Cybersecurity Warning: Several Nations Trying To Penetrate U.S. Networks, Ex-FBI Official Says

The Washington Post:

At least half a dozen countries with offensive cyber-capabilities are probing U.S. corporate and military computer systems, looking for data and a toehold should they one day want to disrupt or destroy the networks, according to the FBI’s former top cyber-sleuth.

Read the whole story at The Washington Post

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Comments

[Filthy]

01:36 PM on 04/18/2012

Offensive cyber-capabilities - translation: notepad, puTTY and an internet connection.

[Doug Cain]

11:14 AM on 04/18/2012

Oh good! How else are we going to know what the plutocrats are up to?

[FogBelter]

11:10 AM on 04/18/2012

When US Corporations set up Data Centers all around the world to cut down the costs of hiring American IT Personnel these corporations provided both the tools and know-how to foreign nationals to not only understand American IT systems, their functionality and methodology, but access into these systems from afar. We talk about hackers in China, India, Russia, etc as threats to our cyber security, while at the same time we allow US Corporations to retain IT personnel in this nations that allows development of expertise TO hack our systems.

Folks, get a clue.

[Filthy]

01:52 PM on 04/18/2012

First off, America didn't invent the computer, the network or packet switching. The knowledge of the basic infrastructure of networks and the internet was never America's sole domain to retain or propagate, let alone American corporations.

Secondly, all you need to hack a system is a computer and an internet connection. With those two things you can aquire whatever knowledge is necessary. It's exactly that type of knowledge transfer that has driven the evolution of the internet and made it useful today. You don't need a job with a multinational corporation. Has nothing to do with outsourcing IT jobs to India. People study computer science on their own. Or they can study it at the University of Beijing, or Shanghai or the American University of Beirut for that matter.

Networks are designed to share information, far fewer are designed to keep it secret, ergo securing them is always difficult, generally expensive and almost always a secondary concern.

[FogBelter]

04:37 PM on 04/18/2012

Corporations run proprietary software on multiple platforms. An operator within a company would know the platforms the applications run on and the file system of the servers. A developer would know the file structure and where the code base is resident, and how builds are performed. A sys admin would have access to passwords. A company that interfaces with the US Government would have access to protocols required to create secure connections and perform file transfers. A hacker outside of a corporation would have to engage in hit and miss, and a hacker within the corporation would have all the information to engage in subterfuge with plausible reasoning for their actions so management might never clue into what is occurring. So you see there is a difference for a hacker working within an organization and without.

[TallMagnolia]

10:58 AM on 04/18/2012

I'm sure there are one or more "friendly" or "neutral" countries on that list.

[whitcombc]

10:58 AM on 04/18/2012

This is NEWS? BS! Yhis is PR for establishing more Internet spying by our own NSA, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and anybody else who wants to keep shredding our constitution. There have always been hackers in EVERY other country trying to hack into mainframes of EVERY other country. There are NO secure Computer networks period. Any defense a person can devise can be hacked by someone just like them. Distributed computing made this possible. Wikileaks and Anonymous have shown the world that we had better be on guard BUT we had better not screw with trying to turn the internet into the property of one government over all the others. The Internet should belong to the PEOPLE of the WORLD and until G W Bush's Whitehouse took control and administration away from the international entities who had been policing it, it did belong to all of us. This destruction has been happening ever since. I remember when Microsoft ignored the parameters for video on the internet and released its own format. It was a bandwidth hog and it would have crushed the use of the internet by anyone using the approved formats. The Administrators gave Microsoft 24 hours to disable it. They didn't and suddenly Explorer stopped working, Redmond was in a dither and Microsoft complied. Not so today. Third Party add-ons are rampant and they are the new launch vehicle for viruses, worms trojan horses and ad-tracking. This would not have happened prior to Bush's takeover.

[Erik Kartmann]

10:48 AM on 04/18/2012

Awww, the poor corporations will have to deduct their loses off their taxes.
So the taxpayers bails them out again.

[Jarrod Putnam]

10:45 AM on 04/18/2012

Gotta get on with that Quantum Encryption, America. Then you can lolz at anyone trying to get your information.

[Filthy]

02:04 PM on 04/18/2012

Encryption strength isn't really an issue. Prevents packet sniffing between you and your SSL connection (man-in-the-middle attack), but doesn't prevent session hijacking. For instance if I'm side-jacking your facebook login at the local Starbucks I won't be able to steal your secure login, but I can steal your session cookie and then you have essentially logged me into your account.

[Jarrod Putnam]

07:10 PM on 04/18/2012

Are you aware on how Quantum Computing in general works? Everything is essentially impossible to be snooped on.

[Aries Warrior]

10:41 AM on 04/18/2012

China.

That is all.

[Rick Eriksen]

10:35 AM on 04/18/2012

Would these be the same officials that are training the MEK out here in Nevada just outside of Las Vegas...you know the MEK, the listed terrorists, they are on the terrorists watch list...training right here...any explanations on that one...what they are helping us in Iran to make sure that the Iranians do not build the bomb that they are not building according to every official source…

[robmclaughjr]

10:32 AM on 04/18/2012

The US should openly publish data showing what these nations are doing and confront them on the world stage. It's time to stop playing footsy, under the table, about these issues.

[Midnight Son]

10:23 AM on 04/18/2012

Former FBI agent states hackers are dangerous, tells horror stories, but can't name actors. Next step, "yes, Congress. I'd be happy to take millions from you to hire my firm to fight the boogeyman." Just the next chapter of the military industrial complex with former piggy bureaucrats looking to overeat at the public trough.

[FrogLips]

10:19 AM on 04/18/2012

Richard Clarke (Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It) warned of cyber attacks. According to him the U.S. has one of the best offenses in the cyber world and we have one of the worst defenses against cyber attacks. His book makes lots of good points about cyber attacks from other countries both friendly and non-friendly countries. Interesting reading because an attack does not have to come from what we call a major power. It may come from some country with little military power or from a group that does not like us. Our infrastructure is wide open to attack not just government or military targets.

[anti-fascist]

10:11 AM on 04/18/2012

I hope Obama protects our proprietary information better than Truman protected our proprietary nuclear weapons

[killerbee256]

10:02 AM on 04/18/2012

So how many foreign governments is the NSA trying to penetrate?

[Aries Warrior]

10:42 AM on 04/18/2012

all of them.

[p mersault]

09:46 AM on 04/18/2012

Can we please stop using cyber- in front of everything? The word is meaningless and no one that works in technology ever uses it. It makes no sense and is really a propaganda word.

[ProCynic]

10:12 AM on 04/18/2012

You're wrong. While I despise the use of "cyber...", "iXXXX", "eXXXX", the fact is I work in government in the IT sector and every company I work with, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, IBM, etc. all use 'cyber' in product/department/briefing titles.

[p mersault]

10:17 AM on 04/18/2012

What, in sales collateral? That's sort of my point.