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US's Greatest Vulnerability is Ignoring the Cyber Threats From Our Adversaries, Foreign Policy Expert Says (cnbc.com)
America's greatest vulnerability is its continued inability to acknowledge the extent of its adversaries' capabilities when it comes to cyber threats, says Ian Bremmer, founder and president of leading political risk firm Eurasia Group. From a report: Speaking to CNBC from the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, the prominent American political scientist emphasized that there should be much more government-level concern and urgency over cyber risk. The adversarial states in question are what U.S. intelligence agencies call the "big four": Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. "We're vulnerable because we continue to underestimate the capabilities in those countries. WannaCry, from North Korea -- no one in the U.S. cybersecurity services believed the North Koreans could actually do that," Bremmer described, naming the ransomware virus that crippled more than 200,000 computer systems across 150 countries in May of 2017.
Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, weighed in, stressing the economic cost of cyber crimes. "It is very hard to attribute cyberattacks to different actors or countries, but the cost is just unbelievable. Annually more than a thousand billion U.S. dollars are lost for companies or countries due to these attacks and our economy is more and more based on internet and data."
Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum, weighed in, stressing the economic cost of cyber crimes. "It is very hard to attribute cyberattacks to different actors or countries, but the cost is just unbelievable. Annually more than a thousand billion U.S. dollars are lost for companies or countries due to these attacks and our economy is more and more based on internet and data."
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
If we would acknowledge that the problem exists, rather than deny it because it somehow diminishes the ego of the current occupant of the Oval Office, we could start to do something about it.
Many businesses and governments exist successfully with cyber-threats. It's a matter of willingness to defend against them. Sure some will be successful but a strong defense with stated goals is key.
in the last few years we've learned that America itself is the biggest cyber terrorist on the planet. Stop trying to make us believe other countries are the enemies and aggressors. And if you attack other countries you have to expect that they fight back.
Stuxnet - I bet the Iranians never believed the USA could do THAT. A real act of war if ever there was one.
It will be interesting to watch how the US government goes about preventing all "foreign" interference by way of the Internet and the Web without completely cutting the USA off from the rest of the world.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Instead of the NSA working with privacy industry to fix exploits, it sits on them and weaponizes them. It means other parties who find the same can also exploit them against us. It makes all our security weak.
Then we insist on putting industrial and military systems on the internet when smarter countries are moving the other way, sometimes even using paper records to make the data more difficult to steal. Not that paper data can't be stolen but it is harder to get a lot at once and it requires old fashioned spy methods.
'Then we have legions after legions of technically clueless managers who ignore the advice of security experts for "convenience".
So if we have cyber security probs those are probs we made for ourselves and we deserve to face the consequences.
We're vulnerable because we continue to underestimate the capabilities in those countries. WannaCry, from North Korea -- no one in the U.S. cybersecurity services believed the North Koreans could actually do that
WannaCry famously used exploit code developed by NSA. It demonstrates an almost sociopathic lack of self-awareness to turn around and blame threats caused by the unnecessarily agressive weaponisation of the internet by US state actors on those same actors underestimation of the threat posed by others.
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are the three fictional superstates in George Orwell's satirical dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
So this group who warn of bad things are named after a state from 1984 a.k.a. Big Brother.
Pot kettle and black.
Our biggest cyberthreat is Windows. Until that thread is neutralized, we will continue to be unnecessarily vulnerable.
In other words: from everyone else on the planet!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
That wall was painted years ago and they're just now realizing this?
It is likely that cyber vulnerabilities follow the same pattern. While everyone is busy looking for the overseas threat, the domestic (and government) hackers are spreading mayhem and chaos internally.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
As a unamerican human, I noticed, that in the last 10-15 years, seemingly everybody in the US became ridiculouly afraid and scared by the smallest things.
People are constantly on the edge and on the verge of snapping.
Which makes them very easy to control, as their minds aren't clear and their reactions knee-jerking.
Indicators for this that I observed are:
* All the fun things are now called too dangerous. Everybody calls you crazy when you handle Mythbusters-style experiment the redneck/Russian way, instead of with a silly amount of safety precautions. (Just look at what experimenting kits for kids have become.)
* People buy civilian tanks (aka SUVs), even though they are inferior in every single aspect but that one.
