Ex-NSA director: China has hacked 'every major corporation' in U.S.

money.cnn.com

Mike McConnell, the ex-NSA director, says Chinese hackers "have penetrated every major corporation of any consequence in the United States and taken information." 

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Security Expert: Likelihood of Future Cyberattacks From Cuba is '100 Percent'

capitolhillcubans

From The Washington Times:

Expert’s warning: Likelihood of future cyberattacks on U.S. emanating from Cuba is ‘100 percent’

The U.S. and Cuba are enjoying a nice honeymoon following the recent reconciliation between the two nations after five decades of acrimony. But don’t get too chummy, warns one information security expert.

“Apparently the United States has not yet learned its lesson of the downside of giving away communication technology to Communist regimes, and will once again pay the price. In a year or two when Cuba gets advanced broadband circuits promised by President Obama, the likelihood that we will see attacks on U.S. public and private networks emanating from Cuba is 100 percent,” predicts James W. Gabberty, professor of information systems at Pace University in New York City and an alumnus of both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University Polytechnic Institute.

“To Cuba, the internet is a veritable lifeline through which it will be able to concomitantly make accommodation bookings for the myriad future American hotels that will one day dot its coastline while simultaneously siphon intellectual property from U.S. industries, perhaps even our Hollywood movies that hopefully won’t offend Cuba’s communist regime,” Mr. Gabberty continues.

“When the day comes that Cuban-based cyberattacks penetrate U.S. networks, Cuba can simply follow China’s typical repudiation posture, and challenge the U.S. administration to prove it. That has worked for Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, and there is no reason to think it won’t work for Cuba,” he observes.

Castro envía de urgencia "Las Avispas Negras" para sofocar rebelión estudiantil en Caracas

Oscar Suarez

Ayatollah Khamenei: Iranian University Students Are 'Cyber-War Agents'

breitbart

By Frances Martel 

ntpinto.wordpress.com

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, released a statement this week urging university students to "refine your souls and to approach God," but also to prepare for "cyber-war." According to Iran's Mehr News Agency, the Ayatollah released a message urging students to "ready for such war wholeheartedly."

The Mehr report includes a number of disjointed messages about self-improvement and the future of the nation, telling students that they should strive for achievement but never forget their duty to the nation. "You are the cyber-war agents and such a war requires Ammar-like insight and Malik Ashtar-like (two Prophet’s Companions in early Islamic history) resistance," the Ayatollah's message reads, "get yourselves ready for such war wholeheartedly."

Israeli newspaper Haaretz describes Mehr as a "semi-official" news source in Iran, and adds that the message was accompanied by other official statements regarding cyber warfare. Iran's Chief of Staff, General Hassan Firouzabadi, specifically targeted the United States and Israel, suggesting that his country was ready for a "decisive battle" with both. He added that Iran had been "staging different war games" to practice, in a statement eerily reminiscent of war statements out of Pyongyang.

Iran has a longer history with cyber war than many nations, being the victim of the single most destructive cyber attack known in history--Stuxnet, a virus jointly created by the United States and Israel, wiped out a major nuclear development plant in the country. It has since spent years developing a cyber wing of their military with mixed success. Last October, the head of Iran's cyber warfare program was found shot dead, a report the country initially denied.

The Ayatollah's call to cyber warfare and generally jingoistic disposition in the message significantly contrast with the image of Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani as a "moderate" compared to his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani's official twitter account yielded a Rosh Hashanah greeting last year that the Iranian government denied existed and is said to believe that the Holocaust happened, putting him somewhere in the middle of the Iranian political spectrum. But in absolute terms, the aggression from the Supreme Leader folds nicely into Rouhani's open boasting about lying about Iran's nuclear program and rejecting invitations from President Obama to bilateral talks. The number of executions in Tehran has also skyrocketed under Rouhani, for infractions ranging from adultery to homosexuality to blasphemy. 

Last month, the White House suggested that sanctions might be in order for Iran should they continue to develop their nuclear program, but by this year's State of the Union Address, President Obama clearly stated that he would veto any attempt to impose sanctions on Iran coming from Congress.

Special report: The cyberwar threat from North Korea

Fox News

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
North Korea’s effort to build a cyberarmy that can conduct a string of attacks on neighboring states has experts asking some key questions:

Is Pyongyang gearing up for a cyberassault on the United States?

Does it have the capability?

“They do have the capability, obviously,” says Alexandre Mansourov, a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “But I don’t think they have the intention.”

But not everyone is so unsure. Like the Cold War in the 1950s and ’60s, cyberwarfare is becoming an arms race. Many nations, including the United States, are building up their offensive and defensive capabilities amid an increase of espionage and a proliferation of attacks on public and private computer networks.

Experts say the number of attacks on South Korea over the last five years looks more like a coordinated war than the work of random hackers. This has some officials in the U.S. girding for a broader fight.

