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Government Increases Hysteria Over Cyber Attacks in Push to Crack Down on Internet
Last week Republican senator John McCain called for the government to establish a special panel to come up with legislation to address supposed cybersecurity threats facing the United States.
“The only way to move comprehensive cyber security legislation forward swiftly is to have committee chairmen and ranking members step away from preserving their own committees’ jurisdiction … (and) develop a bill that serves the national security needs of all Americans,” McCain said.
As if on cue, the Pentagon announced two previously unpublicized attacks following McCain’s call for a bipartisan action.
On Thursday, out-going deputy secretary of defense Bill Lynn said a foreign intelligence service had stolen 24,000 files on a sensitive weapons system from a defense contractor’s network.
Lynn said the Defense Industrial Base Cyber Pilot was established to work with the private sector in the battle against cyber foes.
“Our success in cyberspace depends on a robust public Read more…
Pentagon declares the Internet a war domain
The Pentagon released a long-promised cybersecurity plan Thursday that declares the Internet a domain of war but does not spell out how the U.S. military would use the Web for offensive strikes.
The Defense Department’s first-ever plan for cyberspace states that DOD will expand its ability to thwart attacks from other nations and groups, beef up its cybersecurity workforce and expand collaboration with the private sector.
Like major corporations and the rest of the federal government, the military “depends on cyberspace to function,” the DOD strategy states. The U.S. military uses cyberspace for everything from carrying out military operations to sharing intelligence data internally to managing personnel assignments.
“The department and the nation have vulnerabilities in cyberspace,” the document states. “Our reliance on cyberspace stands in stark contrast to the inadequacy of our cybersecurity.”
Other nations “are working to exploit DOD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have Read more…
Pentagon reveals 24,000 files stolen in cyber-attack
The Pentagon has disclosed that it suffered one of its largest ever losses of sensitive data in March when 24,000 files were stolen in a cyber-attack by a foreign government.
By Nick Allen
William Lynn, the US deputy secretary of defence, said the data was taken from the computers of a corporate defence contractor.
He said the US government had a “pretty good idea” who was responsible but did not elaborate.
Many cyber-attacks in the past have been blamed on China or Russia, and one of the Pentagon’s fears is that eventually a terrorist group will acquire the ability to steal data.
Mr Lynn disclosed the March attack in a speech outlining a new cyber-strategy, which formally declares cyberspace a new warfare domain, much like air, land and sea.
It calls for developing more resilient computer networks so the Read more…
EU cloud data can be secretly accessed by US authorities
US-owned companies bound by Patriot Act, says Microsoft
Personal information belonging to EU users of US-owned cloud-based services could be shared with US law enforcers without the user being informed, Microsoft has said.
The software giant said it could not guarantee that it would not have to hand over EU customers’ data on a new cloud service it has developed whilst keeping details of the data transfer secret.
Cloud services allow internet users to store data online instead of locally.
EU data protection laws state that organizations must tell people when they are asked to disclose their personal information.
These EU provisions might conflict with obligations US-based firms, such as Microsoft, face under US law.
The USA Patriot Act gives law enforcement authorities the right to access Read more…
Apparently, China is Trying to Buy Facebook
Maybe it’s decided that Facebook is the lesser of two evils when it comes to Western social networks. Maybe it’s just Beijing buying itself a birthday present. Whatever the reason, it appears that China — or more specifically, one of China’s sovereign wealth funds — is trying to buy a significant stake in Facebook.
A Business Insider report cites “a source at a fund that buys stock from former Facebook employees” who was approached directly about helping to put together a stake big enough “to matter” and “a second source tells us there is a rumor going around the social network that Citibank is at this very moment trying to acquire as much as $1.2 billion worth of Facebook stock on behalf of two sovereign wealth funds – China’s and another from the Middle East.”
$1.2 billion isn’t going to be nearly enough of a stake to matter at a company whose value is pegged around $100 billion, but the news has caused some concern, given that Read more…
China’s army develops ‘online war game’
BEIJING — After setting up its own cyber-warfare team, China’s military has now developed its first online war game aimed at improving combat skills and battle awareness, state press said Wednesday.
