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Rick Wilking / Reuters file
First Lt Michael Newman examines a server rack that is isolated from the Internet at the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., in July 2010.
The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyberweapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure, according to a leading expert on hostilities waged via the Internet.
Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit institute that advises the U.S. government and businesses on cybersecurity, said all three nations have built arsenals of sophisticated computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other tools that place them atop the rest of the world in the ability to inflict serious damage on one another, or lesser powers.
Ranked just below the Big Three, he said, are four U.S. allies: Great Britain, Germany, Israel and perhaps Taiwan.
But in testament to the uncertain risk/reward ratio in cyberwarfare, Iran has used attacks on its nuclear program to bolster its offensive capabilities and is now developing its own "cyberarmy," Borg said.
Borg offered his assessment of the current state of cyberwar capabilities Tuesday in the wake of a report by the American computer security company Mandiant linking hacking attacks and cyber espionage against the U.S. to a sophisticated Chinese group known as “Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398.
According to a new White House report released today, cyber spying and other forms of economic espionage are a growing national security threat – especially from China, where hackers are able to quietly and discreetly acquire source code from U.S. companies. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
In today’s brave new interconnected world, hackers who can defeat security defenses are capable of disrupting an array of critical services, including delivery of water, electricity and heat, or bringing transportation to a grinding halt. U.S. senators last year received a closed-door briefing at which experts demonstrated how a power company employee could take down the New York City electrical grid by clicking on a single email attachment, the New York Times reported.
U.S. officials rarely discuss offensive capability when discussing cyberwar, though several privately told NBC News recently that the U.S. could "shut down" the electrical grid of a smaller nation -- Iran, for example – if it chose to do so.
Borg echoed that assessment, saying the U.S. cyberwarriors, who work within the National Security Agency, are “very good across the board. … There is a formidable capability.”
“Stuxnet and Flame (malware used to disrupt and gather intelligence on Iran's nuclear program) are demonstrations of that,” he said. “… (The U.S.) could shut down most critical infrastructure in potential adversaries relatively quickly.”
China, Russia have different priorities
Borg said China and Russia have similar capacity to cause mayhem, but have different priorities and skill sets.
usccu.us
Scott Borg says the U.S. possesses a 'formidable capability' to wage cyberwar.
“Russia is best at military espionage and operations,” he said. “That's what they have focused on for a long time. China is looking for crucial business information and technology. China's main focus is stealing technology. These things quite separate. You use different tools on critical infrastructure than you use for military espionage and different tools again on stealing technology."
Borg said that each has its strong suit. "The Russians are technically advanced. The Chinese just have more people dedicated to the effort, by a wide margin,” he said. “They are not as innovative or creative as the U.S. and Russia. China has the greatest quantity, if not quality."
Borg said the group featured in Mandiant’s report, the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, may be one of the most important groups working in China, but not necessarily the most important.
"There are at least two dozen groups carrying out aggressive operations against the U.S.,” he said. “They get in each other’s way and trip over one another, but they are all operating with the tacit approval of the Chinese government.
"They're not cooperating with each other because they don’t share capabilities," he added. "One group has good programming, but is bad at access or targeting."
The Chinese hacking efforts are so broad, Borg said, that the highest-ranking Chinese officials “almost certainly do not know what all the groups are doing,” or the consequences. As a result, he added, they have been embarrassed by reports like the one in Tuesday’s New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant assessment.
China is the most likely of the superpowers to leave a calling card, making their work the easiest to track. "China is very arrogant in its authorship of cyberweapons,” Borg said. “It does little to conceal its identity."
That’s in sharp contrast to the Russians, who he noted are not above writing code in Chinese to throw off investigators.
While the U.S. could respond to ongoing cyberattacks from China and Russia by shutting down the power grid of "any of its adversaries” and causing severe physical damage, Borg said it is encumbered by several factors.
One is its vulnerability to cyberwarfare as the world’s most networked nation, he said.
