Cyber Security & Government

I found another private sector hacking. On March 31, 2012 MasterCard and Visa credit card accounts were breached at Global Payments the money processing portion of the transaction. Now I’ll talk about what’s been going on with the government and the internet.

On November 8, 2011 the FBI arrested Estonian nationals who were charged with using malware and rogue DNS servers to hijack 4 million computers worldwide. Since this incident, the internet system consortium has been operating replacement DNS servers for the Rove Digital Network which will end on July 9, 2012. To check if you’re infected go to www.dcwg.org and follow the instructions (the FBI began warning people on April 22 that they could lose internet service when the replacement servers are shut down).

On November 17, 2011 we were informed that the US satellites were on at least 2 occasions compromised by malicious cyber activity; hackers temporarily gained control of the command and control systems; China was suspected (I don’t know if these are the same 2008 NASA incidents that were reported on October 29, 2011). On December 21 it was said that for over a year Chinese espionage hackers had infiltrated the US Chamber of Commerce website getting major US corporation and Pentagon information; when a printer started printing in Chinese it was discovered that a Chamber thermostat was communicating with the them. It’s was said that the Chinese were stealing corporate secrets, getting strategies for selling products and ripping off our economy of billions of dollars; they checked the files on American human activists, downloaded Ford files on hybrid vehicles and government files on stealth fighter planes; it was estimated that the US is losing $250 billion a year on economic espionage. January 19, 2012 hackers immediately shut down the Justice and Patent offices and tried to shut down the FBI because the Justice Department indicted the largest file sharing group megaupload.com that uploads pirated movies, videos and games (they were up the next day using an IP address out of Belize (on March 5 US prosecutors were seeking extradition of megaupload.com’s founder and 3 colleagues from New Zealand). On January 30 it was reported that as many as 50 million customers of theirs could see their information deleted.

On February 5, 2012 ‘Anonymous’ paralyzed the Swedish government’s website with a deluge of fake users; they intercepted a confidential email, hacked into a private conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard and put the audio recording on YouTube, they took down the Greek Justice Department’s website, and took over the police websites in Boston, Massachusetts, Syracuse, New York (NY) and Salt Lake City, Utah getting personnel and informant information. On February 11 Anonymous claimed credit for crashing the CIA’s website. On February 29 Interpol arrested 25 suspected members of the international hacker group ‘Anonymous’; a top hacker (self taught programmer, living on welfare in NY turned informant.

On March 8 the Vatican website was hacked in protest of the church’s policies. On April 27 we heard that as the Afghan cyber war heats up, the Taliban’s website was hacked.

Okay, so the government isn’t doing a good job on protecting its websites either. As far as I know it hasn’t committed a crime or infringement of our privacy for money. The government has been proactive in dealing with many of the issues and something needs to be done to catch the private sector criminals as well as those committing international espionage. I don’t know what would hold up better in court – private companies giving information to the government or direct government contact and capture of information. I do know that our government has better connections than the private sector to take action on a worldwide level. At least with our current President we know there is a concern about our privacy, I can’t say the same if a Republican is chosen with the upcoming election.