“We should never underestimate Pyongyang's willingness to engage in dangerous and provocative behavior to extract more aid and concessions from the international community,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

'They are saying quite publicly they have several thousand men and women working on a daily basis on cyber.'

- Jarno Limnéll, director of cybersecurity at Stonesoft Corp.

“North Korea is certainly not the most capable nation-state threat actor today, but even relatively minor cyberplayers can sometimes find vulnerabilities in complicated civilian architectures and cause significant disruptions."

While no one knows exactly what North Korea has up its sleeve, a number of hackers who have defected, as well as the increasingly sophisticated attacks on South Korea, suggest that its leader, Kim Jong-un, isn’t limiting his muscle-flexing to nuclear tests in the Pacific.

A history of cyber-violence
According to reports beginning in 2010, North Korea has been training thousands of top computer science students to be sophisticated cyberwarriors. Some experts, like Professor Lee Dong-hoon of the Korea University Graduate School of Information Security, estimate that Pyongyang has been pouring money into cyberwarfare since the 1980s.

The proof is in the attacks, of course, though it is difficult to pin down the responsible parties:

• A wave of “distributed denial of service (DDoS)” attacks in 2009 struck both U.S. government and South Korean websites. A virus launched from unknown sources (South Korean officials accused Pyongyang) through a series of “zombie” computers sent waves of Internet traffic to a number of websites in the two countries. The U.S. Treasury and Federal Trade Commission sites were shut down for a weekend, but the action crippled a number of government sites and media outlets in South Korea.
• A DDoS attack on South Korean banks in March 2011 left 30 million people without ATM access for days. At the time, Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee Labs, said the attacks had the mark of a North Korean “cyberwar drill” and theorized that Pyongyang had built an army of zombie computers, or “botnets,” to unleash malicious software. He guessed that the 2009 attack had been a similar operation.
• An attack in March 2013 was the biggest one yet, infecting and wiping clean the critical master boot records of 48,000 computers and servers associated with South Korean banks and media outlets, using their own networks. Experts traced the “cyberweapon” back through more than 1,000 IP addresses used on different continents, but South Korean officials accused North Korea of directing the attack. Systems were crippled for days.

Gen. James Thurman, commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, told Congress in 2012 that "the newest addition to the North Korean asymmetric arsenal is a growing cyberwarfare capability,” in which North Korea “employs sophisticated computer hackers trained to launch cyberinfiltration and cyberattacks" against South Korea and the U.S.

Observers say the alleged North Korean attacks are launched from servers all over the world in order to avoid detection. 

“It’s all untraceable,” Mansourov said. “But there is a presumption of guilt -- I think it's a valid presumption.”

Jarno Limnéll, director of cybersecurity at Finland-based Stonesoft Corp. (part of the McAfee cybersecurity company), said that while it is “hard to know what cyber-capabilities your enemies or even your friends have, [this is] something [North Korea] has taken very seriously … and what they are saying quite publicly is they have several thousand men and women working on a daily basis on cyber. They want to give a very clear impression that they are a strong player in this field.”

Accusations fly worldwide
For its part, Pyongyang has accused South Korea and the U.S. of launching similar attacks against North Korea. Last March, around the time of the attacks on banks and broadcasters in Seoul, North Korean offices said an online attack took down the servers at Loxley Pacific Co., the broadband provider for the North.

Mansourov said there is a “Cold War situation going on,” a tit-for-tat between the North and South. And it’s not limited to the Korean Peninsula:

China has accused the U.S. of cybersnooping, and the U.S. has accused China not only of spying, but of launching expensive cyberattacks against public and private networks in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Israel and the U.S. were widely fingered for launching the Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran's nuclear program in 2010.

“It’s effectively an arms race,” said C. Matthew Curtin, founder of the computer security consulting firm Interhack and author of  Brute Force: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard.

“We need to assume that hostile nation states -- even non-state actors like al Qaeda -- have offensive cyber-capabilities, and we need to be in a position to render their capabilities moot."

He said the best way to confront cyberthreats is to secure domestic networks and force other countries to spend more money to get to us. “Then it becomes like the [Cold War-era] Soviet Union, where they will eventually have nothing left to spend,” he said.

Rogers still hopes to see the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which the House passed in April,  succeed in the Senate and be signed into law by President Obama. It would allow greater information sharing between the government and private companies to prevent and respond to cyberattacks. But critics say it will give the government greater ability to monitor citizens’ Internet communications.

“It’s not a black-and-white issue,” said Curtin, who noted that “nothing is free” and that breaking down these “barriers” of information will require ordinary citizens to give up some privacy.

But the threat is real, he said, whether it comes from North Korea or Iran.

"If someone was trying to shut down our power grid when there is a huge polar vortex blowing through the country, that would have a serious impact on us,” he said.