* Conservatism, nationalism and religiousness (which are all cases of being afrad of that which is not understood or known) seem to actually be on the rise.
* Surveillance and total control are on the rise.
* Locked down devices are actually *popular*.
* And I even have a feeling that SJWs and snobbety are results of that.
By comparison, the Americans of the 80s that I "knew", who were the cool role models that everybody here (in Europe) wanted to be, are gone.
It's not just sad. But it is so clear that with so much tension, it is *bound* to snap and spin out of control in a big im-/explosion.
And I don't know how to fix it.
Jon Steward's "Rally to Restore Sanity" hit the nail on the head, but was of course ultimately useless.
I'm not even Murican, and I want my Murica back!
(And yes, this makes everyone here think of how a certain narrow-moustached guy came to power. Because this is what he promised to give back. Including tje convenient scapegoats to blame for everything. ... Trump is not him, but I can understand very well why he was elected.)
The biggest threat is incorrectly assessing and overreacting. The threat is there but making it out to be a bigger boogeyman than it really is can and will set in motion consequences both internal to the nation and outside it that will be extremely dangerous and difficult to walk back from. Don't let politicians influence you with their unbridled suspicion and fear. Remember these experts are paid by someone and they have personal incentives that drives their outspokenness.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The problem lies on a way more fundamental level...
For instance, how much Equifax had to pay for leaking a whole ton of sensitive data? It was obviously less than enough.
How much other companies who leaked medical data, credit card data, governmental data, electors data, had to pay for weak security?
Not enough.
US is it's own cyber threat, it doesn't need to label other ships as the enemy, it's sinking by itself.
What's the response around security from US politicians? Let's use fearmongering against smartphone companies without any proof and bar them from the US market without any proof of doing anything wrong, because we think the chinese government might exploit connections to spy on us. It applies because we'd certainly do the same in their position.
We don't punish incompetence, we put in question the competence of others, and we accuse others of the unethical behaviour that we practice and deserve to be called for. US gets exactly what it deserves. Leaders who thinks they own the place and keep pushing others away while making unreasonable demands all the time eventually gets overthrown. Those who still didn't get this will be forced to given time.
Even though he says it in such a dickish way, that it actually harms his point.
Yes, the US corporate oligarchy government is the biggest online manipulator on the face of the planet, and harms a massive amount of people with it.
But go and actually meet Americans please!
Not from TV.
Most of them are nice, like in any country. Most of them are victims too. Like in any countly.
I would even say they are victims the most!
Yes, even the one-in-a-million assault-rifle-wearing Confedrate-flag-swinging offensive-war-and-torture-supporting most stereotypical 500-pound American in the entire country!
So please, let us keep those two separate.
Donald Trump is not Silas Nacita. Lloyd Blankfeyn is not Jon Steward. And LifeOfBoris is not Putin either.
EVERYONE ON EARTH outside the USA knows you fucks are the biggest cyber thieves.
Windows isn't the biggest threat. I know plenty of people who don't even have a computer any more. Besides, Windows can be locked down.
Phones, on the other hand, are always-on cameras and microphones that cannot be locked down in any way. Phones alsoallow for 100% harvesting of all email, text messages, and phone calls sent through them.
We'd be in good shape, as a country, if Windows really was the greatest "cyberthreat".
I don't respond to AC's.
Interesting to see so many comrades on the job right away. Slashdot must be closely monitored.
Thanks Ivan. It's good to know you can flip to "totally hyperbolic" when you need to. I'm sure you'll make a few extra rubles for this little exchange.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Our company provides security services for many fairly large companies. Rackspace, for example, is one of our many customers. You can imagine how much data flows through our IDS every day. We have millions of security events logged.
Attacks can be broadly classified into two groups - bulk, unsophisticated attacks, and targeted, more sophisticated attacks.
The largest VOLUME of attacks come from Eastern Europe and Russia, places where local law enforcement isn't all that concerned about hackers targeting the US, and there are computer geeks capable of attacks. That's a lot of countries, though - the single country with the greatest number of attacks is China.
The most sophisticated attacks come from China.
