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| | The Telling IT Straight Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | Views: 868 | | Nov 10, 2009 10:36 pm | | Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # | 
Ron Sam | | Did you watch 60 Minutes this past week?
http://3.ly/t3a (18 mins)
[...]
Much of it was still theory, but we were told that before too long it might be possible for a hacker with a computer to disable critical infrastructure in a major city and disrupt essential services, to steal millions of dollars from banks all over the world, infiltrate defense systems, extort millions from public companies, and even sabotage our weapons systems.
Today it's not only possible, all of that has actually happened, plus a lot more we don't even know about.
[...]
How much of this is true?Private Reply to Ron Sam | | Nov 10, 2009 10:49 pm | | re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # | 
Scott Wolpow | | What makes you think it is true? Perhaps it is disinformation. Private Reply to Scott Wolpow | | Nov 10, 2009 10:52 pm | | re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Ron Sam | | OK Scott,
How much of it is disinfo?
Private Reply to Ron Sam | | Nov 10, 2009 11:06 pm | | re: re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Scott Wolpow | | I can not confirm or deny any of it.LOL
In realty it is old news. The thumb drive was figured out within a few hours and the data 'stolen' was all altered. Just like when the Russians stole the plans for the Concorde. Their crashed upon lift off. Whoops.
Same is true with stolen radar plans by a unknown [Hint first gulf war] country. In the ciruits were tracking signals. Their planes were shot down on the runway.
By the time 60 minutes reports on it, it is old news. If they reported any real security risks, they would lose all contacts at the Pentegon.Private Reply to Scott Wolpow | | Nov 10, 2009 11:17 pm | | re: re: re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Ron Sam | | Do you do online banking, brokerage accts, etc. Scott? Private Reply to Ron Sam | | Nov 10, 2009 11:41 pm | | Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Scott Wolpow | | Yes, I pay my credit cards online, but no banking. All my banks are less than a 5 minute walk and open until 8:00 pm mpst days.
I also do not click on any atachments unless I know they are coming.Since I am not foolish enough to use Outlook, I have only gotten one virus in 14 years. And that was because a trusted person was sending me files at the time. Being alert I was able to counteract the effects before it did any damage.
Will companies get hacked? Yes, unless they hire a person with skills and follow directions. Most hacks are done because people fail to follow safeguards, or they leave the highest level of trust in the lowest paid people.
Why do you ask?Private Reply to Scott Wolpow | | Nov 11, 2009 12:48 am | | re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Ron Sam | | Their report indicated banks getting robbed digitally. Bet the banks follow security rules yet they continue to get hit.
The government hires out security companies like SAIC and pay millions but they still get hacked.
China and Russia are primary suspects who seem to be ahead of the game in being able to penetrate our most valued databases.
Will the opposition shut down power grids and ruin us? I remember a few years back when the west coast grid - Pacific Intertine got compromised and there was no electricity for days. I have a generator now for that reason. I can run it off the natural gas that seems to be fairly regular (no interruptions).
I don't bank online, don't want to leave any traces. Prefer paper trails.
Did you believe it when it was said that they broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information? Something like 12 terabytes of high security data in '07.
How will we know that will compromise our military security?Private Reply to Ron Sam | | Nov 11, 2009 1:29 am | | re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Scott Wolpow | | The banks that got hacked were careless. They left switches and routers with default passwords. They foolishly allowed wireless access. They did not train against social engineering. Many left passwords taped under their key boards or used easy to guess passwords. It is not like the movies.
Who says SAIC is that good. They are connected. I know of more skilled hackers that can find a weakness in a system.
China and Russia have lots of hackers. China has many on payroll to attack our systems and I think it is great. Complacency is the weakest link.
The same holds true with the grids.
Do I think they broke into the high tech agencies. No, They are on a different Internet, that is pure fiber optic and every packet is monitored and accounted for. Alarms would sound, literally, if Terabytes were downloaded.
My guess it was all a honey pot.
Private Reply to Scott Wolpow | | Nov 11, 2009 3:17 am | | re: re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Ron Sam | | The banks did all of what you said but do they continue to make the same mistakes over and over? They are continuing to loose money to hackers/cyber stealers year over year.
Never said SAIC wad good or connected but they are contracted by mil and defense to help avert attacks. All I said was that they got paid millions.
If the hackers got honey pot data could that data be detected, thus identifying certain vulnerabilities like with the CENTCOM network they talked about?
FDIC recently raised guarantee limits to quarter million per account, think they are at fear? Anyone ever find unaccountable entries in their account?
Who is complacent?
NERC, perhaps?
'the death of a thousand cuts.'
...Every day a little bit more of our intellectual property, our innovative skills, our military technology is stolen by somebody. And it's like little drops. Eventually we'll drown. But every day we don't notice....
Who are more vulnerable the Chinese or Russia or US? They say we can't complain because we do cyber stealing to them, but who has more to lose? Since the US has become more tied to internet infrastructure in industry and government and maybe military, don't we have more to loose than the opposition foreign powers?
When they said that most or nearly all of the H/W is made offshore and that secret h/w is added to components that are very difficult to detect even with reverse engineering, that the hidden h/w can aid the opposition to steal data, do you buy that?
In their presentation a university program showed that a 27-ton power system called Aurora could be violated and controlled to blow itself up by shutting off safety controls, raising the BTUs and stopping the cooling systems all remotely and undetected. I couldn't believe there were no local regulators to monitor critical operation and interrupt the process. This is bad engineering if no fail-safe systems were included in the design. I wonder what their point was. This seemed not the complete story presented.
Why would the 60Min media show vulnerabilities that are not there? What do they gain by instilling fear?
Private Reply to Ron Sam | | Nov 11, 2009 4:00 am | | re: re: re: re: Cyber warfare defense - US is losing | # |
Scott Wolpow | | Banks are run by non-techs that like to manage by magazine or inactivity. They tend to ignore the skilled people and mostly act inept. It is teh Peter Principle.
Yes SAIC got paid millions, again rule by idiots.
Yes, they can find the hackers, that is part of the plan.
FDIC raised limits to get with the times.
Who is complacent?
Too many people, so when they get hacked they wake up.
Tough to say who is more vulnerable. We have more computers than they do, so we are a bigger target.
However China is a closed society, that makes them weak.
Yes there have been cases where HW was compromised, but that was high-end switches and it was detected. The cheaper stuff would get detected because so many people are using it.
Anything can be hacked if no safeguards are in place, but that is human error.
Japan and most of Europe are far more advanced using the Internet, but you do not hear about hacks beacuse the media there does not think they have superior rights to have tehir questions answered.
As to why 60 minutes would have that show? Because they are low lifes who distort facts and interviews, often editing them out of sequence.
They want to scare you so you watch:
One story of proof.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/03/019926.php
The follow is purely speculative and based on my opion and should not be considered fact, :)
I know of another possible story that was pulled before airing under threat of presence of malice. The interviews were alleged to have been designed to only prove one thing against a company. That company held patents which another CBS affilated comapny wanted to buy and they were refusing to sell. With the bad publicity this company would have lost clients and have no choice but to sell out.
Or so I was told.Private Reply to Scott Wolpow | | |
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