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An al Qaeda video calling for "electronic jihad" illustrates the urgent need for cybersecurity standards for the most critical networks in the United States, a group of senators said. The video calls for cyberattacks against networks such as the electric grid and compares vulnerabilities in the United States' critical cyber networks to the vulnerabilities in the country's aviation system before 9/11, according to a statement Tuesday from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. "This is the clearest evidence we've seen that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups want to attack the cyber systems of our critical infrastructure,"...

Ignoring a veto threat from the White House, the House passed legislation Thursday designed to protect communications networks from cyberattacks. The vote was 248-168. But even as the House bill moves forward, privacy concerns about granting government agencies access to personal information transmitted on the Internet could prove to be a major obstacle to any new cybersecurity law. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan and a former FBI agent, said he spent the last year working on the bill because the national security risk to the United States posed by cyberattacks is one, "we are just not prepared to...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- A blackout of al-Qaida's main Web sites is in its 11th day, and officials think the forums may have been brought down in a cyberattack. While no one has claimed credit for disabling the sites..." SNIPPET: "The loss of information typically confuses and frustrates the readers of the Web sites. "It leaves the rank-and-file to guess which messages and which messengers are genuine al-Qaida, and provides undercover operators with new opportunities to disrupt the movement," said A. Aaron Weisburd, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute."

The internet has become a powerful catalyst for international violent jihad, according to a new report from the Dutch security service AIVD.

The United States has ordered the expulsion of Venezuela’s consul general in Miami, AFP reported on Sunday. The expulsion comes amid reports linking the diplomat to an alleged Iranian plot to target sensitive U.S. facilities with cyber attacks. According to the report, the Venezuelan embassy in Washington was notified on Friday that Livia Acosta Noguera, the consul general in Miami, had been declared persona non grata and had until Tuesday to leave the country...

For the last two weeks Air Force computer specialists have been battling a computer infection of ground based computers that control drones operating over the Mideast. The administration specialists at Creech AFB, Nevada wanted to keep the incident quiet till they could eliminate the virus by themselves. Instead of asking for help the command was overwhelmed by a virus that couldn’t be easily removed. Because of the time wasted it may take a while before the extent of the infection is known and what systems have been compromised. Keylogger The virus affecting the ground stations was a “keylogger” virus. A...

When the Stuxnet computer worm severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program, many Americans cheered. We should also fear cyberattacks coming at us. The International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., was hacked this past week. The top suspect? China. The week before, the White House. More than 100 senior Obama administration officials found that their private gmail accounts were targeted by China-based hackers, an administration spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating. The attacks have been traced to Jinan, home to China’s army cyberunit. The various recent hacking attacks are not isolated events....

A child becomes computer literate at primary school. Meanwhile, North Korea's most prodigious young students are identified and trained in advanced cyberwarfare techniques As South Korea blames North Korea for a recent slew of cyberattacks, two defectors share their experiences, as a hacker and trainer of "cyberwarriors" in the reclusive communist country, with Al Jazeera shedding some light into the inner workings of the North's cyberwarfare programme. In the process, Kim Heung-kwang and Jang Se-yul also warn of the regime's concentrated efforts to bolster its cyberwarfare capabilities. The hackers' professor Kim Heung-kwang was a computer science professor in North...

MALICIOUS hacking software that could force a passenger jet to nosedive has been developed. Security representatives at the Asia-Pacific Aviation Security conference, which included representatives from Qantas and Virgin Airlines, said that cyber attacks were the second biggest risk to the aviation industry after natural disasters. Ty Miller, of Australian security firm Pure Hacking, said the risk was no longer "something out of a movie" but had become more likely with the dawn of the Stuxnet virus. An unknown attacker last year used the software to sabotage one of Iran's uranium enrichment plants. "The stereotypical Die Hard 2 airport attack...