The NSA Is Building a Computer to Crack Almost Any Code

TIME

In theory, the computer would be able to make calculations faster than any traditional computer. While this could compromise everything from home banking to state secrets, the nearly $80 million project hasn't succeeded yet.

Ex-Pentagon general target of leak investigation, sources say

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read on investigations >>

Wikipedia wars: the most controversial pages revealed

Fox News

silenced.co

By Bahar Gholipour/

A behind-the-scenes look at the so-called edit wars on Wikipedia has revealed the topics people argue about the most across the globe. The winners: religion and politics.

Considering that Wikipedia is the result of mass collaboration, with essentially 40 million editors, back-and-forth editing and even arguments are bound to occur. But some topics on the site better resemble a battlefield than a publishing house, according to researchers.

"Wikipedia seems to be a cool and novel platform for collaboration, but it suffers from very traditional features of human societies," said Oxford University physicist Taha Yasseri, co-author of the new study detailed online May 23 in the preprint journal arXiv.

Yasseri and his colleagues collected the revisions on all of the articles submitted over ten years. They then looked at edit wars in which Wikipedia users (or "editors") repeatedly override one another and don't reach a consensus. "It's a big deal in Wikipedia, as well as in any other peer-production projects without a supervisor," Yasseri said.

The researchers identified the 100 most controversial topics in 13 languages. "Because the method is only based on revision metadata and not the content, it can be easily generalized to different languages," Yasseri said.

Overall, after religion and politics, the most controversial topics were countries and geographical places, followed by sex, gender and race-related topics.

Some subjects, such as Israel, were heavily debated in all the languages, and some topics were local to different language editions. On the French- and Czech-language Wikipedia sites, scientific topics were the most controversial, whereas sports were the hot topic on Spanish-language sites.

"Sometimes, you don't know what is really important for the local community, but you will realize [it] by looking at these results," Yasseri said.

The Hong Kong-based television station TVB, along with its productions, appear quite often in the Chinese list of disputed articles. The Romanians argued most about musicians and art, and the Japanese Wikipedia is a battlefield for manga.

Religion and politics were heavily disputed in Middle Eastern languages, including Hebrew, Persian and Arabic. They were also controversial topics in other languages Wikipedia sites. The three most disputed topics on the English-language version of Wikipedia were about George W. Bush, anarchism and Muhammad. On the French-language Wikipedia site, the most controversial articles were about Sgolne Royal, UFOs and Jehovah's Witnesses. On the German-language site, Croatia is heavily disputed, followed by scientology and 9/11 conspiracy theories. [Top 10 Conspiracy Theories]

There are different ways of collaborating on Wikipedia, such as talk pages, available history of the edits, off-wiki forums and real-world connections, Yasseri said. "All these are designed to elaborate the collaboration, and they really help. But when it comes to sensitive topics, they are just enlarging the battle field."

The method the researchers developed to explore Wikipedia could help design similar projects for example, OpenStreetMap, a collaborative project that aims to create an editable map of the world, the researchers said. Moreover, it could give social scientists a better understanding of the dynamics of conflict emergence and its universal features in human societies.

"Many of the theories in social science never could be tested against real experiments," Yasseri said. "Now, thanks to our digital life of today, we are able to track and analyze the interactions of a huge society of individuals for example, the leader-follower relationship or the role of mediators."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/03/wikipedia-edit-wars-most-hotly-contested/#ixzz2VFOSzbkP

China labels US the ’real hacking empire’ after Pentagon report

behindthewall

chinhdangvu.blogspot.com

By Sui-Lee Wee, Reuters

BEIJING -- China on Wednesday accused the United States of sowing discord between it and its neighbors after the Pentagon said Beijing is using espionage to fuel its military modernization, branding Washington the "real hacking empire.”

The latest salvo came a day after China's foreign ministry dismissed as groundless a Pentagon report that accused China for the first time of trying to break into U.S. defense computer networks.

The Pentagon also cited progress in Beijing's effort to develop advanced-technology stealth aircraft and to build an aircraft carrier fleet to project power further offshore.

The People's Liberation Army Daily called the report a "gross interference in China's internal affairs.”

"Promoting the ‘China military threat theory’ can sow discord between China and other countries, especially its relationship with its neighboring countries, to contain China and profit from it," the newspaper said in a commentary that was carried on China's Defense Ministry website.

The United States is "trumpeting China's military threat to promote its domestic interests groups and arms dealers,” the newspaper said, adding that it expects "U.S. arms manufacturers are gearing up to start counting their money.”

The remarks in the newspaper underscore the escalating mistrust between China and the United States over hacking, now a top point of contention between Washington and Beijing.

A U.S. computer security company, Mandiant, said in February a secretive Chinese military unit was likely behind a series of hacking attacks that targeted the United States and stole data from more than 100 companies.

That set off a war of words between Washington and Beijing.

