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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...

he head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command warned Congress today that the United States is vulnerable to cyberattacks "across the spectrum" and that more needs to be done to defend against the potential of online strikes, which could "potentially threaten not only our military networks, but also our critical national networks." But Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton made clear to a House Armed Services subcommittee that he has not been asked to defend most government Web sites nor the commercial and public infrastructure networks whose destruction could cripple the nation.

Cyberwarfare is waged on a massive scale the world over. Ostensibly friendly nations zap each other's electronic nerve cells frequently, and with reckless abandon. On a single day in 2008, the Pentagon was hit by would-be intruders 6 million times in 24-hour period. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the highest annual figure for cyber attacks against the Pentagon was 250,000.

Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a conference in New York that computer attacks pose the biggest risk "from a national security perspective, other than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our major cities." "Other than a nuclear device or some other type of destructive weapon, the threat to our infrastructure, the threat to our intelligence, the threat to our computer network is the most critical threat we face," he added. US experts talk of "cybergeddon," in which an advanced economy -- where almost everything of importance is linked to or...

"OPERATION CAST LEAD The IDF's Fight Against Terror in Gaza" # A blessed New Year to everyone here and abroad. Today's thread beginning January 1, 2009 (U.S.A. Time)

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

Malicious e-mail and other cyberattacks on Tibet advocacy groups in the United States are linked to Internet servers used in past hacker intrusions traced by U.S. law enforcement to China. The link, made by security experts on the basis of publicly available data, is the first direct evidence the recently intensified attacks against the Tibet groups, reported by United Press International a week ago, were launched from China. But it remains unclear to what extent -- if any -- the Chinese government or military is implicated. The news follows charges last week from the Save Darfur Coalition, a group opposing...

Defense-related think tanks and contractors, as well as the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, were the target of repeated computer network intrusions last year apparently originating in China, the Department of Defense said this week. In its annual report to lawmakers on China's military power, the department said the intrusions "appeared to originate in" China but added, "It is unclear if these intrusions were conducted by, or with the endorsement of" the Chinese government or military. The report gave few details, but one China expert who works in the private sector told United Press International that in the last 18...

China bids for firm that makes "intrusion prevention" technology for the Department of Defense. THE CHINESE ANNOUNCED on Saturday that they would be buying into the company that provides the Pentagon with technology to prevent cyber-attacks--of the sort the Chinese launched a few weeks ago. Why worry? We are all free traders now, according the president and his secretary of the Treasury--all except misguided Democrats, trade unions, displaced workers, and those who worry about our national security. True, free trade is great--when dealing with other parties who are in it for the same thing--to make money. But that ain't the...

The New Zealand secret service has suggested the Chinese government was behind attacks on the country's networks. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday assured reporters that no classified information had been compromised but ... "We have very smart people to provide protection every time an attack is tried. Obviously, we learn from that," ... Warren Tucker, New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service director, hinted ...that the Chinese government was responsible for the attacks, referring to previous allegations about the country's spying activities by Canada's secret service. The allegations come only a week after the Chinese foreign ministry denied that the...

French government officials say they are now the fourth victim of cyberattacks originating from China, saying the attacks are similar to those reported by other countries. In the past three weeks, government officials in Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom have claimed that cyberattacks on government systems have originated from China. Chinese officials have denied they are behind the attacks. French officials were careful not to implicate the Chinese government as the source of the attacks.

Computers and information networks at the National Defense University (NDU), the Joint Chiefs military education school at Fort McNair in Washington, were hacked and damaged by unknown attackers, defense officials said. (snip) ... hackers had planted clandestine "trap doors" into the system that would allow them future access, or would facilitate computer attacks. The only way to ensure the security of the systems was to replace them... (snip) Official suspicions are focused on Chinese hackers, based on similar attacks on Pentagon and military computer networks. Chinese hackers also were involved in the electronic theft in 2005 of hundreds of evaluation...

Evan Kohlman describes how the internet has become the focal point for AlQaeda's new business model in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Following is an except published at Counterterrorism Blog: In truth, although catastrophic computer attacks are not entirely inconceivable, the prospect that militants will be able to execute them anytime soon has been overblown. Fears of such science-fiction scenarios, moreover, have led policymakers to overlook the fact that terrorists currently use the Internet as a cheap and efficient way of communicating and organizing. These militants are now dedicated to waging an innovative, low-intensity military campaign against the United...

Has cartoon rage in Denmark over the cartoons of Muhammad printed by the newspaper Jyllands Posten now taken the form of hacker attacks against that paper's website? "Denmark subject to islamic cyber-attacks," from the Dansk-Svensk blogspot, with thanks to Steen: from www.politiken.dk the 29 of jan. a German version will appear later today: New hacker attack paralyzes Jyllands-Posten The web version of Jyllands-Posten is off-line. Hackers pulled off another large attack on the website of the paper. The web version of the paper Jyllands-Posten, www.jp.dk, has again been knocked to the ground. The web paper is under attack by hackers....

Many FReepers, especially those in NJ, are familiar with the trentonrevolution website. Whether for analysis, opinion, NJ news or humor, I have always found the site to have something to say. I went to the site this morning to check on the status of a previous posted multi-part piece. I was unable to access the site. After several hours, I was finally able to make a connection and their was a two line note about the attack. Have any other small sites suffered the same fate? They do have a new webTOON, it was interesting. Best of luck to them.

Chinese hackers have been blamed for a wave of attacks on South Korean government computers, the latest in a series of internet security breaches in which China is alleged to have been involved. The US, Taiwan and the Dalai Lama are among other victims of suspected Chinese cyber sabotage in recent years. Nearly 300 South Korean government computers have been infected recently with viruses capable of stealing passwords and other sensitive information. The National Assembly and an atomic energy research institute are among 10 agencies penetrated by the hackers, who were traced to China by the Korean intelligence service. "The...

ONE of the most destructive computer viruses in the world started from a semi-detached house in the genteel resort of Llandudno. From his pebble-dashed family home, 22-year-old cyber vandal Simon Vallor dispatched three viruses which dug their way into e-mail address books across the world. One virus alone spread to 27,000 computers in 42 different countries, causing incalculable economic damage to businesses. North Wales Police arrested Vallor in February after receiving information from the FBI in the US, where the viruses wreaked havoc. At Bow Street Magistrates Court, in central London, Vallor yesterday admitted spreading the virus. He was released...

Beltway sniper takes out FBI cyber-sleuth By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 10/19/2002 at 01:52 EST An armed lunatic plaguing the Washington, DC area has managed to do more harm to American cyber-defence with a single .223 caliber bullet than an entire squadron of PLA hackers could hope to accomplish, Vmyths editor Rob Rosenberger points out in a recent rant. FBI National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) cyber-analyst Linda Franklin became the Beltway sniper's eleventh victim shot and ninth victim murdered last Monday as she loaded her car with merchandise in a suburban DC shopping mall. For Rosenberger it's...