And from a geopolitical standpoint, Borg said, the U.S. would not want to badly damage the economy of either China or Russia. In fact, he said, the U.S. would almost certainly have to incorporate protections for critical systems like the power grid in any cyberattack.
Also, detecting the source of hostilities is not always easy, Borg said, as cybertracks are not as easy to follow as missile tracks. That means “mutually assured destruction,” the main strategic tenet of the Cold War, is problematic at best when talking about cyberwar, he said.
"It might be difficult to determine proportionate response,” he said. “It might not be simple to attack the attacker.”
For example, policymakers may think an attack has been carried out by the Chinese, when it was actually the work of the Russians or a rising power in the cyber world, like Iran. That is why intelligence -- getting insight into these operations -- is more important in a crisis than cyberforensics, which can take longer and not be as certain.
"There is no MAD in the Cold War sense," he said, "You can’t be 'assured' of attribution. The attack can be anonymous. It can be spoofed," or disguised as coming from another source.
Iran developing 'serious capability'
The U.S. first began to develop its own offensive capabilities 20 years ago when several strategic thinkers, particularly at the Naval Post-Graduate School, began to see the possibilities. It was not so much a strategic priority, but more "people familiar with electronics and hackers exercising their imagination." (Borg says one of those thinkers, Winn Schwartau, used fiction to discuss the threat and the possibilities, in a 1991 book, "Terminal Compromise.")
While the U.S. has the means to respond and to defend itself, Borg notes that some countries have no recourse. He cited the Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, when the Georgian government and media infrastructure was quickly compromised.
What was particularly interesting, Borg said, was that the Russian military and intelligence services weren’t directly involved.
"The first wave was carried by organized crime," he noted. "The second wave was carried out by a (hacker) group organized though social media.” He said Russian hackers could download the attack software from a variety of popular sites, including dating and gun-collecting websites.
In both cases, Borg concluded, the organizers apparently were tipped off early about the timing of Russian military operations, he said.
The attack on Georgia also illustrated another aspect of cyberwarfare, Borg said, noting that Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania afterward formed a cyberalliance, leaving them in a better position to deal with future assaults.
That also appears to be the case with Iran, which recently announced that it decided to establish cyber army and claimed to have 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel involved in defensive and offensive operations. That isn’t all bluster, Borg said, noting that when the U.S. leveled new sanctions on Iranian banks last year, U.S. banks suddenly came under attack.
"Iran is developing a serious capability," said Borg. “It's exaggerating the present capabilities, but it’s working toward the future."
That’s especially troubling because the risk of smaller nations waging cyberwar against one other may be higher than with the online superpowers, he said.
He cited reports indicating that Iran may have been behind what he called one of the more serious cyberattacks to date -- an assault last August on the Saudi Aramco computer network that disabled more than 30,000 computers used to control the flow of Saudi oil. The Saudi Interior Ministry blamed "foreign countries" for the attack.
Borg said he believes the attack was an "Iranian fundamentalist attack ... at some point loosely the under auspices of Iran, and blessed by Iran. The fundamentalist group made a claim of responsibility. ... “Based on technical analysis, the claim has credibility."
For that reason, Borg says he is less worried about the possibility of China or Russia launching a catastrophic attack against the U.S. than he is about the emerging cyberpowers.
“What I’m really concerned about isn’t Russia or China, but attacks from Iran or terrorist groups working with state actors,” he said.
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If China were afraid of the USA, it wouldn't be doing this. But they ain't afraid. Heck, if we can't defeat a bunch of tent-dwelling goat-herders in Afghanistan after 14 years of fighting, we can't do much to 1.3 billion Chinese with high-tech gadgets and weapons, can we? LOL
We also do it. I think they're just better at it.
How do you propose making them afraid of us? We're not going to attack China (or Russia) under anything but the most extreme circumstances because the consequences are so severe for everyone involved. They know, we know and the world knows it. And, the same is true of those countries. We're all three at a stand-off with each country making probing (cyber) attacks, but stopping well, well short of full-scale cyber invasion.