China has said repeatedly that it does not condone hacking and is the victim of hacking attacks -- most of which it says come from the United States.

"As we all know, the United States is the real 'hacking empire' and has an extensive espionage network," the People's Daily, a newspaper regarded as a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, said in a commentary.

"In recent years, the United States has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries,” the article said.

"Cyber weapons are more frightening than nuclear weapons," the People's Daily said. "To establish military hegemony on the Internet by repeatedly smearing other countries is a dangerous and wrong path to take and will ultimately end up in shooting themselves in the foot."

Cuba: Ciber-propaganda

con el rimbombante titulo de "Ciberguerra cubana se gesta en el Comité Central", se describe lo que no es mas que una campañita manipuladora y propagandistica en las redes sociales

Carlos Alberto Pérez Benítez con su Chiringa de Cuba

con minimo impacto en la opinion publica. parametrada, con similares codigos comunicativos provenientes del ordeno y mando, no cuenta ni con la frescura ni la diversidad requerida para ser presencia estimable. lo contraproducente del articulo es que desconoce la verdadera ciberguerra castrista que es dirigida y ejecutada por la contrainteligencia cubana.

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

martinoticias

Lizandra Díaz Blanco

Lo que a simple vista podría parecer la opinión de periodistas comprometidos con las ideas castristas, es en realidad un organizado y obligatorio sistema de réplicas para contrarrestar en internet las informaciones que resulten incómodas al poder en Cuba.

Proyecto Enjambre ha nombrado el gobierno cubano  a  este grupo selecto de periodistas de todos los medios de prensa oficiales, que tuitean bajo las mismas etiquetas, siguen las mismas cuentas y divulgan las mismas informaciones al unísono.

Un periodista cubano que por razones obvias prefiere el anonimato puso como ejemplo que recientemente se pidió a los miembros de la prensa oficialista brindar al entonces candidato a la presidencia venezolana Nicolás Maduro el mismo apoyo que una vez se le ofreció a Hugo Chávez, a través de las redes sociales.

Actualmente en cada provincia de Cuba existe un grupo de 8 a 10 personas, que desde sus casas o centros de trabajo, generalmente bajo identidades falsas intentan contrarrestar las informaciones u opiniones que no favorezcan la imagen internacional del gobierno.

Esta política de enfrentamiento del gobierno, bautizada por ellos como Cibermambí, lleva ya varios años implementando este sistema de réplicas, pero no es hasta ahora que el primer vicepresidente cubano Miguel Díaz-Canel ha comenzado a generalizarlo, pues su nuevo cargo incluye la atención directa a la rama ideológica, aseguran dichas fuentes.

Cibermambí, que comenzó a gestarse en enero de 2010 a partir de un curso de periodismo digital Instituto Internacional de Periodismo  “José Martí”, se extiende ahora a las provincias, de la mano de periodistas e informáticos de los medios, bajo la orden del Comité Central del Partido y el departamento ideológico del Ministerio del Interior.

El poder en Cuba se encontró impotente ante noticias de la oposición  interna que acaparaban titulares en medios de prensa del mundo, como el fallecimiento durante una huelga de hambre del disidente Orlando Zapata Tamayo o las opiniones de Yoani Sánchez en su blog Generación Y.

El joven opositor Eliécer Ávila, quien durante su visita a Europa anunció la fundación de la organización política Somos Más a su regreso a la isla, está ya en el punto de mira de este “enjambre”, con materiales audiovisuales que intentan dar nuevos dignificados al nombre de dicho movimiento.

“De esta forma se hace justicia a la verdad. En Cuba para afirmar Somos + hace falta contar con el pueblo. Nos vemos el 1ro. de Mayo en la Plaza de la Revolución,” así introducen el video en Youtube que  presenta a Ávila, Yoani Sánchez, las Damas de Blanco como “mercenarios” y los separa del pueblo cubano.

El ingeniero en informática Eliécer Ávila,   recuerda de sus días de estudiante de la Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas (UCI )  la Operación Verdad: “un grupo de estudiantes especialmente escogidos para contrarrestar las opiniones contrarias al criterio del gobierno cubano en internet, asesorados por las más altas esferas de poder (…) bajo la apariencia de ciudadanos comunes”.
Ávila indicó, que según ha sabido, Operación Verdad fue el experimento inicial, pero luego han implementado réplicas del proyecto “no solo a nivel de periodistas sino también a nivel de Joven Club, y de otras universidades.”

 Para las autoridades cubanas todo se reduce al campo de batalla. Según ellos, toda crítica contraria a la posición oficialista cubana través de internet es parte de la “ciberguerra”, incluso lo publicado en medios de prensa del mundo, sin compromisos con ninguna de las partes cubanas.

