Hackers break into IMF

[Big Hoss]

Troubles Continue for IMF After Hackers Cause 'Major Breach' - Yahoo! News

HA! Love it.

 

[waltky]

US Senate hacked too...

Lulz attacks: US orders review as Senate site hacked
13 June 2011 - Lulz Security said the intrusion was "just-for-kicks"

US officials said they have ordered a security review after hackers managed to break into the Senate website at the weekend. An official said the incident had been "inconvenient", but had not compromised the security of the staff. The confirmation came after Lulz Security, a loosely aligned group of hackers, said it had carried out the attack for fun and posted files online. Lulz has previously targeted Sony, Nintendo and Fox News.

Senate Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms Martina Bradford said the hacking had been noticed at the weekend, and that officials were now reviewing all the sites hosted on Senate.gov. "Specifically, there is no individual user account information on the server supporting senate.gov that could have been compromised," she said in a statement. Lulz Security posted files online which indicated they had been in the Senate network. However, none of the files appeared to be sensitive.

"We don't like the US government very much," Lulz Security said at the top of a release. "This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov - is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?" it added. The US recently said it would consider cyber attacks an "act of war", and reserved the right to respond to attacks with conventional means if they were found to have been orchestrated by a nation state. Lulz is a reference to internet-speak for "laugh out loud".

BBC News - Lulz attacks: US orders review as Senate site hacked

 

[newpolitics]

Thank God... the IMF should be shut down.

 

[waltky]

Pentagon havin' problems keepin' up with all the cyber attacks...

Government in cyber fight but can't keep up
6/16/2011 - Pentagon expanding effort to safeguard its contractors as recent wave of attacks boosts concerns

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is about to roll out an expanded effort to safeguard its contractors from hackers and is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace to test new technologies, according to officials familiar with the plans, as a recent wave of cyber attacks boosts concerns about U.S. vulnerability to digital warfare. The twin efforts show how President Barack Obama's administration is racing on multiple fronts to plug the holes in U.S. cyber defenses. Notwithstanding the military's efforts, however, the overall gap appears to be widening, as adversaries and criminals move faster than government and corporations, and technologies such as mobile applications for smart phones proliferate more rapidly than policymakers can respond, officials and analysts said.

A Reuters examination of American cyber readiness produced the following findings:

* Spin-offs of the malicious code dubbed "agent.btz" used to attack the military's U.S. Central Command in 2008 are still roiling U.S. networks today. People inside and outside the U.S. government strongly suspect Russia was behind the attack, which was the most significant known breach of military networks.
* There are serious questions about the security of "cloud computing," even as the U.S. government prepares to embrace that technology in a big way for its cost savings.
* The U.S. electrical grid and other critical nodes are still vulnerable to cyber attack, 13 years after then-President Bill Clinton declared that protecting critical infrastructure was a national priority.
* While some progress has been made in coordinating among government agencies with different missions, and across the public-private sector gap, much remains to be done.
* Government officials say one of the things they fear most is a so-called "zero-day attack," exploiting a vulnerability unknown to the software developer until the strike hits.

That's the technique that was used by the Stuxnet worm that snarled Iran's enriched uranium-producing centrifuges last summer, and which many experts say may have been created by the United States or Israel. A mere 12 months later, would-be hackers can readily find digital tool kits for building Stuxnet-like weapons on the Internet, according to a private-sector expert who requested anonymity. "We're much better off (technologically) than we were a few years ago, but we have not kept pace with opponents," said Jim Lewis, a cyber expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "The network is so deeply flawed that it can't be secured."

"It's like an insect invasion"

 

[waltky]

China got more than 100,000 hackers...

China’s hackers shifting focus: report
Sun, Apr 28, 2013 - CYBERWARFARE: China’s cyberarmy now numbers more than 100,000, has a budget of more than US$2.71 million and targets telecoms and think tanks, the NSB said

The National Security Bureau (NSB) believes that the Chinese military has shifted the emphasis of cyberattacks on Taiwan from government institutions to civilian think tanks, telecommunications service providers, Internet node facilities and traffic signal control systems, according to an NSB report. The report on the country’s measures to stem attacks by China’s hackers was prepared for lawmakers’ reference ahead of a scheduled legislative hearing on the issue tomorrow that will be attended by NSB, Ministry of National Defense and Criminal Investigation Bureau officials. Amid the public’s growing reliance on the convenience of online networks, Taiwan’s heavy dependence on technology means threats to Internet security are increasing, the bureau said.

Private think tanks, information technology businesses or outsourced factories and businesses, less well-defended network nodes, factory-grade microcomputer controllers, cloud storage and traffic signal switches may be targeted instead of governmental facilities and embassies, the bureau said in the report. The bureau also cautioned that social media may be used to get close to personnel in sensitive or key positions to gain access to their computers to further penetrate the nation’s Internet defenses. The hackers’ goal is to acquire as much control as possible over internal Internet systems before trying to steal or forge information, or paralyze Internet communications, the bureau said in the report.

According to the bureau, since 2002, China has extended its cyberarmy and now there are more than 100,000 people working for it, with Beijing budgeting more than NT$80 million (US$2.71 million) a year for the hackers. As an agency of national defense, the bureau is a long-term and dedicated target of Chinese hackers and was hit 3.34 million times last year, the bureau said. However, it said the actions were reconnaissance rather than actual attacks. About 70,000 malignant attacks — averaging 209 a day — were all successfully averted, the bureau added. The bureau takes cyberdefense seriously and has allocated funding over the past three years to purchase specialized equipment, such as defensive software systems, as well as prioritizing the limitation and scanning of outgoing documents, the bureau said.

In a special note, the bureau said telecommunication providers should prioritize national defense over financial gains, adding that the providers should try to strengthen and implement Internet security protocols in accordance with government policies. Meanwhile, the Executive Yuan’s Information Security Office said in a report that among all government units, only the Council of Agriculture and the Executive Yuan itself have met information security standards. Saying the situation was unsatisfactory, the Executive Yuan said that branches of the government should seek to have every office, branch or unit under their jurisdiction pass the Information Security Management System testing standards to ensure online security.

China?s hackers shifting focus: report - Taipei Times

 

[Steelplate]

I say pull all of our business out of there and bring them back home....then throw a 50% tariff on everything coming out of that country.

 

[RoadVirus]

China got more than 100,000 hackers...

China’s hackers shifting focus: report
Sun, Apr 28, 2013 - CYBERWARFARE: China’s cyberarmy now numbers more than 100,000, has a budget of more than US$2.71 million and targets telecoms and think tanks, the NSB said
China?s hackers shifting focus: report - Taipei Times

[/QUOTE]

And what's oBozo doing about this?