America Continues to be Target of Cyber AttacksBy Kellep A. Charles, CISA, CISSP
2008-11-10
America continues to be a target of cyber attacks from both major well-funded nations as well as 3rd world countries. Recent events in the past year have illustrated this to be an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed.
For example, The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned both the Obama and McCain campaigns that their computer networks had been hacked into by a foreign organization during the presidential contest. It seemed these hackers were trying to obtain information about both candidates view on various foreign issues to use in future negotiations.
There is also a recent report that hackers had penetrated the computer networks of the White House on more than one occasion. An undetermined amount of confidential e-mails between government officials had been stolen before computer experts were able to fix the problem.
And of course last year network penetration of the Department of Defense's computer network.
Due to the nature of the attacks and information gathered, many computer experts believe theses attacks are originating from China.
The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force confirmed that the attacks originated from computers hosted on servers located in China IP space but cannot pinpoint exactly where.
It is not exactly clear what information the Chinese are now privy too, but there is a pattern developing.
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1 comment:
Hi Kellep, interesting post. Do you have any further information or references that discuss these attacks? As a security researcher, I find it challenging to motivate the need for security systems that combat these types of sophisticated attacks. This is because details of attacks motivated by espionage are kept secret by the victims. Their desire to minimize public disclosure of vulnerabilities is understandable, but their lack of disclosure makes it hard for others to fix the problem. That being said, any documentation of attacks from China or elsewhere would be of great interest to those who build security systems.
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