Actions to retaliate for treatment of WikiLeaks, Manning, spokesman for Anonymous says. DALLAS — A leader of the computer hackers group known as Anonymous is threatening new attacks on major U.S. corporations and government officials as part of at an escalating “cyberwar” against the citadels of American power. “It’s a guerilla cyberwar — that’s what I call it,” said Barrett Brown, 29, who calls himself a senior strategist and “propagandist” for Anonymous. He added: “It’s sort of an unconventional, asymmetrical act of warfare that we’ve involved in. And we didn’t necessarily start it. I mean, this fire has been burning.”...

The US government is offering private intelligence companies contracts to create software to manage "fake people" on social media sites and create the illusion of consensus on controversial issues. The contract calls for the development of "Persona Management Software" which would help the user create and manage a variety of distinct fake profiles online. The job listing was discussed in recently leaked emails from the private security firm HBGary after an attack by internet activist last week.Click here to view the government contract (PDF)According to the contract, the software would "protect the identity of government agencies" by employing a number...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to prosecute Julian Assange for espionage. The founder of WikiLeaks "intentionally harmed the U.S. government," says Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. By releasing 250,000 State Department cables, he also violated the 1917 Espionage Act by transmitting "information which the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation," Feinstein, D-Calif., charged in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Tuesday. To John Perry Barlow, co-founder of San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of...

In this seventh article in a series focusing on the need for improved information assurance and cyber situational awareness in the electric power industry, we continue a survey of government and industry consensus about the need for increased security of SCADA systems in the power industry. Cyberterror Impact, Defense Under Scrutiny The DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report for Aug. 4, 2004 included the following item summarizing work by Jon Swartz of USA TODAY: A coordinated cyberattack against the U.S. could topple parts of the Internet, silence communications and commerce, and paralyze federal agencies and businesses, government officials and security...

TORONTO, ON – The Information Warfare Monitor (Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the SecDev Group, Ottawa) and the Shadowserver Foundation announce the release of Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber espionage 2.0. The report documents a complex ecosystem of cyber espionage that systematically targeted and compromised computer systems in India, the Offices of the Dalai Lama, the United Nations, and several other countries. Members of the research team are holding a news conference at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 6, to discuss their latest findings and to answer questions from the media....

Google's woes in China are a warning shot in the new Cold War of our time -- the fight for dominance of cyberspace. It's a conflict the United States can't afford to lose. Start by realizing that Google's decision to leave China was about far more than censorship. For the past year, Chinese government hackers have been trying push their way into Google's operating system. In recent attacks, they may have abused Google to access computers of some 200 US companies. That is, hacking Google gives China access not just to personal data about Chinese dissidents but any number of...

By some estimates we will need nearly 60,000 newly trained cyber defense warriors (as they are called), just in the next 3 years to help stop the threats to U.S. interests, companies and friends around the globe. That number is staggering when you realize that much of the hacking that exists today is unknown. For example, for every hacker like Francois who clearly wants to be known, there are hundreds who want to do just the opposite....they just want to sneak in, get the info and then sneak out......never detected.

"Dismantling of Saudi-CIA Web site illustrates need for clearer cyberwar policies" By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 19, 2010; A01 SNIPPET: "By early 2008, top U.S. military officials had become convinced that extremists planning attacks on American forces in Iraq were making use of a Web site set up by the Saudi government and the CIA to uncover terrorist plots in the kingdom. "We knew we were going to be forced to shut this thing down," recalled one former civilian official, describing tense internal discussions in which military commanders argued that the site was putting Americans at...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A message that North Korea had conducted a nuclear attack on the Japanese island of Okinawa turned out to be false, but the fact it was delivered via U.S. military communications has prompted a high alert, according to U.S. officials who asked to remain anonymous. U.S. military channels were hacked either by the Chinese or North Koreans, the source said. Access to such communications – even unclassified military systems – suggests a serious breach of technology security. "Today, March 06, 2010 at 11.46 AM local time (UTC/GMT -5 hours),US seismographic stations recorded seismic activity in the area...