I have phone numbers of FBI agents at the Cyber Division who want to hear about any significant attacks originating in the US. If a domestic attacker targets a specific organization or group of organizations, the FBI can send a Cyber Action Team to the targeted facility within 24-48 hours. The CAT performs the initial forensics, making sure evidence isn't lost, assesses the threat, and can call on other experts as needed. The Cyber Action Team is the first step in series of events that involves the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The US is not a the place to be if you're a black hat hacker. If you're going to try to hack US computers in a significant way, you REALLY want to be somewhere the FBI won't go to visit you.
Windows isn't the biggest threat.
However, the larger threat of Windows comes from what it's used to manage, specifically SCADA systems.
Windows can be locked down.
Unfortunately, Windows has a perpetual stream of 0day bugs being added to it from Microsoft via Windows Update. The other problem is that getting a distribution of Windows that focuses specifically on security costs more money, so Cheapy McCheapskate is just going to use vanilla Windows.
Phones, on the other hand, are always-on cameras and microphones that cannot be locked down in any way. Phones alsoallow for 100% harvesting of all email, text messages, and phone calls sent through them.
There is no doubt that they are a significant threat but exploiting them is difficult without having them installing malware.
You can create the most secure systems but unless it's cheap and easy, you're going to get assholes that don't know what the fuck they are doing completely screwing over the rest of us. The biggest threat is people and the second biggest is people using Windows.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"The Russians did it! The Russian said that! Anyone who speaks the truth are Russians!!!1!!!!"
Americans are fucking pathetic, they're Israel's bitch anyway, the entire fucking DC is run by Israel.
Mr. President, we must not allow a mine-shaft gap!
Here in Europe the Belgcom hack has just come into the newspapers. A Belgian telecom company was hacked by the British GCHQ a few years ago. Although there is more than enough evidence no one dares take them to court because of politics: https://theintercept.com/2018/...
-- Cheers!
Well at least you're not pretending to be an American anymore Ivan, but that's going to cost you some rubles. You'll get downgraded to calling the Ukrainian government "Nazis" at this rate. Maybe you'll get some points for the Israel comments t. We all know how much Russians hate Jews.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
became profit makers and copyright holders.
Smart serial murderers became soldiers.
Smart mass murderers generals.
Etc.
What kind of an idiot thinks like this? Ah, at least we know how Trump got elected. Americans need to wake up and smarten up. They need to look long and hard in the mirror. The world thinks a whole lot less of America now than it did in the past. Wonder why.
PS. Get your small-dicked president to close a fair NAFTA trade deal or we'll turn off flow of oil, water, and resources. The orange idiot seems to not realize that trade is a two-way street.
What it lacks is adequate talent to deal with the adversaries. That exceptional talent comes with a high price tag. Champagne taste, beer budget.
We'll make great pets
Ooooohhhhh; do they wear skin-tight, rubber outfits with a drawing of a black panther on the chest area?
It's Sunday and looks like you're playing the troll-vodka game, take a shot, comment, take a shot comment...
Interesting how this article accumulated over 50 posts and nobody (unless I just totally missed it) has pointed out that we are in the fix of a) being under concentrated cyber-attack from Russia and b) we have a president 100% committed to the idea that there is no threat.
Hopefully the career military, spooks, and bureaucrats are on the job because it is pretty much up to them to defend us.
Russia is run by Jews.
You need to work on that trolling, it's just not working, why even play the insecure smart ass routine, you're 10 years late on that, people don't even respect Americans anymore, they don't even take you seriously because everyone already knows Americans are full of shit, so you're not even getting the effect you want, your own kind thinks you're embarrassing and the rest of the world welcomes the fact that most Americans have no idea what's ahead of them, it just makes their fall more dramatic to watch.
The odd thing is that the OP never once claimed to be American, you just assumed that for some reason.
Though I do find it odd that you prefer to argue with a person's nationality instead of their arguments.
Please keep doing that, BTW. It will definitely help the election chances for decades to come.
I feel like the kid in Sixth Sense walking around, thinking "all of this will come down in the first week." Tanks, jets, aircraft carriers, are all crowd control for savages. I hope someone already has a Battlestar Galactica like strategy in place for the real war with Russia and China, but still the civilian toll would be incredible.
