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Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called for the U.S. to begin treating cyberattacks like any other assault on the country. “As president, I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack,” the Democratic presidential nominee said. “We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.” Clinton called for the U.S. to “lead the world in setting the rules in cyberspace.” “If America doesn’t, others will,” she said. The remarks, given during a foreign policy speech at the American Legion Convention in Cincinnati, address one the central challenges the Obama administration has...

The international movement calling for a boycott against Israel on Thursday said its website was repeatedly attacked earlier this year and raised suspicions that Israel was behind the attacks. The BDS movement released a report Thursday showing that its main website suffered six attacks in February and March. The denial of service attacks, which work by flooding a target website with bogus traffic, knocked out the BDS website for several hours at a time. The report, compiled by nonprofit online security service eQualit.ie, said the attacks had a level of “sophistication and commitment” it normally does not see. It also...

Security researchers have tied the recent spate of digital breaches on Asian banks to North Korea, in what they say appears to be the first known case of a nation using digital attacks for financial gain. In three recent attacks on banks, researchers working for the digital security firm Symantec said, the thieves deployed a rare piece of code that had been seen in only two previous cases: the hacking attack at Sony Pictures in December 2014 and attacks on banks and media companies in South Korea in 2013. Government officials in the United States and South Korea have blamed...

The IRS’s computers remain vulnerable to hackers, the government’s top auditor said Monday, saying changes were still needed months after the agency suffered a breach that saw hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ most sensitive information stolen. Passwords to key agency systems “could be easily guessed,” and investigators from the Government Accountability Office found the IRS didn’t require regular password changes — an important part of modern cybersecurity. The tax agency also failed to load the latest security patches, ran obsolete software on systems, and granted some employees access — both physical and electronic — to systems they didn’t need to...

Cyberwars: Three recent news items are a stark reminder that the U.S. is under increasing global cyberattacks. And it should be a loud warning to the Obama administration that we're losing this war.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps has in recent weeks launched increased cyber attacks on Obama administration officials, hacking into their email and social media accounts. U.S. officials believe that the hacks are related to the recent arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Tehran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has routinely conducted cyberwarfare against American government agencies for years. But the U.S. officials said there has been a surge in such attacks coinciding with the arrest last month of Siamak Namazi, an energy industry executive and business consultant who has pushed for stronger U.S.-Iranian economic and diplomatic ties. Obama administration personnel are...

Major attacks on the U.S. power grid system are “increasing,” with hackers stepping up efforts to penetrate critical systems and to implant malicious software that could compromise the power grid and result in a nationwide crisis, according to a government report. While experts have long signaled that the U.S. power grid and related systems are vulnerable to physical attacks by terrorists and other individuals, the U.S. government is now warning that sensitive computer systems that maintain the grid are increasingly being attacked, according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report that was not made public until the Federation of American...

The U.S. and China will have intense disagreements, but the world is depending on the two powers to work together, Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday, urging China to be a “responsible stakeholder” in international affairs. Biden was speaking at the start of the annual U.S.-China Security and Economic Dialogue, which takes place amid growing tensions over cybertheft and China’s island building in the South China Sea. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was looking forward to a “very frank” discussion on cybersecurity, Internet freedom, human rights and religious freedom. Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang said neither China nor...

Hacking: Chinese hackers apparently stole far more data on more federal employees than first suspected, creating a huge national security problem. Worse, the Obama administration knew this database was being targeted.

Privacy: In two weeks, we've learned that offshore hackers managed to steal 100,000 tax filings and personnel data on millions of federal workers. Who, exactly, is in charge of cybersecurity in this administration?

A former commander of U.S. nuclear forces is leading a call for taking U.S. and Russian nuclear missiles off high alert, arguing that keeping them less ready for prompt launch would reduce the risk of miscalculation in a crisis. It also could keep a possible cyberattack from starting a nuclear war, he said, although neither Washington nor Moscow appears interested in negotiating an agreement to end the practice of keeping nuclear missiles on high alert. Retired Gen. James Cartwright said in an interview that “de-alerting” nuclear arsenals could foil cyber intruders by reducing the chance of firing a weapon in...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday created the first sanctions program that would allow the U.S. to penalize individuals and entities overseas who engage in malicious cyberattacks and cyber spying. "Cyber threats pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States," Obama said in a statement after signing an executive order creating the sanctions regime. The order gives the U.S. the authority to sanction individuals, though no specific penalties were announced. Obama said the sanctions would apply to those engaged in malicious cyber activity that aims to harm critical infrastructure, damage computer systems, and steal...

