Relatively little going on this week other than stories being cleaned up from previous weeks. No hacker conferences going on, and no major conflagrations to report. There are some squeaky articles about planned hacktivism or “major” attacks through cyber means on 9/11. Though very little detailed and that would be a complete change in the way that most terrorism has ever been done. So little impact is expected leading into the weekend.
The big news this week has been the DigiNotar and the likely links to Iranian government entities. One question I would ask is why Iran and why China in all of these attack scenarios. Why would the media be leaning towards these entities so heavily. So lets do a little thought experiment and ask ourselves a question. Is China a massive hacking machine or is China just normal and sized extremely large? On the one hand you have America (as an example) with approximately 300 million Americans. Of that number about 1/3rd (100 million) are of the age where technology and hacktivism would make sense, and of that number about .01 percent (10K) might have the skills to be involved. I’m making all this up on the fly so just go with the flow and take another sip of your beer. Now take China with about 5 times as many people and you get around 50K bad boys. So we would expect all things being the same about 5K the hacking effort. So the media blitz about the evil dragon is either a) China hackers are really poor at what they do to get caught so often; b) the simple swell of numbers being noticed as the bell curve is swollen with a huge number of incompetent low level hackers in China; or c) nobody is looking for the other hackers in the mix from the other countries.
So, lets look at the other countries that could be involved and have the technical chops to whack, hack, and smack the information technology environment of other countries. The eight largest economies by GDP are 1) United States 2) Peoples Republic of China 3) Japan 4) India 5) Germany 6) Russia 7) United Kingdom 8 ) Brazil. If the GDP is associated with technology and there is a good case to be made that it does why don’t we see more stories about Japan, India, Germany etc. hacking away. There are very few threads about Japanese hackers and Brazilian hackers. Are there significant cultural differences that make those countries so “elite” that they don’t get caught or is it a case of we see fire everywhere but where we are? Why are China and Russia so over represented in the media reports as “hacking” and even though Anonymous and LulzSec were anchored in the United Kingdom and likely had presence in Germany they are not reported on as national security threats?
There really isn’t anything significant here just analyzing the trends of the reporting that is going on through out the weeks.
Monday September 5th
| UK Law Enforcement Agencies Arrest Cyber Attack Suspects ITProPortal The hunt for hackitivists by UK law enforcement agencies continues as two more people were arrested and two others charged for having alleged ties to hacker outfits Anonymous and Lulz Security. According to a statement released by the Metropolitan … See all stories on this topic » |
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| CHINA: If The Government Doesn’t Like It, It Must Be Good Strategy Page Chinese neighbors agreed with this, as did more distant targets (of Chinese Cyber War attacks). China promptly denounced the American analysis as “baseless.” But the reality is otherwise. The growing Chinese navy is increasingly showing up to enforce … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Hackers hit Friendswood police chief’s email account; How you can protect yourself KHOU by Doug Miller / KHOU 11 News FRIENDSWOOD, Texas—A cyber attack targeting Texas law enforcement officials has apparently exposed confidential investigative information as well as offensive emails purportedly written by police. … See all stories on this topic » |
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| DHS Warns of Anonymous Cyber-Attack Tools, Planned Mass Protests eWeek The Department of Homeland Security is beginning to take Anonymous and other non-professional cyber-attackers more seriously as it issues a warning about potential attacks. The United States Department of Homeland Security warned the security community … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Stolen information worth £300m recovered by GCHQ Telegraph.co.uk By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said the agency had joined forces with the Serious and Organised Crime Agency to obtain the information as part of the ongoing cyber war against foreign states and criminal … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Hackers Forge Certificates to Break into Spy Agencies PCWorld The cyber attack on DigiNotar, a Dutch subsidiary of VASCO Data Security International Inc, is much more serious than previously thought. In July, hackers gained access to the network and infrastructure of several of DigiNotar’s CAs. … See all stories on this topic » |
Tuesday September 6th
| ACRES accused of ‘cyber attack‘ TODAYonline by Tan Weizhen SINGAPORE – The controversy over the capture and captivity of 25 wild dolphins for Resorts World Sentosa’s (RWS) Marine Life Park attraction has taken a new twist, with the resort accusing animal welfare group Animal Concerns Research … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Cyberwar & Certified Lies: 531 Spy Certs target CIA, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla Network World (blog) DigiNotar was blacklisted by Microsoft, Google and Mozilla browsers, but the attack targeted 531 rogue digital certificates including domains for the CIA, the UK’s MI6, and the Israeli Mossad. Pretty much if you use the web, then a site you accessed … See all stories on this topic » |
