US Mounted 231 Offensive Cyber-operations In 2011, Runs Worldwide Botnet

An anonymous reader sends this news from the Washington Post: "U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents [from Edward Snowden]. Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed 'covert implants,' sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions. ... The implants that [an NSA group called Tailored Access Operations (TAO)] creates are intended to persist through software and equipment upgrades, to copy stored data, 'harvest' communications and tunnel into other connected networks. This year TAO is working on implants that “can identify select voice conversations of interest within a target network and exfiltrate select cuts,” or excerpts, according to one budget document. In some cases, a single compromised device opens the door to hundreds or thousands of others."

Comments

Re:Many eyes

[fluffy99]

There are many people that work on the kernel, and even more students that study it. The kernel is of little concern. What is a concern is the thousands and thousands of little executables that are in so many distros. Worse still, how many people look through all the code from an average everyday apt-get?

Doesn't really matter in the end as there is always the Underhanded C Contest to think about.

So please explain the number of kernel exploits over the past year.
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-33/product_id-47/cvssscoremin-7/cvssscoremax-7.99/Linux-Linux-Kernel.html
http://www.zdnet.com/linux-trailed-windows-in-patching-zero-days-in-2012-report-says-7000011326/

Linux had 14 kernel vulnerabilities this year versus 7 Windows kernel-mode vulnerabilities this year. (Just going by MS announcements for Windows 7, there may have been more unannounced issues)