As the article pointed out, the real risk is from countries that feel that they have nothing to lose, or are so fanatical that they just don't care.
Maybe we should stop underfunding our schools... and in those districts where administrative largess exists, address the issue and get our focus back on giving a quality education to our children.
No matter what happens: keep going to Wal Mart and buy all the Chinese stuff you can cram in your Korean Cars. And if you are a gubmint employee make double sure you export your paychecks/retirement checks to those people who would like to kill your children. Make sure nobody talks you out of doing this. You must show your independence and freedom. Remember the money you export to China may fund their program aimed at you - and you don't want anyone to disrupt that.
IReadYou...
You make a good point with respect to Walmart. They are essentially a local storefront for Chinese factories and they have destroyed the economies in far too many small towns in this country. The money pours in and then, unlike small businesses, it leaves the area.
Several towns have refused to allow them in... more, in my opinion, should follow suit.
"The greatest nation on Earth -- the greatest nation on Earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next." Obama, SOTU 2013
apparently some "outlets" don't agree....they seem to keep catching your attention...gun laws, cyber laws, fly by the seat of your pants making laws, ....
Post #1 is TERRIBLE
too bad everyone else's comment is going get collapsed along with his filth
Looks like government control of the internet has oozed in through the back door-to cement it permanently, all they need is a crisis to invoke the Patriot Act and it's done. And the potential for an attack, or even a heavy probing, to instantly spin out of control in seconds is frightening. A cyber-attack that snuffs out a nations electrical grid with a few seconds delay to confirm, followed with an all out missile launch before the generators kick in to reboot the radars? It appears that finding the perpetrators is time consuming, so what does the attacked nation do when a full scale cyber-attack is launched against their infrastructure?
They treat this like it's a new development while this has been going on for years- business as usual
so is this sudden news coverage because we are trying to make it appear ok that we do this, this meaning hack into other electronic systems? so now we cause panic and get approval from the masses to spy on other countries e-transactions.....?
why do we have to play so many games, its sickening
we are losing ourselves people. This might be a valuable topic, but if it is used as a way to get approval from the people to hack everything our government can, it is an evil topic
"One is its (US) vulnerability to cyberwarfare as the world’s most networked nation"
That means that we have potentially far more to lose in a 'cyberwar'.
Perhaps the best defense is more 'compartmentalizing', meaning that hackers would have to break a myriad of access codes to have a significant effect - in other words, severely limit the 'reach' of any single system, which would limit the damage from an attack.
Here's a thought;
Hack into China's financial structure and 'cancel' the $1 Trillion debt to them.
It's interesting to me why this is all of a sudden getting so much attention. Seems like there's a concerted push to increase cyber security, which sounds great and all, but such increases in security are generally accompanied by further loss of privacy and personal liberty. Wonder what they're going to take from us now.
Also, we've recently had high ranking government officials compare the security risk from a cyber attack to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, actually they said it would make 9/11 "pale in comparison." With the "absolute havoc" some are predicting from a cyber attack, why is it so out of line for people to want to keep and bare arms, including assault rifles? I don't necessarily buy into the fear mongering, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that some do. Given the state of the world we live in, I'd hardly call it paranoia like some of the gun grabbers do.
Also, why isn't "cyber" recognized as a word in spell check?
Here's another thought;
Whenever wilsonarden3567 posts their advertizing rip off SCAM, we should all tag it as 'Advertizing'.
Maybe the US is looking for an excuse to charge China for repairs in hacking damages, cost 600 billion dollars.
ROY WILSON-336103
Maybe someone should hack into our own treasury and cancel the entire $16 Trillion.
So if that guy is named Borg, and he works in Cyber, can we say he is Cyborg?
TFNJ
I thought that was pretty obvious actually. "We have the technology"
"We have the technology"
The Six Million Dollar Man?