Cualquiera puede ser un enemigo para este ejército, desde agencias noticiosas como CNN hasta blogueros, y acusan a estos periodistas y comunicadores de distorsionar opiniones y exagerar el impacto real de las acciones de la oposición en la isla. Aunque el gobierno de los Estados Unidos continúa siendo el villano favorito, algunos diplomáticos extranjeros también son señalados con el dedo.

De algo sí están claros: Twitter, Facebook y YouTube son las nuevas y poderosas armas de los periodistas independientes y opositores cubanos.

Pero el proyecto Cibermambí va más allá de la réplica a opiniones contrarias a las suyas, se trata de modernizar a la prensa cubana, prácticamente ausente del ciberespacio hasta hace muy poco, por razones obvias de poca y lenta conectividad.

Con estos objetivos hasta el momento se han impartido en toda Cuba más de una treintena de cursos, tanto para medios de prensa como para otros organismos y entidades de la administración central del estado.

La Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA) es parte fundamental para hacer realidad esta presencia en la internet, de hecho sus funcionarios toman parte en las reuniones  citadas.

El trabajo se monitorea a partir de un grupo llamado “contrainjerencia”, compuesto por Rolando Alfonso Borges, jefe departamento ideológico del Partido, y Joaquín Suárez, funcionario del mismo.

Otros miembros de este equipo son Bertha Mojena, Jorge Legaño, Sonia Benítez y Percy Alvarado, además de los autores de blogs como La isla desconocida,  Cambios en Cuba, Vladia, La pupila insomne, y otros blogueros extranjeros afines al gobierno.


No obstante, sus planes son ampliar el proyecto a sectores como  cultura, turismo, y personal universitario, de acuerdo con el ancho de banda de cada entidad.

BREAKING NEWS: AP Twitter account hacked, posts false White House scare

NBCNews.com

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Following a hack attack, the Associated Press' verified Twitter account posted "an erroneous tweet" claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended. Immediately following the false tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered. (See chart below.)

Google

Following the false @AP tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered.

"That's a bogus tweet," an AP spokesperson initially told NBC News, a statement that was repeated by the company's corporate communications account. Though the false tweet disappeared, the false message continued to exist on the service in over four thousand retweets. In a briefing that occurred after the erroneous tweet appeared, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that "the president is fine, I was just with him." Julie Pace, AP's chief White House correspondent, reiterated during the briefing that "anything that was just sent out about any incident at the White House is actually false." AP media relations director Paul Colford is quoted, in a blog post, as saying that the company had also suspended other AP Twitter feeds, "out of a sense of caution." He added, "We are working with Twitter to sort this out." A wire statement issued later explained that the mid-day tweet "came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists." The New York Times revealed a tweet by a group called the Syrian Electronic Army claiming credit for the hack. The group's Twitter account is currently suspended. Social media accounts associated with CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were compromised on Saturday. The same group, known for its pro-Assad politics, took credit for that attack too, as well as earlier attacks on the Twitter accounts of NPR and the BBC. The group is not to be confused with the hacking collective known as Anonymous — in fact, they have previously clashed online. Passwords are weak link Because password theft is the culprit behind social-media account takeovers, security experts say that better protection is needed. Responsibility for security is shared between the user and the service. "The challenge (with corporate-owned Twitter accounts) is, we share the password," Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told NBC News. "Once you get enough people with the password, bad things are going to happen," he adds. "There's no good way of isolating or limiting access these high-profile accounts." Wisniewski said it is up to Twitter to strengthen security by using two-factor authentication, a log-in technique used by Google, Apple, Facebook and others that requires the pairing of a password with a code delivered to a user's cellphone. "In my opinion, this is overdue for Twitter, especially for verified accounts," he said, regarding how incidents like this could be prevented. "Humans are the weakest things when it comes to a phish [attack]." NBC News has reached out to Twitter for additional comment. — with additional reporting by NBC News' Stacey Klein, Helen Popkin and Patrick Rizzo

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Successful hacker attack could cripple U.S. infrastructure, experts say

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Read on usnews >>

Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia

openchannel

Rick Wilking / Reuters file

First Lt Michael Newman examines a server rack that is isolated from the Internet at the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., in July 2010.

By Robert Windrem, Senior Investigative Producer, NBC News

The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyberweapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure, according to a leading expert on hostilities waged via the Internet.

Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit institute that advises the U.S. government and businesses on cybersecurity, said all three nations have built arsenals of sophisticated computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other tools that place them atop the rest of the world in the ability to inflict serious damage on one another, or lesser powers.

Ranked just below the Big Three, he said, are four U.S. allies: Great Britain, Germany, Israel and perhaps Taiwan.

But in testament to the uncertain risk/reward ratio in cyberwarfare, Iran has used attacks on its nuclear program to bolster its offensive capabilities and is now developing its own "cyberarmy," Borg said.

Borg offered his assessment of the current state of cyberwar capabilities Tuesday in the wake of a report by the American computer security company Mandiant linking hacking attacks and cyber espionage against the U.S. to a sophisticated Chinese group known as “Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398.