Note: This is a SNIPPET only. Quote: GAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE http://gao.gov/products/GAO-10-338 "Cybersecurity: Progress Made but Challenges Remain in Defining and Coordinating the Comprehensive National Initiative" GAO-10-338 March 5, 2010 SNIPPET: "Summary In response to the ongoing threats to federal systems and operations posed by cyber attacks, President Bush established the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) in 2008. This initiative consists of a set of projects aimed at reducing vulnerabilities, protecting against intrusions, and anticipating future threats. GAO was asked to determine (1) what actions have been taken to develop interagency mechanisms to plan and coordinate CNCI activities and...

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. "We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks...

Updated February 18, 2010 Cyberattacks Reportedly Traced to Computers in Chinese Schools" FOXNews.com SNIPPET: "The recent cyberattacks on Google and other American companies have been traced by investigators to computers at two schools in China, including one with ties to the Chinese military, according to a New York Times report citing unnamed inside sources. The Times report also says that the attacks began much earlier than first thought, as far back as April..."

The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity. Under an agreement that is being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack. Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity,...

MONITOR EXCLUSIVE: Breaches show how sophisticated industrial espionage is becoming. The big question: Who’s behind them? Houston At least three US oil companies were the target of a series of previously undisclosed cyberattacks that may have originated in China and that experts say highlight a new level of sophistication in the growing global war of Internet espionage. The oil and gas industry breaches, the mere existence of which has been a closely guarded secret of oil companies and federal authorities, were focused on one of the crown jewels of the industry: valuable “bid data” detailing the quantity, value, and location...

SNIPPET: SEOUL, Jan 27, 2010 (AFP) - South Korea's spy agency said Wednesday it had issued an alert against cyberattacks aimed at stealing data from government networks. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) did not say whether North Korea was responsible. Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based group specialising in the North, said the latest attack was led by Pyongyang, which runs elite hacker units. The NIS said its alert was heightened "from normal to concern" on Monday after a massive inflow of overseas hacking attacks. The attacks were aimed at stealing data from government and other state networks, it...

Representatives from the electrical industry sharply criticized on Tuesday a proposal in the House to extend federal regulation to include local power plants in major cities to protect them and the national power grid from cyberattacks. Under the 1935 Federal Power Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission enforces security standards for most of the nation's power plants, including facilities and control networks -- known as bulk power systems -- that connect power systems. But the commission does not have regulatory jurisdiction over electrical systems outside the continental United States and to local distribution facilities, which include some in large cities...

Related Story: Australia 'must prepare for cyber attack' SNIPPET: "More evidence is emerging of sophisticated attacks by criminals and foreign governments on Australia's computer networks. Government officials from the spy organisation ASIO, as well as federal police and computer security experts, have joined forces with the top-secret Defence Signals Directorate since July. The Cyber Security Operations Centre has found attacks on company information, apparently conducted by organised crime, which turn out to have national security implications."

"Project Grey Goose and University at Albany SUNY to investigate major Power Grid blackouts caused by hackers" SNIPPET: "This is an open call for volunteers who wish to participate in a joint Project Grey Goose / University at Albany SUNY open source intelligence investigation into power grid blackouts caused by hacker attacks. The scope is global and includes the U.S. Interested parties should contact me from their work email address with an expression of interest, a brief bio, and your experience, if any, in SCADA systems in general or the power grid in particular. All respondents will be kept confidential....

“MI5 hiring Asian teenagers to fight cyber terror” London, September 21, 2009 First Published: 00:09 IST(21/9/2009) Last Updated: 02:44 IST(21/9/2009) SNIPPET: “MI5 head Jonathan Evans has told his staff that the recruits were essential to combat cyber terrorism which has been traced to China, Russia and Pakistan — the hackers have also intercepted messages from terrorists in Belmarsh maximum security prison, the newspaper said. In a report to Lord West, the Security Minister, Evans has revealed that during the summer over 1,000 hits were made on computers in Whitehall. Other targets have been air traffic control, power stations and the...