RT.COM
PRESSTV.IR
You want to destroy even more nations. Not just Syria and Iraq and Lybia ?
Those whom you try to subjugate by means of more than 400 bases globally.
Hope your Imperium breaks down ASAP.
Seems Karma already comes for you.
Your poor little country is eaten by the truth, while nations such as Syria and Iraq are literally killed by the ISIS bastards America and Israel and Saudi-Arabia are financing, arming and hospitalizing.
Poor America....
We will simply coach your MONEY OVERLORDS to do more of their work. Thereby, America will let Sodomism fully blossom and destroy itself. You can do nothing about it, because the moneymen of NY are your REAL government. They are going to infect your mind with deadly information and there is nothing you can do about it.
Enjoy !
Your overlords in Tel Aviv need to control you by means of cyber spying. Forget the idea of secure computers, as long as you have your thinking outsourced.
Ian Bremmer???? Wasn't he the dood from the Bushie Administration who helped create ISIS by firing all those Iraqi military types and allowing them to vamoose with their weaponry????
Now why would anything he had to say be of value, especially as CorporateAmerika continues to offshore jobs, techinology and investment to China, etc.????
The threat is a lot closer to home. A mouthpiece for the US state security apparatus, possibly tasked with signaling the Washington establishment as to what their policies are going to be. These leaks against Trump being an attempt to persuade him to get with the program. The program being to do exactly what he's told. America's greatest vulnerability is the backdoors inserted into the communications infrastructure and allowing a particular foreign intelligence to control of them.
...
US's Greatest Vulnerability is Ignoring the Cyber Threats From Our Advertisers ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
We’re not ignoring them – We (well, the GOP anyway) needs to somehow spin them as “false news”, attack anyone who claims it’s valid and redirect to some Clintonian BS when evidence is demonstratively contrary to the GOP story.
For the GOP to actually admit the 2016 election results were somehow manipulated, would be to validate a false President rules the throne.
As we’re now seeing, sexual escapades are hidden by shell companies, lawyers and friends, “jobs to Americans” is really just paying back the old 19th century business model of scotched earth for profit even if human life / well being hangs in the balance.
Annually more than a thousand billion U.S. dollars are lost for companies or countries due to these attacks
I wonder how they came to such a huge number. One thousand billion USD is the GDP of Mexico or Indonesia
Egg on the face of politicians or making them look bad, a la Clinton. That's not risk. Shutting down freedom of speech in order to save face is not a solution either.
This guy needs to go pound sand.
Oh, and all those Democrats who say that everyone who disagrees with them is a Russian troll? Go fuck yourselves.
The biggest indicator that the US is in trouble is that its leadership uses the term “cyber”.
No one who knows anything about computers says that.
The odd thing is that the OP never once claimed to be American, you just assumed that for some reason.
Oh don't be so dull, MM never "assumed" writer was claiming to be American in the thread above. MM wrote: "well at least you're not pretending to be an American anymore Ivan." If you kept abreast of current affairs, you would have understood to what that referred.
Though I do find it odd that you prefer to argue with a person's nationality instead of their arguments.
Ditto ... So here's a clue: Look at the just the title of the current article if you can't RTFA. You need to get your brain into gear dude, this ain't a high-school debate that is getting marked for nice valid arguments ...
You are being, at best perfidiously disingenuous, if not an outright fool.
... Not sure anyone makes cyber-sex anymore. Hopefully people will forget about cyber-war too.
The big "four"? The BIGGEST threat is Israel, not Iran or China or Russia. That is just more propaganda to make us look in the other direction.
"China hacks? Outrageous, something must be done!
North Korea hacks? Outrageous, something must be done!
Iran hacks? Outrageous, something must be done!"
"Russia hacks? Oh no, Russia would never do that. Or at least, they didn't do that during the election of the Big Giant Orange Head. Or maybe they did, but everyone does it and so it's OK. Certainly I was not taken in by Russian trolling, I'm an SMRT person and a very stable genius!"
This is what passes for intelligent political discourse these days. Selective agreement with the facts to support pre-established positions.
Um, when did SlashDot get bought out by Koch brothers and Republicans? There are like 4 factually wrong articles on here, minimum, all of which are cliche talking points of the Kochs and other frauds, like the Occupational licensing article.