Hacked u.s. Gov websites

[JimJones]

The AP (Associated Press) reported yesterday that the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department all had been hacked and had their websites brought down over the July 4th holiday. Some of these sites have experienced issues not just one day but for several days, which is a bit abnormal.

As most of us already know that our government see’s attacks on websites just about every day and most are defended. What makes this story interesting is that the country of South Korea had their websites were also hacked this weekend. The sites included the Presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top internet portal Naver. They went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, said Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at the Korea Information Security Agency.

The AP also reported that Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, called it a “massive outage” and said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.

The Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, says there were 5,499 known breaches of U.S. government computers in 2008, up from 3,928 the previous year, and just 2,172 in 2006.

Know after reading this, how safe will your government controlled healthcare records be if they can’t stop hackers from cracking the Secret Service web-servers? Better yet, let me add that Obama himself was hacked just a few months before he was elected. His computer was state of the art government issue. I for one, see no reason why our healthcare records need to be held by big brother. U.S. Websites Hacked | BorderlineIQ


Source: Associated Press, Fox News

-JimJones

http://twitter.com/BorderlineIQ.com

 

[AllieBaba]

I can't imagine why anyone would be interested in my health records?

 

[Luissa]

I think he is one of those types that needs something worry about.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

They were not hacked.

They were the target of a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). This is typically done through use of a BotNet, which is thousands, even tens of thousands of infected computers turned into drones, which are then commanded by the BotNet operator to go and make repeated page load or file requests on the target site(s). The owners of the infected computers are blissfully unaware their computer is being used in this manner, and typically are running IE6. If the BotNet operator has enough drones, he can take a site down because the servers cannot handle the volume of requests.

It's basic, old school, script kiddie stuff.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Which is why you should delete IE6 off of your computer as soon as you open the box.

And never use IE for anything. None of the browsers perfectly safe, but you are better off with Firefox or Safari. And IE is perfectly dangerous.

Actually, it is not the computer that is at fault, it is the software configuration. Little Green Footballs noted that the 0bama people didn't take even minimal information security procedures. You could look at the index page and see what files were on there.

Interesting to see what the botnets were up to. Since we don't know who was making the botnet work, we don't know what they were trying to achieve. But it is interesting that South Korea was having a DOS attack while the NORKS were doing missile tests.

 

[JimJones]

Let me start off answering a statement that I might have a health issue …I don’t, thanks for your concern Luissa.

I had been an IT director for a very larger hospital group so I do have some insight into this subject that I wrote about today. Alliebaba questioned why would anyone be interested in health records?
-Most health insurance companies use your social number is your account number. Also, with your complete medical record it will show your birth date, hair color, eye color, defects and even past address, past employers. Everything needed for identity theft.
-What if you die and your death was ruled inconclusive. Right before your life insurance company pays out to your wife and kids they see while you were 18 a doctor noted that you should be on a suicide watch. With this info the life insurance company stops pay leaving your wife and kids having to take them to court for the money that they should have paid out.
-Currently there are a ton of laws about discrimination against infectious disease. What if you lose out on a job that you are interviewing for or a job that you have because your employer finds out you have hepatitis or HIV/AIDS?
-How about a young girl that has an abortion and her parents or even her church finds out? It’s possibility that she gets banded from maybe both depending on the belief system of her family.
-How about a new girl friend finds out that you have herpes and you hadn’t told her yet. She breaks up with you and posts it on a social networking site like facebook. Not the end of the world but something you probably wouldn’t want the world to know. Right?
-Nothing like pharmaceutical companies marketing to you based on your condition.
-Being in the Army and they find a record from years back that you are guy. With don’t ask don’t tell what happens?

I can go on and on but at the end of the day this type of information can do major damage to you, your family and your standing in the community, should the information find itself in the wrong hands.

 

[KissMy]

U.S. law enforcement websites got hacked.

The group known as Anonymous says it has hacked some 70 law enforcement websites across the southern and central United States in retaliation for the arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain.

The hacking group also claims to have stolen 10 gigabytes of data, including emails, credit card details, and other information from local law enforcement bodies.

Anonymous' claims couldn't all be immediately verified, but a review of the sites it claims to have targeted — mainly sheriffs' offices in states such as Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi — showed that most were unavailable or had been wiped clean of content.