"We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man." "Steve Austin will be that man."
What bothers me, is the insistance on placing all our finances in "direct deposit" accounts, and paying all our bills online. We're setting ourselves up for a calamity. All my paychecks come to my bank account through direct deposit. As far as I am concerned, I have NO financial information online, that comes from me, but I am finding out many companies I do/did business with are passing out my personal information online. Get ready folks, start a really BIG piggy bank!
Though in today's economy, he will be the Six Billion Dollar Man.
(Leaps through the air) TANANANANANANANA
I would think that you're wrong. Just as in the nuclear arms race, we're likely light years ahead of Russia and China. As we should be, considering we spend orders of magnitude more on our military (which includes cyber warfare) than anyone else...
To be offended by Chinese hacking, one must be naive enough to believe we didn't do it first, and do it far more widespread.
Hehe.....we have a cyber warfare expert named Borg....... :-)
i was wondering why the last two weeks I cant load more than one page at a time, and even then its crappy....yet I can log onto 4 different online video games at the same time with no problem at all...
anyone else notice things from MSN not loading????
So riddle me this batman...Let's say that Iran decides to exact a little cyber warfare and takes out our, oh how about our electrical grids, what should the response be?
Iran's boasting and bluster is 99% hot air, as always.
Hec, If I were maintaning US Gov Security, I wouldn't even allow that picture above to be posted. There I see a rack of HP servers, probably DL320. Finding a vulnerability in ILO, I know where to target.
Security problems come from places people don't suspect.
hack them back? Which of course, we've already been doing for years now...
Scott is the Borg...resistance is futile!
It is simply: gather up the best computer nerds (you know the ones that love to hack into everything) and put them against theirs.
Lets continue to have foreigners come here for their education. I mean those students would in no way use their knowledge to help hack our systems. They just want our education is all. No harm in that
DrowningGrover - love the name by the way. :)
I'd disagree in part. As the story mentioned, we're better at it than China - though China devotes more people to it (kind of like their traditional army as well) - but Russia is a different story. Cyber warfare isn't that far off from traditional espionage in that you want to gather info and do damage without being detected. I'm not exactly an expert, but I do believe that Russia may well be one of the best (if not the best) in the world at doing things undiscovered. I don't think we're "light years" ahead of them in this race.
Being light years ahead of China doesn't mean that we can easily defend against their attacks either. There's an old, but still effective method of warfare that entails simply overwhelming your enemy with sheer numbers. Keep them so busy, they can't mount a counter offensive and slowly overwhelm their defenses until you achieve victory. While cyber warfare may be drastically different from traditional warfare, I'd think the overall idea is still effective. If they can throw enough garbage at us at once, something (or several somethings) are bound to get through and cause damage.
However, as the article also pointed out, China and Russia really aren't our greatest concerns. They have as much to lose by attacking us as they have to gain. It's a tricky chess match where victory might not actually be victory at all. The greater threat comes from the developing cyber nations that have far less to lose and/or don't really mind losing it.
TFNJ -
I thought that as well. I served in communications back in 2003-2004. When I left the military in 2006, it was still highly unthinkable to post a picture of the equipment we used back then and it was outdated even as I was exiting the military. You just don't give up that kind of information even when it's obsolete. The enemy likely knows it's obsolete, but can still gather a lot of intel from it and can gather where you might be from where you've been. Odd that they so easily allowed that picture to surface on the net.
J.I,
they even name the guy working on it, and likely admin. Mitchel Newman.. MNewman? Security flaws all over the place.. lol
Notice though that in the pic, their intent was to show off the neat rack and cabling, but look at the rack to the right.. LOL
If China subjects us to cyber attacks, we could devastate their economy (and ours) by stopping buying their stuff. If we are subjected to cyber attacks by Iran, should we impose the same sanctions we already impose a a result of their nuclear activity, or different sanctions?
TFNJ Agreed! Very surprising how lax the very security they're talking about appears to be.