The Operation Arid Viper campaign has successfully stolen more than 1 million files with current malware campaigns underway, though it's not the usual suspects, according to Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro. The Arab-speaking group, with ties to Gaza, have targeted foreign government offices, critical infrastructure, military, universities, and other high-profile targets. The attacks likely occurred starting in mid-2013 and a full investigation into their actions is underway.   "Whoever the real culprits are, it is clear that they are part of the Arab world, evidence of a budding generation of Arab hackers and malware creators intent on taking down their...

Cyberspace is the new “Wild West,” President Barack Obama said Friday, with everyone looking to the government to be the sheriff. But he told the private sector it must do more to stop cyber attacks aimed at the U.S. every day. “Everybody is online, and everybody is vulnerable,” Obama said during a White House cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, just miles from Google, Facebook, Intel and other internet giants. “The business leaders here want their privacy and their children protected, just like the consumer and privacy advocates here want America to keep leading the world in technology and be safe...

Five years ago, Utah government computer systems faced 25,000 to 30,000 attempted cyberattacks every day. At the time, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Keith Squires thought that was massive. "But this last year we have had spikes of over 300 million attacks against the state databases" each day: a 10,000-fold increase. Why? Squires says it is probably because Utah is home to the new, secretive National Security Agency computer center, and hackers believe they can somehow get to it through state computer systems. "I really do believe it was all the attention drawn to the NSA facility. In the cyberworld, that's...

The North Korean Internet has gone dark.  Meanwhile the United States has demanded that Korea pay compensation to Sony for the damage they have caused.First of all, Congratulations to the Obama administration.  After bumbling on this issue for more than a week, it seems they may have got up enough gumption to slam the North Koreans.Even more importantly, the sordid threats to destroy the White House, Pentagon and other American institutions, perhaps with suicide attacks –all of this coming from North Korea and its inexperienced leader– are dangerous threats. Hitting back sends a message that statements of this kind are...

Outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Friday the U.S. is "going toward bloodshed" and "getting into the arena of major" acts of cyber terrorism. "There can be an attack on the electrical system of the United States, on airport computers of the United States," she said. "We're getting into the arena of major attacks. Right now, it has to do a great deal with private industry. But the cost for private industry is now in the trillions of dollars. And it has to be stopped." Feinstein's comments came after President Obama said Sony Pictures "made a...

If there is one salient fact that emerges from the now infamous Sony hack it is that the bad guys won.  The bad guys won because there they paid no price for the damage inflicted.  In the Sony case the hackers are outside and beyond the law, so their backers and sponsors are encouraged to cause even more damage in future. To stop cyber attacks, particularly those sponsored by foreign governments, we need to respond to attacks now. Sony is a movie company, a major cog in the entertainment industry.  Whether Sony rises or falls has little or nothing to...

FBI Director James Comey says an agent impersonated an Associated Press reporter during a 2007 criminal investigation, a ruse the news organization says could undermine its credibility. In a letter to the Justice Department last week, the AP requested Holder's word that the DOJ would never again misrepresent itself as the AP and asked for policies to ensure the DOJ does not further impersonate news organizations. In a letter Thursday to Comey and Holder, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press asked the agency for full disclosure about the incident. "The utilization of news media as a cover for...

A Chinese intelligence unit carried out a massive cyber espionage program that stole vast quantities of data from governments, businesses and other organizations, security analysts who uncovered the operation said Thursday. The activities of the Chinese unit called the Axiom group began at least six years ago and were uncovered by a coalition of security firms this month. Cyber sleuths traced Axiom attacks to the 2009 cyber operation against Google in China and other U.S. companies known as Operation Aurora. The group was also linked to a Chinese hacking program that targeted dissidents and opposition groups known as GhostNet. More...