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Politically Motivated Cyber Attacks
Orome1 writes "According to a new report, 53 percent of critical infrastructure providers report that their networks have experienced what they perceived as politically motivated cyber attacks. Participants of the Symantec survey claimed to have experienced such an attack on an average of 10 times in the past five years, incurring an average cost of $850,000 during a period of five years to their businesses. Participants from the energy industry reported that they were best prepared for such an attack, while participants from the communications industry reported that they were the least prepared."
I don't see any problems when a company that sells "security" releases data about the bad terrible things that can happen to you if you don't have the appropriate "security".
And when Merck says Vioxx is safe, we must trust them.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...unlike Slashdot were bacon and iCraps seem to be the only motivations...
Smile, don't click...
If you think about it, the reason people resort to terrorist (or "politically-motivated") attacks is that they feel they have no other recourse: no other way to make themselves heard.
In so-called democracies, this shouldn't happen. If people feel that a company is threatening their environment or killing hapless animals or whatnot, then the people should be able to participate in the democracy in such a way that they can have their concerns addressed. But of course, we don't live in a democracy. All we do is vote, then shut up and let our leaders decide what is good for us. Real democracy will only come when we apply the principles of free software to government.
OK, so there is a second source of politically-motivated attacks: nations trying to sabotage each other. That too is fundamentally a failure of democracy. Because rule of the people implies supersession of national boundaries. Nation-states are relics of kings. When we have real democracy, where everyone in the world can participate in any policy decision, then the idea of segregating people into distinct groups just because of the happenstance of their geography or ethnicity will seem ridiculous.
Critical infrastructure providers represent industries that are of such importance either to a nation’s economy or society that if their cyber networks were successfully attacked and damaged, the result would threaten national security.
WTF are "critical infrastructure providers" doing by connecting their critical systems to the internet?
If they need to connect plants or other things, leased lines aren't an option?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This is almost not news. There's been a de facto cyber-war with the Chinese going on for years now; just neither side talks much about it openly.
Politically motivated cyber attack reports are spun into support for new laws bringing the US up to speed with the most draconian technology laws in the world - provide your password or go to jail forever, prove that the drawing is of an adult, and even prove that you have never interacted with anyone who has committed these cyber-crimes or go to jail by association!
This is really OT; but while negative ads seem to stick in our heads, the other half are ads touting the candidate's record in a few key areas and one or two of their strategies. Maybe you're not in the USA, but here we get both.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
How come there's no mention of the objective of these attacks? What could it be, why would you take out energy or communication companies?
It's a war. This is not new. Just look at whats going on with Cryptome being hacked in the name of Bradley Manning. I would say ideology is a strong motivator for hacking.
If somebody is a politically motivated cyber terrorists, the law isn't going to make a difference as they aren't the kind of person who would respect the law to begin with.
So those laws would mainly affect us and leave them free to hack us and do anything to us basically. The only real solution is for spy agencies and military to train it's own group of cyber warriors or whatever we want to call these people to conduct cyber warfare. This combined with the current laws should be enough.
The law usually creates as many problems as it solves.
Are "vital infrastructure" systems actually specifically targeted or have then been attacked by worms/bots because their systems tend to be underpatched?
That might make sense for things like the Energy Industry (which is better prepared supposedly) but not so much for Communications, since their business IS the internet. Sometimes total quarantine just isn't an option. And many of the so-called "critical infrastructure" industries are legally required to be on monitoring networks, so that if one site etc goes down others can pick up the slack (again Energy fits this as the national power grid needs such redundancy). Now you could say that they just make a isolated intranet for such things, but lets be realistic. These are measures legislatively imposed, and the US government is far too bureaucratic to shell out the cash or even approve the necessity of providing such a thing (at least within any useful time-line), and the individual companies are not in a position to accomplish it themselves, even if they were motivated to do anything beyond the legal minimum. Keep in mind we are mostly talking corporations, which are actually legally required to do whatever they can to maximize the bottom line earnings. Above-and-Beyond spending just doesnt happen unless somebody can prove a hidden earing (usually PR or the like)
So yes, in a perfect world each critical industry would only network through dedicated lines, using a unique and secure OS build to confuse and foil would-be attackers, on computers with no USB, and operated by employees that never get disgruntled, overly curious, or lazy. If you believe that's possible Ive got a bridge to sell you.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
Continuing with the offtopicness:
I'm in the US as well...true, you do see ads that focus on only one or two areas of a politician's "accomplishments", but as a whole, politicians tend to talk smack about their opponent more than they talk about themselves. Or at least, that's how it seems to me.
Living With a Nerd
Politicians have the illusion of power by signature. The real power are the intelligence agencies that bribe and blackmail politicians into doing their bidding. The real power are the corporations funding the lobbyists who do the bribery, or in some cases the journalists and private investigators who do the blackmail, so lets face it every politician basically reads their script and is like a celebrity.