Why thank you sir. It relates to drowning Grover Norquist (and his infamous quote), and I'm proud of the fact that I registered it way back in 2008 before Norquist and his "Tax Pledge" began showing up all over the news.
While I'd agree that both China and particularly Russia are serious threats in this "cyber-arms-race," and through sheer numbers could overwhelm our cyber defenses, I still stick by my initial assertion that we (meaning the US military, CIA, NSA, etc.) are far better at this type of espionage/warfare then we're letting on. That is not to say that other nations are not a threat however.
They'll claim that Iran is a serious threat, but it took them something like 14 months to reverse-engineer and hack one of our drones they captured when they had the parts right there in front of them. Meanwhile, we've already had the technology to be flying them for well over a decade. And that's just the crap we know about.
absolutely and well said. A crazy country like North Korea is likely a far greater hacking threat than China, but they're capabilities are also likely far less.
The same can be said to this (and to TFNJ) as above. It's probably a mistake to think that the picture floated in this article is ANYTHING architecturally like what we're ACTUALLY using. Having done engineering research for DARPA during graduate school, I'm pretty confident the DOD is well aware of the dangers of information disclosure and doesn't do so lightly.
Just because the guy in this picture has fatigues on, doesn't necessarily mean these are military servers. More likely, they're probably the VA pension benefit servers from 5 years ago or some other similarly inane piece of hardware (even though it says it's at the Air Force base). And yes, i'm joking about it being the pension servers, or maybe not :)
Here's a thought; disconnect critical equipment from the internet. Use dedicated lines that don't connect to the outside world.
the photo caption actually says the hardware in the picture is disconnected from the internet, unless of course it's really the pension fund server :)
oh go the F away you loser. Seriously mods, how come we haven't gotten a ban on this guy yet? He's been posting this same crap (exact same post) for like two weeks now. I've seen faster bans for people calling each other "retards" and "idiots." WTF is the holdup?
DG,
I agree that the threat is minimal in the scenario I brought up. But, in my paranoid mind, and my thinking ahead to every possible scenario, even if the risk were 1 in 1 million, I wouldn't do it. It pays to be paranoid when it comes to security.
The US position on cyber attack should be to treat it no different than if an enemy force attacked US soil. While no lives may be lost directly with such attacks, the potential exists to destroy our entire way of life. Our response should leave no question in the mind of the attacker it their cyber attack was a good idea or not. By that I mean any and all options for retaliation are in play, especially nukes. We cannot poo-poo this as anything short of an act of war.
The Internets origin comes from the days of 'Big Blue' a US DoD communication system that has long been obsolete. I am certain there are more sophisticated systems they are using now. But the internet uses bandwidth from the old DoD communications backbone, adapted to civilian usage, and was turned over to public domain some time ago. With national security in mind, I have serious doubts that the DoD would ever abandon the ability to simply pull the plug. Later systems being corrupted could be a problem.
DrowningGrover -
I don't doubt that for a moment. Even as an underling (so to speak) in the military hierarchy, my team and I were never open about our missions or capabilities, even to our brothers-in-arms in other units. Even with my very limited knowledge of the inner workings of the CIA, NSA, etc., I'm quite certain they are capable of far more than we realize.
It's not really their overall capabilities I'm worried about so much as what they're willing to do. As the old saying goes, the sun shines on even a dirty dog's butt now and again (or several variations thereof). Meaning, of course, anyone can get lucky once in a while. Considering the lengths I believe countries like North Korea and Iran are willing to go to, any measure of luck on their part could be catastrophic to us and the much of the rest of the world with us.
That is a very good point, and I did think of that after posting my reply to TFNJ. The pension fund comment was funny...and sadly probably has a measure of truth. :) I was actually thinking "those are probably the servers they use for the army portal" which is far less secure than anything they would use for cyber security measures.
Still, as TFNJ posted above, I tend to lean more toward the ultra-cautious approach when dealing with security measures. Even if what I'm showing is pure junk, it might be better than our adversaries have and I wouldn't want to let them gather just how good our defenses might be.