CNET Reports: ”Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.[…] CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency. The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for...

Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. The attack gives hackers a way to read encrypted traffic sent between computers and certain types of routers that use the WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption system. The attack was developed by Toshihiro Ohigashi of Hiroshima University and Masakatu Morii of Kobe University, who plan to discuss further details at a technical conference set for Sept. 25 in Hiroshima. Last November, security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken, but the Japanese researchers have taken the...

The Internet has now become a vital outlet for commerce, communications & social networking to name a few, and has now breed an over-dependence in our daily lives. It's also become a target from more sinister factions and made our critical infrastructure now extremely vulnerable to cyber attacks. I have just completed a 4 week period of research and production for an audio documentary called 'The Slow Road to Cybersecurity'. What I have encountered, has made me wish I had never known about it. Cybersecurity has now entered a new era of concern, our risk and vulnerability is becoming a...

WASHINGTON -- Russian hackers hijacked American identities and U.S. software tools and used them in an attack on Georgian government Web sites during the war between Russia and Georgia last year, according to new research to be released Monday by a nonprofit U.S. group. In addition to refashioning common Microsoft Corp. software into a cyber-weapon, hackers collaborated on popular U.S.-based social-networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook Inc., to coordinate attacks on Georgian sites, the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit found. While the cyberattacks on Georgia were examined shortly after the events last year, these U.S. connections weren't previously known. "U.S. corporations...

The distributed denial-of-service attack that hampered access to social networking and blogging sites all went after one pro-Georgia blogger, according to security company reports. According to a post from F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen, the attacks focused on Cyxymu's accounts at Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Livejournal, and also included a "Joe Job" spam campaign that was designed to look as if the unwanted messages had been sent by Cyxymu. McAfee offers a similar analysis with a post that ties the spam campaign to the same botnet that launched the DDoS attack, and says that a cyxymu account at Fotki.com was also targeted....

A hacker attack Thursday shut down the fast-growing messaging service Twitter for hours, while Facebook experienced intermittent access problems. Twitter said in its status blog Thursday morning it was "defending against a denial-of-service attack," in which hackers command scores of computers to a single site at the same time, preventing legitimate traffic from getting through.

"Microblogging site still slow after assault paralyzed it for hours"-Twitter confirmed this morning that the site had been taken down by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack...

The micro-blogging site Twitter has come under attack this afternoon, taking it down for more than an hour. On the site's corporate blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said: "On this otherwise happy Thursday morning, Twitter is the target of a denial of service attack. Attacks such as this are malicious efforts orchestrated to disrupt and make unavailable services such as online banks, credit card payment gateways, and in this case, Twitter for intended customers or users. "We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate."

WASHINGTON -- Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, even as a growing wave of coordinated cyberattacks against the government poses potential national security risks, a private study found.

The U.K. was the likely source of a series of attacks last week that took down popular Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea, according to an analysis performed by a Vietnamese computer security analyst. The results contradict assertions made by some in the U.S. and South Korean governments that North Korea was behind the attack. Security analysts had been skeptical of the claims, which were reportedly made in off-the-record briefings and for which proof was never delivered. The week-long distributed denial of service attack involved sending multiple requests to a handful of Web sites from tens of thousands...

Hackers extracted lists of files from computers that they contaminated with the virus that triggered cyberattacks last week in the United States and South Korea, police in Seoul said Tuesday. The attacks, in which floods of computers tried to connect to a single Web site at the same time to overwhelm the server, caused outages on prominent government-run sites in both countries. The finding means that hackers not only used affected computers for Web attacks, but also attempted to steal information from them. That adds to concern that contaminated computers were ordered to damage their own hard disks or files...

North Korea celebrated America’s Fourth of July by launching a wide-ranging cyber assault on websites in South Korea and the U.S., including that of the Treasury Department and Secret Service. The attack is not only a significant escalation by the DPRK, but a demonstration of how the U.S. remains vulnerable to a covert operation by a rogue state or terrorists that can be as devastating as a WMD attack. The North Korean offensive began after Lab 110, a group of top hackers working for the military, were given instructions in May to “destroy” the communication infrastructure of South Korea. One...

