't  enough to stop the constant barrage of cyber threats. 

 Barack Obama and  Xi Jinping

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met as recent as the 25 Sept 2015 in Washington and reached an “understanding” not to use cyber spies to commit economic espionage and not to hack private firms in each other’s country for economic gain. But in less tan 20 days  a U.S. cybersecurity company claims that it has evidence that hackers linked to the Chinese government tried to violate a recent agreement between Washington and Beijing. American business have complained for a number of years that Chinese hackers have sought to steal trade secrets from U.S. corporate computers. In retaliation U.S. spy organizations have hacked into Chinese companies claiming that American officials performed these hacks  for national security purposes and not to steal Chinese trade secrets. Washington’s determination to eradicate Chinese cyber theft and ban all forms of digital protectionism resulted in regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries  requiring  them to criminalize hacking attacks on U.S. companies.

US officials currently working on the Iran policy determined that the recent surge of cyber attacks by the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials it possibly  linked to arrest of  Siamak Namazi an Iranian-American businessman. The Iranian military  Revolutionary Guards have regularly made hacking attacks on US government agencies in recent years but has increased  after the landmark international agreement to eased severe economic sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.  

The World  Wide Web is the direct consequence of  all the hacking taking place globally but even though these hacks cost global business move than  £200bn last year, the Internet is non-the-less an indispensable  global resource which no country can function without. It is in this sense that ministers of the Obama administration are demanding answer with respect to the protection of the vital undersea Internet cables.  The Russian government recently spooked US officials by dispatching a submarine equipped to cut undersea cables along the East Coast of the United States. 

However the threat is much closer to home. A  teenage hacker crew has been casing John Brennan director of the CIA and other  government officials. A hacker with the alias "Cracka",  hacked into an email account belonging to the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano  getting into a Comcast email that’s under Giuliano’s wife’s name.  They even provided several screenshots to prove they hacked the account but declined to reveal how they did it.