A few articles of interest . . .
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Chris Strohm and Eric Engleman of Bloomberg Businessweek reported that those cyberattacks against U.S. banks are back underway, this time with Capital One in the crosshairs. A few weeks ago, the biggest U.S. banks came under a sustained DDOS attack. Although a fringe Islamist group claimed responsibility, the sophistication of the attack led many to conclude that a nation-state was probably behind it. Moreover, that nation-state was probably Iran.
According to the article, Capital One’s online systems “were disrupted” but had since been restored, with no indication that any customer information was lost.
Interesting point . . . the article said that the attackers are using encrypted data to get pass the bank’s firewalls and security devices.
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Tom Simonite wrote a great article for MIT’s Technology Review as to why the U.S. is so afraid of Huawei. Simonite explained that Huawei could potentially build back doors or triggers into the routers that make up a network’s infrastructure. Those backdoors are extremely hard to detect and may give the Chinese government the ability to copy information , re-route the information, or even change the information en route.
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Sen. Joe Lieberman wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post on our weakened cybersecurity in light of delayed passage of legislation. Noting that “information-sharing alone is a helf-step,” Sen. Lieberman argued that critical infrastructure must face standards forcing them to act on that information because “sharing information with [critical infrastructure providers] in real time won’t do much good” otherwise. Finally, Sen. Lieberman commended President Obama for trying to fortify critical systems, but still beleives that “[e]xecutive action is not the best way to protect the United States from cyberattacks.”
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The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote an op-ed concerning the U.S. frank talk about cyberweapons and the upcoming Plan X conference. Plan X is DARPA’s proposed cyberwar management platform. DARPA recently rescheduled a conference around Plan X due to unprecedented interest. The ed-board noted that this conference is not open to the public. Moreover, the ed-board believes that we need a public statement on when and where the U.S. will use offensive cyberweapons.
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Finally, let us bow our heads in a moment of silence. NBC News’ Winda Benedetti reports on how a hacker broke into World of Warcraft (the popular online fantasy game) and insta-killed thousands of player’s characters.
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