South Korea's state intelligence organization said Friday it has discovered that a wave of cyber attacks carried out earlier this week into key government and private websites in South Korea and the United States was launched from computers in 16 countries, Yonhap News Agency reported. The National Intelligence Service made the report to a closed-door meeting with members of a parliamentary intelligence committee, Yonhap quoted committee members as saying. North Korea was not among the 16 countries, which include South Korea, the United States, Japan, and Guatemala, Yonhap said. The cyber attacks have been traced to 86 Internet Protocol addresses...

South Korea has issued security warnings after the disruption of major Internet sites by an apparent cyber attack. Several U.S. Web sites have also been affected. Reports are emerging in South Korean media that intelligence officials suspect North Korea may have had a hand in the disruption. South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted parliamentary intelligence committee lawmakers as saying North Korea may be behind the apparent cyber attack. Wednesday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of the North's revered first leader, Kim Il Sung. In past years, North Korea has used the occasion to show defiance or superiority toward...

A few days ago, I read this article "Spies 'infiltrate US power grid' ", and I thought, "Wow, that's hardly a surprise," but I blew it off. I disregarded it-not because Michael Jackson's funeral was on TV, or because I was preparing/partying/recovering from 3 days of straight BBQ party for the Fourth of July. No, I blew it off because we all suspected this kind of thing was always happening, always possible, and it's like the threat of nuclear war: awful, not something one wants to think about, and we kind of already know the consequences. Today, multiple papers are...

The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than initially realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange. Other targets of the attack included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post, according to an early analysis of the malicious software used in the attacks. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained computer assaults. The Associated Press obtained the target list from security experts analyzing the attacks. It was not immediately clear...

North Korea is suspected of launching a cyber attack that paralysed the websites of South Korean and United States government agencies, banks and businesses, the first such large-scale attack attempted by the isolated communist state.

Do we retaliate for cyber attacks with cyber attacks? If not - WHY NOT?

COVERT RADIO SHOW http://covertradioshow.com # http://covertradioshow.com/podcast.cfm?pid=187 Covert Radio Daily Blast May 7 North Korea has hackers working round the clock on cyberwarfare. Could they have been behind recent attacks on the Alaskan Air Traffic Control system? Are we prepared for Cyber Warfare? Narco Traffickers are declaring war on our cops, and the latest in the coming war between Georgia and Russia.

South Korea and the United States have agreed to cooperate in fighting cyber attacks against their defence networks from countries including China and North Korea, officials said Monday. The April 30 deal calls for an exchange of information on detecting and fighting cyber attacks against information systems used by the militaries of the two allies, the defence ministry said. At least once a year the two countries will hold a conference on joint readiness against computer hacking, it said. "The deal covers cyber attacks in general, including those from North Korea and China," a ministry official told AFP on condition...

By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, April 22, 2009 – Defense Department officials are working to reduce vulnerability to cyber-attack attempts that occur regularly and are likely to continue for the foreseeable future, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said. “We are under attack virtually all the time, every day here,” Gates told CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric yesterday during an interview broadcast on the show. Attempts to attack DoD computer networks have more than doubled recently, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters yesterday. He declined to cite details, saying that to do so would only “make it...

The WSJ's Siobhan Gorman has a tale today about deep penetration of America's power grid by foreign hackers that has several on the wingnut side of The Force hyperventilating. However, Gordon's story hangs mainly on the anonymous say so of "and former national-security officials". The nearest she gets to named sources confirming this alleged penetration is Dennis Blair saying "we have seen cyberattacks against critical infrastructures abroad, and many of our own infrastructures are as vulnerable as their foreign counterparts.", which doesn't actually pinpoint power companies at all. In fact, the best knows infrastructure cyber attack, in Australia, was aimed...