The Cyberwar Thread

In other news, Taiwan and Philippines started a cyberwar after Philippine Coast Guard killed a Taiwanese fisherman last week



TAIPEI - Hackers in Taiwan and the Philippines began a "cyberwar" on the Internet on Sunday, apparently over the shooting death of a Taiwanese fisherman last week by the Philippine Coast Guard.

Taiwan's Executive Yuan spokesperson Cheng Li-wun said in a statement many government websites and those of the Taiwanese private sector have been attacked by hackers, apparently based in the Philippines.

Judging from the timing, Cheng said she suspects the attacks might be related to the shooting of the Taiwanese fisherman last Thursday.

The incident also triggered attacks initiated by Taiwanese "netizens" to disrupt Internet services of the Philippine government and public institutions.

Cheng said the Cabinet's Information and Communication Security Office launched an investigation into complaints filed by the Presidential Office, foreign ministry, defense ministry and Coast Guard Administration that their Internet traffic flow has slowed down significantly, services have been disrupted and some websites defaced.

Cheng said the office found most of the attacks originated in the Philippines and the Taiwan National Computer Emergency Response Team has reported the incident to Facebook, requesting the attackers' accounts be removed.

The response team also asked the Philippines' Computer Emergency Readiness Team for assistance.

The team will also consider blocking the Internet protocol of the Philippines should it fail to comply, she said.

On a more "concrete" level, Taiwan dispatched a 3,600-ton Lafayette-class Kang Ding frigate and S70-C helicopter Sunday to assist in the coast guard's mission in what the island claims are disputed waters in the South China Sea.

The move came after the Presidential Office announced Saturday night Taiwan is considering imposing sanctions on the Philippines should Manila fail to respond to Taiwan's demands within 72 hours.

Calling the shooting of the fisherman "cold blooded" and a "clear violation of international law of the sea," Taipei demands an official apology, compensation, punishment of those responsible for the incident and launch of negotiations on a bilateral fisheries agreement.

Should Manila fail to respond before midnight Tuesday, Taipei has threatened to freeze the hiring of workers from the Philippines, recall its de facto ambassador to the Philippines and ask the de facto Philippine ambassador to Taiwan to return home to assist in the investigation of the case.

Presidential office spokeswoman Lee Chia-fei said Saturday night that preliminary examination results by Taiwanese prosecutors showed the fishing boat was hit by 52 bullets and there were no signs of a collision.

The Philippine Coast Guard admitted Friday having fired at the Taiwanese fishing vessel, but it said the shots were in self-defense.

Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Armand Balilo said Friday the Taiwanese vessel was poaching in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone and tried to ram the patrol boat.

He defended the coast guard's actions, saying, "The Filipino personnel had been properly carrying out their duties to stop illegal fishing."
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/05/12/13/ph-taiwan-cyberwar-heats
 
City of Akron tax files hacked by Turkish group

Thousands of files — including names, addresses and Social Security and credit-card numbers — have been compromised in a cyber attack on the city of Akron.

The city’s website and internal systems were hacked by a Turkish group. Some files were posted on the Internet.

A Turkish hacking group called Turkish Ajan has claimed credit for the attack. Hudak said the group is part of Anonymous’ OpUSA Campaign, which has been specifically trying to hack into various U.S. government websites.


Between Thursday, when the city of Akron’s website was hacked, and Saturday afternoon, the city’s 311 information center received 5,200 calls from taxpayers desperate to learn if their information had been compromised.
 
carrying on from my post it is seen that at least the Turkish intelligence types still use typewriters in preparing reports . To avoid electronic sniffing . The conscript in question used his cellphone to take pictures of the pages .
 
US highlights cyber-attack concern with China

In the United States, the Obama administration says it has repeatedly raised concerns about cyber-theft with the Chinese.

It comes after a report by a US security company claimed a secretive Chinese military unit is behind a series of hacking attacks.