“Glorious Mission” is a first-person shooter game that sends players on solo or team missions armed with high-tech weapons, the China Daily reported.
Weapons used in the game are part of the actual arsenal of China’s People’s Liberation Army, it added.
The final version of the game, which took nearly three years to develop and test, was launched on June 20.
“I think it is possible the game will be made open online for Chinese military fans to download and play,” an unnamed PLA press officer was quoted as saying.
China has the world’s biggest online population at more than 477 million users, according to official data.
The launch of the game comes after the military announced earlier this year that it had set up an elite Internet security task force to fend off cyber attacks.
Despite numerous allegations from around the world pointing at China as a source of cyber attacks, the state press, citing military officials, denied that the elite task force was set up as a “hacker army”.
DARPA’s advance research arm building virtual Internet to battle cyber attacks
The Pentagon’s advanced research branch is working on a virtual version of the Internet to further the U.S.’s resistance against cyber attacks. According to Reuters, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, more commonly known as DARPA, is setting up something called the National Cyber Range. The National Cyber Range would be a virtual “testbed” to simulate a mini-Internet. Officials could use it to test virtual cyber-warfare games that experiment with different computer-generated-attack situations.
DARPA, the same agency that started that whole Internet thing in the 1960s, created the National Cyber Range project to make it simple to create different scenarios, combine those scenarios, and ultimately test any potential situations that may have to be dealt with on the real Internet. The purpose is to test things like network protocols as well as satellite and radio Read more…
FBI seizes servers in brute force raid
The FBI seized a number of web servers during a recent data center raid in Reston, Virginia – a facility used by the Swiss-based hosting company Digital One.
The operation knocked several web sites offline, including those run by New York publisher Curbed Network.
“This problem is caused by the FBI, not our company. In the night FBI [took] 3 enclosures with equipment plugged into them, possibly including your server — we cannot check it,” DigitalOne CEO Sergej Ostroumow confirmed in an official email to clients.
“After [the] FBI’s unprofessional ‘work’ we can not restart our own servers, that’s why our Web site is offline and support doesn’t work.”
Unsurprisingly, the raid has been tentatively linked to an ongoing investigation of Lulz Security.
Indeed, an unnamed government official told the New York Times the FBI was “actively investigating” LulzSec along with suspected “affiliated” hackers.
While most Americans probably don’t really care about a few downed sites, the brute force raid executed by the Feds surely doesn’t bode well for the future.
One can’t help but wonder what comes next: mass Gmail seizures, Amazon cloud server confiscations, or perhaps entire data centers carted off in FBI trucks?
Clearly, U.S. law enforcement officials must learn how to minimize “collateral damage” to neutral civilian infrastructure during cyber-related raids. If they don’t, such operations could potentially be as disruptive as those executed by hostile digital infiltrators.
Rather ironic, don’t you think?
Next generation Internet addresses tested on global scale
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A worldwide test was under way on Wednesday of the next generation of Internet addresses designed to replace the dwindling pool of 4.3 billion unique identifiers in the original system.
Hundreds of companies, organizations and institutions around the world are taking part in “World IPv6 Day,” including Internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!
Internet Protocol version 6 is the new system of unique identifying numbers for websites, computers and other Internet-connected gadgets and is replacing the original addressing system, IPv4, which is nearing exhaustion.
IPv6 provides more than four billion Read more…
The Netherlands Second Country to Codify Net Neutrality After Chile
I’ve been keeping you up to date about the situation around net neutrality in The Netherlands – and today, everything finally came to its logical conclusion. During a debate in our lower house, most of the kinks were ironed out, and our minister of economic affairs, Maxime Verhagen, will now turn net neutrality into law. This means that after Chile, The Netherlands will be the second country in the world to do so.
I already told you that Verhagen wished to comply with the lower house’s demands, but I failed to make the clarification that he just wanted to prohibit carriers and ISPs from throttling and blocking, without actually turning it into a law. During today’s debate, he faced an almost unanimous lower house asking for net neutrality to actually become a full-grown, big-boy law.
The only party against net neutrality was the Read more…
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