Perhaps I'm a little paranoid. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me. :) HAHAHA
meanwhile 24% of the federal budget goes to military spending- things like tanks, aircraft carrier, missiles- you know stuff for the 21st century (right...). We spend more than the next 12 countries combined. Meanwhile our enemies, even that POS stone age country Iran, have migrated to the 22nd century.
Let's keep arguing about abortion, women's rights, healthcare, the fact that there's a black guy in office. These loser politicians ought to be tried for treason.
Did you all notice how the spin doctors went from China being the problem to Iran being the problem? LOL! These m-fkers are quick!
WakeUpPeople - who says that - of that 24% of the federal budget spent on military - a healthy portion of that money isn't being funneled into cyber warfare? I've not seen a breakdown on where all that money is going, but I somehow doubt that every penny is being used on "tanks, aircraft carrier, missiles", etc.
What's more, just because cyberspace is becoming the latest battlefield doesn't mean that we should abandon our armaments of the 20th Century. They're still useful and much needed.
Also...while "stone age country Iran" may be making progress on the cyber front (and posing a very real threat), I somehow doubt that they are a good hundred years ahead of the curve. After all....we're only 13 years into the 21st Century....
Well at least we don't have to send our young men overseas to die in a cyber war. That's one plus. I will never understand why people think the world should fear us. Our bullying and meddling is the whole reason why so many hate us to begin with. As long as we base our foreign policy on trying to make the rest of the world fearful the more fearful and paranoid we will become ourselves. Americans are already scared of their own shadows. How much more fear do we need in the world?
Iran, China, and other countries are racing to see who's first in the cyber race, meanwhile Obama wants to get rid of pennies and map brains, lol! How long has it been since Barry actually worked as President?
Exactly. Well said and most likely true.
So what's your big plan? Perhaps we should start a decade long war with no clear objectives or perhaps we could strip ourselves of more freedoms. If there is a covert "cyber race" going on then what makes you think that you would even know about it in the first place? What do you have against mapping the brain anyway? Or eliminating pennies for that matter. It costs nothing to express an idea so what's the problem?
CogitoErgo, Maybe we should stop underfunding our schools... and in those districts where administrative largess exists, address the issue and get our focus back on giving a quality education to our children. Why? If all they teach is political divisiveness and sports rule the world?
Unfortunately, cyber warfare is not the only warfare China is waging against the US. They are also waging trade warfare that Mr. Obama has failed to address in a serious and comprehensive manner. The two types of warfare are being used simultaneously to steal our intellectual property, manufacturing base, jobs and our financial viability.
Can someone please wake up the amateur currently occupying thw WH and tell him that being President is not a celebrity job, but requires serious hard work and decision making followed up by actions.
If anybody on this planet had the track record that these "experts" have then they would have been laughed out of their jobs on the first day of work...
Who could believe anything (or words) that comes out of Washington?
And i mean that in the most factual way possible, just look at what they've done..
Healthcare, yea wonderful job
Education, brilliant. The "no child left behind" thing oh yea, America doesn't win, place, or show among OECD nations.
The gap between the rich and the poor, the widest of all of industrialized nations, doing a great job “fixing” the economy
How about the military, what a brilliant bunch. Great job in Afghanistan , terrific in Iraq, wonderful humanitarian mission in Libya. And you could keep going back,
Tell me one thing, just one thing that they have done successful…?
Now again,only speaking for me, only an imbecile would believe the crAp coming out of Washington. Why would they fix anything? These are the people that destroyed it, now they are going to fix it? No, things are goinig to get much worse…
Our Economy, Bernanke? Again why would anybody believe what this clown says at all? Lets go back for the record again, im not throwing darts at the moron im putting his record out there.