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| The Calm Before the Storm – by Joel Brenner Foreign Policy (blog) Cyberwar is already happening — and it’s about to get much, much worse. A veteran cyberwarrior explains how America can prepare itself. BY JOEL BRENNER | SEPTEMBER 6, 2011 Revelations of wholesale electronic fraud and massive data heists have become … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Watch Out Hackers! Sony Hired a Homeland Security Official Kotaku This spring, a cyber attack resulted in a 23 day outage of the PSN and the theft of personal details from over 77 million accounts. Sony is strengthening its online network and stepping up its security. Sony created a new chief information security … See all stories on this topic » |
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Wednesday September 7th
| Strategic News Service Welcomes Cleantech Group as Alliance Partner MarketWatch (press release) Recent calls include the 2007 global economic meltdown, the emergence of “Currency Wars” and of “Economic Cyberwar,” together with increasing global IP theft by China, among other major global trends. SNS is delivered each week to a subscriber base of … See all stories on this topic » |
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| 300000 Iranian IP Addresses Compromised In DigiNotar SSL Hack CRN By Stefanie Hoffman, CRN Google Web mail was likely compromised for 300000 Iranian customers by hackers issuing fraudulent security certificates following a cyber attack against Dutch certificate authority DigiNotar, according to investigators. … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Naval Academy Expands on Cyber Security Military.com ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The new academic year marks the beginning of the Naval Academy’s new cyber security curriculum, in which midshipmen are required to take classes that will enhance their knowledge of cyber warfare and the threat it poses to national … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Turkish hackers strike websites with DNS hack IDG News Service Due to a reporting error, the story posted Monday, “Turkish hackers strike websites with DNS hack,” inaccurately portrayed the scale of a cyber-attack as well as the sites targeted. The story has been edited on the wire and the changes are detailed … See all stories on this topic » |
Thursday September 8th
| Former general says Israel unprepared for cyber war infolive.tv The chairman of Israel’s Electric Corporation and a former IDF general warned Israel is inadequately prepared to defend itself against growing cyber threats. Speaking at the Zvi Meitar Institute for Land Warfare conference, Yitzhak Ron-Tal said Israel … See all stories on this topic » |
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| How Do You Tell When You’re Under Cyber Attack? Huffington Post (blog) I’ve talked in a previous posting about the term “cyber attack” and why I don’t particularly like it — because in many cases it’s very difficult to tell whether you’ve been attacked. That’s because the attacker’s complete objective is to avoid being … See all stories on this topic » |
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| Would the United States win a cyberwar? SC Magazine US A while back I taught a week-long class for aspiring hackers, a war room of sorts with attack and defend scenarios, points tallied for successful exploits, and stuff like that. We balanced the war room with plenty of classroom and lecture time. … See all stories on this topic » |
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| infolive.tv news 08/09/2011 infolive.tv Hamas terrorists with ties to Syria arrested Palestinian official blasts US Former general says Israel unprepared for cyber war US official: revolution in Iran, a matter of time Israel’s Ambassador returns to Cairo Syria continues killing activists. See all stories on this topic » |
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| What would a Stuxnet-type attack in US look like? GCN.com Cyber warfare, like conventional warfare, has its own objectives, said James Howe, vice president for threats, technology and future requirements with Vision Centric. He noted that cyber warfaremust be integrated into conventional warfare. … See all stories on this topic » |
Friday September 9th
| Cyber defenders study the art of cyber war Defense Systems By Henry Kenyon The country’s cyber defenders need to master the art — as much as the science — of cybersecurity through continuous education, an information security expert said at the Defense Systems Summit on Cyber Defense Sept. 7. … See all stories on this topic » |
| Mozilla Wants Answers After Digital Certificate Hacks PC Magazine Specifically, the browser maker wants all Certificate Authorities (CA) to complete a series of security checks by September 16 to make sure they too won’t fall prey to a cyber attack like the one that hit DigiNotar. The requests are mostly technical in … See all stories on this topic » |
| Doctrineless and self-absorbed The MIT Tech Our warnings are coming in the form of panicked reports of intensifying cyber warfare and increasing volumes of weapons-grade nuclear material on the black market. We are facing a paradigm shift just as important as that brought about by nuclear-tipped … See all stories on this topic » |
| Many firms ‘do not have sufficient ecrime insurance’ Comms-express.com Companies that have recently set up with network kits may want to take out ecrime insurance in case their newly established system is breached in a cyber-attack. Malcolm Marshall, UK head of information security at research firm KPMG, observed that … See all stories on this topic » |
| Science & Tech: Council website shut down after Russian hackers cause security … Scottish Daily Record East Lothian Council suspended their edubuzz.org blog network after the cyber attack. Security experts are repairing the damage. A council spokesman said: “Hackers in Russia had been putting links into the site which caused us security concerns, … See all stories on this topic » |
| Cyber hijackers pose threat to planes, vehicles msnbc.com Some unfriendly countries are working on so-called cyber warfare programs, and there are also “al-Qaida cells that are acting as training centers for hackers,” said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, an information-security … See all stories on this topic » |