In today’s brave new interconnected world, hackers who can defeat security defenses are capable of disrupting an array of critical services, including delivery of water, electricity and heat, or bringing transportation to a grinding halt. U.S. senators last year received a closed-door briefing at which experts demonstrated how a power company employee could take down the New York City electrical grid by clicking on a single email attachment, the New York Times reported.

U.S. officials rarely discuss offensive capability when discussing cyberwar, though several privately told NBC News recently that the U.S. could "shut down" the electrical grid of a smaller nation -- Iran, for example – if it chose to do so.

Borg echoed that assessment, saying the U.S. cyberwarriors, who work within the National Security Agency, are “very good across the board. … There is a formidable capability.”

“Stuxnet and Flame (malware used to disrupt and gather intelligence on Iran's nuclear program) are demonstrations of that,” he said. “… (The U.S.) could shut down most critical infrastructure in potential adversaries relatively quickly.”

China, Russia have different prioritiesBorg said China and Russia have similar capacity to cause mayhem, but have different priorities and skill sets.

“Russia is best at military espionage and operations,” he said. “That's what they have focused on for a long time. China is looking for crucial business information and technology. China's main focus is stealing technology. These things quite separate. You use different tools on critical infrastructure than you use for military espionage and different tools again on stealing technology."

Borg said that each has its strong suit. "The Russians are technically advanced. The Chinese just have more people dedicated to the effort, by a wide margin,” he said. “They are not as innovative or creative as the U.S. and Russia. China has the greatest quantity, if not quality."

Borg said the group featured in Mandiant’s report, the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, may be one of the most important groups working in China, but not necessarily the most important.

"There are at least two dozen groups carrying out aggressive operations against the U.S.,” he said. “They get in each other’s way and trip over one another, but they are all operating with the tacit approval of the Chinese government.

"They're not cooperating with each other because they don’t share capabilities," he added. "One group has good programming, but is bad at access or targeting." 

The Chinese hacking efforts are so broad, Borg said, that the highest-ranking Chinese officials “almost certainly do not know what all the groups are doing,” or the consequences. As a result, he added, they have been embarrassed by reports like the one in Tuesday’s New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant assessment.

China is the most likely of the superpowers to leave a calling card, making their work the easiest to track. "China is very arrogant in its authorship of cyberweapons,” Borg said. “It does little to conceal its identity."

That’s in sharp contrast to the Russians, who he noted are not above writing code in Chinese to throw off investigators.

While the U.S. could respond to ongoing cyberattacks from China and Russia by shutting down the power grid of "any of its adversaries” and causing severe physical damage, Borg said it is encumbered by several factors.

One is its vulnerability to cyberwarfare as the world’s most networked nation, he said.

And from a geopolitical standpoint, Borg said, the U.S. would not want to badly damage the economy of either China or Russia. In fact, he said, the U.S. would almost certainly have to incorporate protections for critical systems like the power grid in any cyberattack.

Also, detecting the source of hostilities is not always easy, Borg said, as cybertracks are not as easy to follow as missile tracks. That means “mutually assured destruction,” the main strategic tenet of the Cold War, is problematic at best when talking about cyberwar, he said.

"It might be difficult to determine proportionate response,” he said. “It might not be simple to attack the attacker.”

For example, policymakers may think an attack has been carried out by the Chinese, when it was actually the work of the Russians or a rising power in the cyber world, like Iran. That is why intelligence -- getting insight into these operations -- is more important in a crisis than cyberforensics, which can take longer and not be as certain.

"There is no MAD in the Cold War sense," he said, "You can’t be 'assured' of attribution. The attack can be anonymous. It can be spoofed," or disguised as coming from another source. 

Iran developing 'serious capability'The U.S. first began to develop its own offensive capabilities 20 years ago when several strategic thinkers, particularly at the Naval Post-Graduate School, began to see the possibilities. It was not so much a strategic priority, but more "people familiar with electronics and hackers exercising their imagination." (Borg says one of those thinkers, Winn Schwartau, used fiction to discuss the threat and the possibilities, in a 1991 book, "Terminal Compromise.")

While the U.S. has the means to respond and to defend itself, Borg notes that some countries have no recourse. He cited the Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, when the Georgian government and media infrastructure was quickly compromised.

What was particularly interesting, Borg said, was that the Russian military and intelligence services weren’t directly involved.

"The first wave was carried by organized crime," he noted. "The second wave was carried out by a (hacker) group organized though social media.” He said Russian hackers could download the attack software from a variety of popular sites, including dating and gun-collecting websites.

In both cases, Borg concluded, the organizers apparently were tipped off early about the timing of Russian military operations, he said.

The attack on Georgia also illustrated another aspect of cyberwarfare, Borg said, noting that Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania afterward formed a cyberalliance, leaving them in a better position to deal with future assaults.