Back before the panic of ’08 began, back in 2005 he said, “there would never be a national real estate crisis. Its never happened before in this country.” Then as things are unfolding he sad the sub prime mortgage problem “wasn’t going to go into the general mortgage market” Then in 2007 he said “America has no risk of going into a recession. Why would anybody look to this guy for anything other then stacking failure on top of failure on top of failure? He doesn’t know what he is doing, they are bunch of losers, as I stated, everything they touch they fail at.
Dont get me started on our military either, and I mean the top brass, the little psychopath boy generals like Allen and Petraeus. These aren’t men. This guy Allen who was in charge of the show in Afghanistan, sending thousands of pages of emails to some chick as the guys are getting their head s blown off and the women getting their legs blown off that are serving over there. Look at this little boy Petraeus I mean come on, do you know how he got there? He married the girl whos father was heading West Point, these guys sucked their way up to the top, they are not fighting men. America has not won a war since WWII, we lost in Vietnam, we lost in Korea. Wait I forgot, we won in Panama and what s that other one? Oh yea Grenada, the big nation of Grenada. Come on, yea they are going to get us into more wars because these are psychopaths. These are not men, they are out of their minds and people keep following them.
I have a lot more to say but its my lunch time.
As always..
Think Smarter, Not Harder
Yours truly,
GMEA42
'Borg' - better get ready to be assimilated!
And that's one of the most critical thoughts that most Americans never want to admit. We do it, and have been doing it for decades.
China has always been a "closed" society to the rest of the world, and what a lot of people, mostly Americans won't realize is the reason America backed out of the Korean and Vietnam wars was because of the backing of those two "Northern" regimes by China. America does not now, nor have they ever wanted to go to war with China.
People talk now of fear of N. Korea and Iran with nuclear weapons when truth be told, America probably has no idea the capabilities of the Chinese nuclear arsenal. Of course I have no proof of either, except what history has written, and what we see going on today. With China's 1.3billion+ population, it will be hard to defeat.
They want to hack us, so we should be hacking the heck out of them. I'm sure we are actively doing it, but of course you never hear about it on our news stations. I do know that most of the spam that I see on a website I own comes from China or Russia. They are responsible for >90% of the garbage I see on the site. It is a daily activity to get rid of the accounts that get through the blockers.
If only the idiots who click on fishing links were as paranoid as you, much of the "threat" of cyber warfare would be overblown. I'm so paranoid, I install NoScript on my firefox browser at home, those javascripts ain't gonna get me :)
Idiot Clicker: "Hmm, its says this email is from my bank, lemme input my account number right now..."
/palmface
Ultra-cautious is the best approach. If you're really cautious (and this goes for TFNJ too), check out the NoScript addon for Firefox (if you're not using it already). It prevents ANY java script from running on your browser unless you accept them. Those annoying ads like "See how this mom makes $5k per week from home," and "New Rule for Drivers, check out how to lower your car insurance," yeah, I don't see them, nor do I pick up the keyloggers that come with them :)
(I do at work, cause i don't run noscript there, too much of a hassle).
Agreed. As an aside, when you make your tinfoil hats, do you use Reynold's Wrap of the generic brand? I prefer Reynold's, I've found that it holds it shape better.
Also, do you rock tri-corner Pirate, or Viking style (complete with the cardboard dowels as horns). I prefer Viking, it's more intimidating when the black helicopters swoop down with their mind control rays.
Good stuff today people... :)
Binary network systems control everything in our world from world banking and finances to energy, governments, the military, food supplies and everything we use presently for living our regular lives. Our world society is made to depend on these networks systems without many even noticing them. Quantum technology is in the process to take control in the future.
There are many all over the world, who as the new spies, have the knowledge and control of this network system. The danger we all face is coming from these technology knowledgeable folks now part of every government, who can hack into world systems (the new spies, but much more powerful).
Our dependency is pretty scary but I don’t see anyone being able to do anything to solve the problem.
the war is back baby this time on the internet=$$$$
LOL, I don't even open jokes sent from friends, unless it is just text. If I get forwarded an email from someone, I just avoid it. In my paranoia I think that they fell for a scam, and are now forwarding it to me.