Beijing has strongly denied the claim.

“We have repeatedly raised our concerns at the highest levels about cyber-theft with senior Chinese officials including in the military and we will continue to do so. This is a very important challenge. It is one the president has been working on and urging Congress to take action on for quite some time and he will continue to do that” said White House spokesperson Jay Carney.
 


Airmen Must Understand Business of Cyber, General Says

WASHINGTON, June 5, 2013 – As U.S. Cyber Command gains strength and steadily extends its range across the newest warfare domain, it has called on all the services over the next five years to contribute trained-up teams of cyber operators to ensure U.S. military freedom of action, defensively and offensively, in cyberspace.

For the Air Force, this means adding more than 1,000 cyber professionals between fiscal years 2014 and 2016, the commander of Air Force Space Command, Gen. William L. Shelton, said during a news conference here in January. This is a 15 percent increase over the 6,000 or so cyber experts now working at 24th Air Force, the service’s operational cyber organization.

One indication of the growth of Air Force cyber was the official opening April 30 of a new 46,000-sqare-foot headquarters and operations center. The new space allows for the expansion of AFCYBER strategy, plans and operations capabilities and integration of counterparts from law enforcement, the Defense Information Systems Agency and industry.


An April 30, 2013 ceremony in San Antonio marks the official opening a new 46,000-sqare-foot headquarters and operations center for 24th Air Force and Air Forces Cyber.
 
Marines Focused at Tactical Edge of Cyber

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va., June 10, 2013 – What differentiates his command from Army, Navy and Air Force cyber operations is a focus on the forward-deployed nature of America’s expeditionary force in readiness, the commander of Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command said during a recent interview here.

As commander of MARFORCYBER, Lt. Gen. Richard P. Mills heads one of four service components of U.S. Cyber Command. The Marine command stood up in January 2010.

Today, 300 Marines, federal civilians and contractors are performing cyber operations, Mills said. That number, he added, will grow to just under 1,000, at least until fiscal year 2016.

Each of the services’ cyber commands protects its own networks, Mills noted.

“Where we differ is that we look more at tactical-level cyber operations and how we will be able to provide our forward-deployed ... Marine Air-Ground Task Force commanders with the capability to reach back into the cyber world [at home] to have their deployed units supported,” the general said.

"...the definition of combat arms is expanding a little bit these days,” he said. “I don’t think cyber is any longer a communicator’s environment -- it’s an operator’s environment. So we want that cyber expert to sit in the operations shop right next to the air expert, right next to the artillery expert, because we think that’s where it belongs.”
 
Your biggest secrets are up for grabs

Nobody's secrets are safe. Not spies, not corporations, and certainly not the rest of us regular people, with our clever little passwords, our privacy settings and our restricted friends' lists.

Think about this: If the NSA could not safeguard its information, how do we expect anyone to do it?

Google's servers store much more than your Gmail e-mails. They contain the words you have looked up, the illnesses you have tried to learn about. It knows what high school sweetheart you've tracked down, it knows what pictures you've looked at online. It knows what phone calls you've made on Google Voice, and it knows where you have been when you made searches, over which cell tower or Wi-Fi network.

Facebook admits that even after we delete material from our page, it is not permanently deleted from its servers unless we delete the entire account.

Will these firms sell our information? Of course. Will they give it to the government? Google's Schmidt said yes, "It is possible that the information could be made available to authorities."

If someone in Hawaii can decide to reveal government secrets, it means another government contractor at the NSA or the CIA or the FBI, or an employee at Google or Microsoft or Facebook, or a hacker in China or California, could get his or her hands on the digital threads of our lives and make them public for fun or for profit.
 


Cyber-surveillance leaks ‘could hurt US-China ties’

Shaky US-China relations could face further challenges in the wake of the whistleblowing scandal over the massive electronic surveillance programme PRISM by the US National Security Agency (NSA), Chinese state media said on Thursday.