That also appears to be the case with Iran, which recently announced that it decided to establish cyber army and claimed to have 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel involved in defensive and offensive operations. That isn’t all bluster, Borg said, noting that when the U.S. leveled new sanctions on Iranian banks last year, U.S. banks suddenly came under attack.

"Iran is developing a serious capability," said Borg. “It's exaggerating the present capabilities, but it’s working toward the future."

That’s especially troubling because the risk of smaller nations waging cyberwar against one other may be higher than with the online superpowers, he said.

He cited reports indicating that Iran may have been behind what he called one of the more serious cyberattacks to date -- an assault last August on the Saudi Aramco computer network that disabled more than 30,000 computers used to control the flow of Saudi oil. The Saudi Interior Ministry blamed "foreign countries" for the attack.

Borg said he believes the attack was an "Iranian fundamentalist attack ... at some point loosely the under auspices of Iran, and blessed by Iran. The fundamentalist group made a claim of responsibility. ... “Based on technical analysis, the claim has credibility."

For that reason, Borg says he is less worried about the possibility of China or Russia launching a catastrophic attack against the U.S. than he is about the emerging cyberpowers.

“What I’m really concerned about isn’t Russia or China, but attacks from Iran or terrorist groups working with state actors,” he said.

"Operacion Verdad": la ciberguerra de Castro

Yoani Sánchez

Entrevista realizada por Yoani Sanchez al joven Eliecer Avila graduado de la Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas de Cuba (UCI). En la conversación se toca el tema de la Operación Verdad, una estrategia de lucha tecnológica que desarrolla el gobierno cubano en Internet. Desde colapsar sitios, crear falsas matrices de opinón, denigrar y difamar sobre los ciudadanos críticos, hasta hackear portales contrarios a la propaganda oficial.
Este material es de vital importancia para comprender la extensión y virulencia de los soldados de la web, entrenados en instituciones cubanas y la labor de hostigamiento que realizan en el ciberespacio.

El video tiene fallas de origen en el sonido, de manera que pedimos disculpas de antemano!

Obama Readies Unilateral Move on Cybersecurity

PJMedia

Rodrigo Sermeño

WASHINGTON – A long-running effort to protect critical infrastructure in the U.S. from cyber attacks collapsed in Congress last year. Despite this setback, different groups have continued their calls for more action in the wake of continuous threats, paving the way for the Obama administration to take the lead on cybersecurity policy – perhaps in an executive order that could come early this year.

After Congress first rejected the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 in August, the Obama administration immediately began drafting an executive document, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20. The White House argued that the danger of a devastating cyber attack against the U.S. was just too great for the executive branch to ignore it. The executive order, unlike the bill, does not need congressional approval, which will undoubtedly open the debate about the directive’s constitutionality.

The executive order will offer voluntary guidelines and a strict set of standards that will help government “more effectively secure the nation’s critical infrastructure by working collaboratively with the private sector,” White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Washington Times.

The cybersecurity bill, first introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) in February, called for the creation of a council to develop standards for certain industries such as utilities, pipelines, and financial service companies labeled as “critical infrastructure.” It also aimed to encourage industry to share information with the government about cyber-threats spotted on their networks.

After months of negotiations with privacy and civil liberty groups and industry representatives, the Senate introduced a revised version of the bill last summer. In the hopes of winning over the opposition, the bill’s co-sponsors significantly watered it down, making the cybersecurity standards optional.

Despite disagreements over specific measures, the legislation attracted widespread bipartisan support in the Senate. Many senators agreed with the major provisions of the bill that sought to strengthen the nation’s barriers against cyber attacks. But a rift emerged between the legislators believing that a new regulatory program was necessary because of the private sector’s failure to adequately protect its networks, and those doubting the efficacy of more government regulation in achieving its intended objective.

Back in August, Republicans and business groups strongly opposed the bill that would have imposed minimum standards of security on companies in key industries, claiming it was unwarranted government regulation. After the bill fell short to pass in August, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voted against it in a procedural move so that he could bring the bill back to the floor in November.

During the lame-duck session, the Senate came close to passing cybersecurity legislation. But a motion to move forward on the bill failed to secure the 60 votes needed to bring the bill up for passage.

“The bill that was and is most important to the intelligence community was just killed, and that’s cybersecurity,” Reid told the Hill after the vote. “Whatever we do for this bill, it’s not enough for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So everyone should understand cybersecurity is dead for this Congress. What an unfortunate thing, but that’s the way it is.”

Opposition to the bill made some legislators break ranks with their party. Four Democrats – Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) – voted against the motion in November. Three Republicans – Sens. Collins, Olympia Snowe (Maine), and Scott Brown (Mass.) – joined their Democratic counterparts in favor of the bill.