They go on TV and read a teleprompter. They sign what they are told to sign. Their controllers write their bills, the politicians don't read anything and just sign off on whatever their controllers make them sign off too. Since the average American citizen isn't in control of anything, the foreign national has more control over the political process than the average American citizen, whether it be hacking the voting machine or bribing the politician.
At least if there are cyber warriors the voting machines wont have to be hacked.
1. It doesn't work.
2. It's a declaration of war against the US military establishment.
Now that these facts are clear, we can ask ourselves some serious questions. Why would a government need to fork? If you look at the system you'll see the problem with government is that the US government has too many enemies. Basically the entire world against the US government. Because of this there are foreign spy agencies seeking to control the US government by controlling congress. These foreign spy agencies now have the ability to use corporations to take control of the US government from the American citizen (the worker).
The result is the citizen/worker does not make their own laws. The political families are just families of corrupted puppets serving whoever bribes them or blackmails them the most. There appears to be no one in complete control and if someone is in complete control I have no idea who that is. Obama is in control on paper but he does not write the laws nor does he read them. Neither do any of the political faces, they merely sign what they are told to sign and the whole thing is part of a ritual.
This is why the current laws being passed suck. That being said there is only one solution that I can see, and that is the militarization of the US society. This would mean we'd need cyber warriors, and the idea that geeks can't be warriors must go. The idea that anybody in any profession cannot be trained to fight for the US interest must go. You can't expect your laws to get better if you aren't free. You can't expect to make more money if you don't control the money, or anything for that matter. And you can't expect jobs if you don't control anything.
Once again, politics aren't the answer. Patriotism might not be the answer either. The answer is to improve cyber security, this way it's far more difficult to steal an election by hacking voting machines. This should be your political stance, not democrat or republican. The security of the democratic process should be the only political stance that matters.
DOSS attacks could be the new form of protests. They could have the same protections as regular protests. They would have to be announced and could last for a limited number of hours per day.
Regular protest cause financial loss anyway, so there's no difference there. But unlike the regular protests people from around the world could participate easily. The media would cover the protest just like any other, so you'd get attention to the issue as well.
It's what anonymous already does in a way - they announce their ddos attacks in a public call to arms.
So you would vote for the guy who takes bribes or beats his niece up, simply because his opposition pointed it out?
I don't blame you...I for one would love to vote for a politician with conviction...assault for example.
It's a brilliant tactic, actually - talk down the opponents track record while mentioning little to nil of their own, and allow the viewer to assume the wanker advertising himself will do any different. After all, it was our fault for making the assumption, right? The politico in the running can't be held responsible if his potential constituents project their own values onto him. That's why these bastards never say anything of substance about themselves.
"Terrorism" does work sometimes. It got the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the French out of Algeria, to name but two. In fact many if not most revolutions contain a 'terrorist' component, but that label just happens to vanish if the revolution succeeds and consequently rewrites the history books making the deaths of innocents into political martyrs (which in Algeria especially was really the case, as the French orchestrated false flag terrorist attacks to undermine popular support for the local insurgency).
As for the rest, your post is tin foil hat nonsense. The President does not normally write laws (and any which he might would still have to be sponsored from committee to floor by a congressman), that's what executive orders are for. Further, congressmen, The President, cabinet members, etc. are all too busy to read most laws. That's not a secret. That's why they have a staff. Their staff researches proposed legislation, writes it, reads it, rewrites it, re-researches it, etc. and only briefs their superiors on key points. It's not a grand conspiracy, it's a simple adaptation to circumstances. There are too many bills which are too long for every congressman to read every one. Hell, many of the never make it out of committee, let alone pass a floor vote or actually get signed.
Oh but of course it's the evil, evil corporations who control everything! That's why the government was so unsuccessful at breaking up AT&T in the 80s... oh wait, it wasn't. Corporate interests are no less valid than the interests of an other institutions or individuals. They are a significant part of the economy and consequently the politics of that economy. I'm sick of all the anti-corporatism for anti-corporatism's sake. Everybody wants to ride the wagon and spit at it too.
We are tired of your excuses. You always have excuses fo why congress does not read or write it's own laws. You'll have excuses for why so many lobbyists like AIPAC are writing laws and influencing government. You'll have excuses for why corporations should be able to spend obscene amounts of money bribing and corrupting the political process.
And of course you say the voting machines being hacked is tin foil. You wont provide any solutions either because you don't want the situation to be solved.
How much are they paying you Mr. Man?
I would have to agree, in my experience most political advertising in the US offers little to no useful information. I could mostly care less as I ignore it anyway and would rather look up information on the candidates myself. What makes it worrisome is some people actually base their votes on those ads.