Edward Snowden, a former spy-agency contractor who has caused a furore by exposing the top-secret programme to gather and analyse Internet and phone data, told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Wednesday that there had been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally.

Snowden also told the daily that the NSA has hacked computers in China and Hong Kong since 2009.

The leaks were meant to demonstrate "the hypocrisy of the US government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries," Snowden added.
 
Obama's Cybersecurity Mandate Hits First Milestone

As federal authorities scramble to meet the first wave of milestones outlined in President Obama's February executive order on cybersecurity, administration officials are stressing that the government is seeking a collaborative approach and eschewing heavy-handed mandates for industry stakeholders.

The first round of deliverables under Obama's executive order is due to the White House today, with national security officials expected to present reports outlining suggestions for how to develop a better system of sharing information about cyber threats, ways to incentivize stronger security among private-sector businesses, and an approach to incorporating new cybersecurity standards into the federal acquisition and contracting processes.

The cybersecurity framework would be voluntary for some operators of critical infrastructure, but the order also requires federal agencies overseeing critical infrastructure to identify the operators and industries most at risk and to explore whether the government can require those companies to adopt the framework.

"The president's executive order rightly focuses on cybersecurity solutions that don't negatively impact civil liberties," ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson said in a statement. "Greasing the wheels of information sharing from the government to the private sector is a privacy-neutral way to distribute critical cyber information."
 
Hagel Vows to Prioritize Cyber, Nuclear Capabilities

WASHINGTON, June 20, 2013 – Malicious cyberattacks are quickly becoming a defining security challenge “for our time, for all our institutions,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said yesterday during a speech in Omaha, Neb., at his alma mater, the University of Nebraska-Omaha

“They are putting America's economic and technological advantages and our industrial base at risk,” the secretary added. “And they threaten our critical infrastructure.”

“Attribution is not impossible, but it is not as simple as identifying a navy sailing across the ocean or an army crossing a border to attack you,” Hagel said. “This is a fundamentally different, more insidious kind of threat than we've ever seen -- one that carries with it a great risk of miscalculation and mistake.”

“You start knocking on infrastructure of a country, you don't need to fire a shot, [and] you paralyze a country,” he said. “You paralyze command and control of your military. You wipe out bank accounts.”

Even seemingly minor disruptions could have a serious affect, Hagel said. “I mean things maybe as mundane as all the traffic lights go out in big cities -- well, big deal. Well, [have you ever] been to New York City or Los Angeles when there's no traffic lights?”
 
Have you heard about the latest Google Glass feature?

When you see a guy wearing them, smile.
That makes you look better for the NSA video database.

What?
You thought that Homeland Security needed drones in the sky to track you?
Not when they can just backdoor Google Glass, and have regular citizens do it for them.
 
Almost a funny joke.:cringe:

Needless to say, there's a substantial mismatch between the potential "intelligence-gathering-devices" (hundreds of millions?) versus the actual humans at CIA, NSA and FBI to monitor them (dozens?). Presumably the Chinese have a better ratio. I suppose it's not difficult to explain the concern people have over this. While the Internet companies gather far more personal data on you than does the government, they don't have the power to arrest you. They can only ruin you financially or socially.
 
Glassfan said:
Needless to say, there's a substantial mismatch between the potential "intelligence-gathering-devices" (hundreds of millions?) versus the actual humans at CIA, NSA and FBI to monitor them (dozens?).
Click to expand...

Good point about the number of humans in the evaluation link.
Perhaps that is why they have computer programs like Prism to sift through all that data and point out activity of interest to them.

Nothing like an having an application work 24x7 to spot individuals viewing a bomb making web site, or reading a tea-party publication.
 
bugwar said:
Nothing like an having an application work 24x7 to spot individuals viewing a bomb making web site, or reading a tea-party publication,...
Click to expand...

...or planning a murder, a violent crime, or a terrorist operation.:sad:
 
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