A rival version, the SECURE IT Act, introduced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and a group of Senate Republicans in March, focused on improving the sharing of information about cyber-threats, but it did not include any measures aimed at creating security standards for critical infrastructure. The bill failed to gain traction in Congress and among civil liberty groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

Many government officials lamented the Cybersecurity Act’s failure. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), senior member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, expressed his disappointment that the Senate “once again failed to put partisan differences aside and pass the critical bill.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also expressed his disappointment with the Senate for failing to allow the country to enhance its ability to protect itself against threats.

Next ->  

Polish Plane Crash, GeoUNgineering, Internet Surveillance

corbettreport Welcome to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com - the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: Poland Denies Explosives Found on Wreck of Crashed Jet
http://ur1.ca/aqx1z
'Key Witness' In Polish Presidential Plane Crash Dies, Suicide Suspected
http://ur1.ca/aqx27
Plane Crash Timeline
http://ur1.ca/ar0zk
Flashback: Polish President Dies in Jet Crash in Russia
http://ur1.ca/aqx2c

Story #2: Ocean Fertilization Experiment to Make Waves at UN Meeting
http://ur1.ca/aqx2j
Harper Government Talks Tough on Haida's 'Rogue Science' Experiment
http://ur1.ca/aqx2q
Ocean-Fertilization Project Off Canada Sparks Furore
http://ur1.ca/aqx2w

Story #3: Police Need 'New' Internet Surveillance Tools, Say Chiefs
http://ur1.ca/aqx31
Canadian Police Urge Parliament to Pass Domestic Spying Bill
http://ur1.ca/aqx37
Wikipedia: Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act
http://ur1.ca/aqx3e

U.S. officials: Iran is behind recent cyberattacks

Security Clearance

Read >>

Panetta: Cyber intruders have already infiltrated US systems

By Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, NBC News

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a call to arms against cyber attacks on U.S. targets and said the Pentagon must be prepared to launch preemptive attacks in cyberspace against potential attackers. He warned that a cyber attack by a nation state or terrorists on the U.S. could be America's "cyber Pearl Harbor" and "be just as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11."

In a speech before business executives in New York, Panetta revealed that cyber intruders have already gained access to some of America's critical control systems that run chemical, electric and water systems with the intent to "cause panic, destruction and loss of life."

With a current annual budget of $3 billion for cybersecurity, Panetta urged that more needs to be done to create an army of "skilled cyber warriors" to confront the immediate and growing threat. The Defense Department is already hammering out new "rules of engagement" for a potential cyber war.  More >>

US Warns Two Chinese Companies Pose Security Risk

Eurasia Review

By Cindy Saine

U.S. companies considering doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE are being warned to find another vendor. A U.S. House of Representatives report said the companies pose a long-term corporate and national security threat.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, said the committee began investigating concerns about the telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE a year ago, interviewing former Huawei employees, industry experts and intelligence officials.

China – US Relations

Rogers said the panel was disappointed by the incomplete, contradictory and evasive answers provided by Huawei and ZTE during the investigation.

“The investigation concluded that the risks associated with these companies providing equipment and services to U.S. critical infrastructure undermines the core U.S. national security interests,” Rogers said.

An Intelligence Committee report recommends U.S. government systems, especially sensitive systems, exclude Huawei and ZTE equipment and component parts. The report pointed out critical infrastructure, everything from electric-power grids to banking and finance systems to water systems, is extremely inter-connected, and said the risk is high that a failure or disruption in one system could have a devastating ripple effect.

Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, a Democrat from Maryland, warned of a heightened risk of cyber-espionage or cyber-attack from the two firms that he said clearly have ties with the Chinese government.

“We already know the Chinese are aggressively hacking into our nation’s networks, threatening our critical infrastructure, and stealing millions of dollars worth of trade secrets and other sensitive information from American companies,” he said.

Ruppersberger said $300 billion worth of U.S. trade secrets are stolen every year, and that most of the cases prosecuted involve China.

Huawei Vice President for External Affairs William Plummer attended the news conference and spoke to reporters afterwards. Plummer strongly rejected the conclusions of the investigation, and said it was motivated by political suspicions of China during an election year in the United States.

“There are politics and then there are facts,” said Plummer. “The facts are that this company is globally-trusted, and that our product is world-proven in terms of its security and integrity.”

Plummer said Huawei has too much to lose to collaborate with Chinese cyber-espionage. He said it is an independently-owned company that has been operating in the United States for years.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also rejected the report, saying Chinese companies do not pose a national security threat to the United States. He said he hopes the U.S. Congress will, in his words, “set aside prejudices and respect the facts.”

U.S. national security policy officials say Huawei works closely with the Chinese military on research and development projects. Huawei is looking to expand in the U.S. telecommunications market, and its cellphones and 4G networks are popular worldwide.

#Venezuela sacan a #Globovision del aire

en el momento mas apropiado

y esto es lo que dice el codigo fuente

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