"Consensus" and "Majority" are entirely different concepts. A consensus government is NOT majority rule. If people disagree with the majority, then there is disensus, and there is no consent to the governance in question.
So would that result in less governance overall? Almost certainly. And it definitely would reduce the significance of gigantic governments. Instead people would be much more likely to be governed in small communities.
So yes, you could call each community a "branch" of the larger humanity governance. Fine. We don't need uniform law applying to everyone in the world. As long as distinct communities can achieve consensus within themselves, they can be happy.
And then a weird thing happens. Communities can work together to build larger consensuses. We might not have one big national government that passes all laws on everybody in it, but we can have specific laws which everyone agrees to adopt in these large meta-communities.
You just need to break out of this mindset that huge government is somehow inherently good. What does it bring us that a network of consensus communities couldn't do better? Well, OK, so big governments are great at producing authoritarianism and helping foster totalitarianism. But what else?
No...if my only choices were "a guy who beat his wife" and "a guy who talks about another guy that beat his wife", I just wouldn't vote.
We have the freedom to CHOOSE to vote in America, not just the freedom TO vote. Not voting is a freedom some people in this world do not have, just as voting is a freedom some people in this world do not have.
Living With a Nerd
Stuxnet for sinking their battleship!
Because the money comes from and is owned by the foreigners and foreign nationals.
So they write the policies, they write the laws, they basically run DC with AIPAC and other lobbyist groups like them. Don't be surprised when China, Isreal, Russia and many other powerful nations actually use their money as speech to determine our future.
No...if my only choices were "a guy who beat his wife" and "a guy who talks about another guy that beat his wife", I just wouldn't vote.
We have the freedom to CHOOSE to vote in America, not just the freedom TO vote. Not voting is a freedom some people in this world do not have, just as voting is a freedom some people in this world do not have.
If the vote isn't counted, and doesn't matter, what difference does it make?
Or if the vote is counted but lobbyists write and push through all the laws, what difference does it make?
And since there wont be any tougher laws on lobbyists what can you expect?
The simple fact is that the US government is too big because the US itself is too big. If you want an efficient government you want a sovereign polis. Aristotle knew it, Machiavelli knew it, but the economic and military concerns have overridden any concern for a pure abstract efficient state. The state does not exist in a vacuum.
The only way to 'fix' the federal government would be to either fundamentally change it, say by imposing limits on the number of bills that could be written/sponsored in a session, or by completely dissolving it and letting the states become sovereign again (which are microcosms of the federal problem so that only partially ameliorates).
The problem is not that the US government is too big, the problem is the US government is neither efficient or effective. To be effective would mean foreign influence would be kept out of the democratic process. Do we really want foreigners writing the laws that govern us as Americans?
To be effective would also mean limiting the influence of corporations on government while increasing the influence of unions. This would give the worker(citizen) a voice, even if it's limited by the corrupt union boss it's still more of a voice than they have now.
Efficient would be to run the government in a way which is both cost effective and which meets objectives. If liberty is the objective of government, this government is not doing it's job effectively or efficiently.
If the government is trying to drive us into serfdom then they are accomplishing that mission very efficiently.
If you want the USA to be free and have a valid democratic process uncorrupted by foreign influence then you'd have to get all the best minds in the country to fight or challenge the best minds from other countries. If the best minds in our country only think about making money, and the best minds in China, Russia, Iran and other countries are all focused on taking over the USA in clandestine fashion, the result is going to be that the best minds in the USA are going to be corrupted by foreign nationals, foreign spys, foreign money from foreign corporations.
So the best hackers in the USA could be hacking for China trying to rig the US election. Or maybe Isreali hackers are better so their candidate wins the election, and so on and so forth. This has far reaching implications for the integrity of the Democratic process.
Then you have the foreign influence on politicians, on scientists working on nuclear and biological weapons, on professors who grade your science paper, on your classmate who keeps tabs on you. It all has far reaching implications and what you aren't considering is that the USA is currently bankrupt.
The bankrupt USA now does not have the money to fund itself. So now it has to rely on foreign money to fund itself. This reliance on foreign money along with the foreign corporations who now can spend as much as they want on elections, along with the willingness of foreign agents to break the law to rig or hack elections, and you have a country which can quite easily be completely taken over and overrun by a coalition of countries who could divide the US up amongst themselves.
And who would they be fighting over? They'd be fighting over the serfs, the servants, the consumers. You think your wages suck now? You think your quality of life sucks now? Wait until foreigners take this country, then you might find yourself laid off while foreigners take your job.
So you can compete with the foreign countries, or you can submit to them. What other choice is there?
Just look around you. Politics are always Financially motivated.
I am not financially motivated too, I only work because it makes me happy. I just enjoy getting payed.