But at work, I monitor firewall traffic, and I can see scanning attempts and phishing emails coming in constantly. Most are blocked by the firewall, most scam emails are blocked by spam protection, but some get through and look perfectly believable to the non paranoid type. I see many concerning payroll, banks, online orders, etc. Someone working in one of those departments may think nothing of it. My biggest problem here at work is upper management. They somehow feel internet safety doesn't apply to them.
If no one ever fell for those email scams, "hacking" and the like would drop dramatically. Actually penetrating a network happens very little.
Oh and on the tin foil hat, I sport the Carmen Miranda style with a fruit basket on top. Works as camouflage.
If US simply minded their own business at home we would not have to worry about other countries trying to destroy our infrastructure.
Here's a thought;
Hack into China's financial structure and 'cancel' the $1 Trillion debt to them.
I'm pretty sure they have this information backed up on an abacus somewhere.
Culheath1.43. That's the way we used to have it. If a transformer blew and someone needed to throw a switch to compensate, a guy would drive to a substation and throw the switch. Totally not hackable. Need a saboteur on the ground to mess with it. So then we fell in love with the Internet, and loaded everything including your sunglasses with tiny little chips from China ( I know the irony is precious) and plugged it all into the Internet. Cause we're smart ! We don't want to pay that guy to drive to the substation. So now we're all crying and waiting for the Chinese to turn our lights out, because we loaded our lives with Chinese junk and made them rich, and transferred our tech to them, and they hate that we have military in the western Pacific and they are getting ready to kill your children. They hate you because you are stupid and gave them all your tech and money - this proves your stupidity and racial inferiority doncha know.
Hello folks, when will we ever learn or at least get it! The government has used the same Problem Reaction Solution psychic attack on the sheeple using false flags over and over again and the sheeple buy in to them hook, line and sinker. They have done it with the Oklahoma City bombing, 911 false flag, false WMDs in Iraq, the Aurora - Wisconsin Sikh and Sandy Hook shootings and even the Osama Bin Laden “seal team six capture, killing and dumping his body in the ocean deception”. Now they are doing it with the “China, Russia, Iran, Anonymous cyber attacks”. They have most Americans trained like Pavlov’s dog, they mention terror or generate a false flag and the sheeple crap their pants! How is it that the only losers in these scenarios are the American people, civil liberties and our constitution?
PROBLEM: Government through their corporate owned presstitutes propagandize that the Internet is unsafe as hackers, China, Iran, Russia, Anonymous, etc.. are threatening the "American Dream" by attacking our infrastructure.
REACTION: Oh please Uncle Sam save us! You can take away more of our civil liberties, anything, I'm just so terrified, save us!
SOLUTION: Enact laws and Executive Orders to control the Internet (CISPA, ACTA, PIPA, SOPA). Allow the Utah Spy Center to investigate all voice and data communications in the US.
Obama signed an Executive Cyber Security order the day of the State of the Union speech which fits in to the NDRP. The president can take over the Internet whenever he deems there is a “National Security Risk”.
It is absolutely shameful and pathetic the cowardice displayed by the American sheeple. You have allowed the government to take away your 4th Amendment right (habeas corpus) through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Second Amendment is now under siege. They are now instilling the fear over the "internet hackers" so that the First Amendment can be taken away as well.
We have lost most of our civil liberties through the passage of the Patriot Act, the Foreign Investigation Surveillance Act (FISA), the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the new National Defense Resources Preparedness (NDRP)! They have authorized the use of spy drones in American skies! You can be surveilled by any number of Federal agencies, have your phone and computer tapped, bank, medical, and private records accessed! You can be arrested without gaining access to an attorney or a trial. We are molested at the airports or radiated for “security”. And just recently added National Defense Resources Preparedness Act (NDRP) which comes on the heels of NDAA. This Executive Order allows the government to take pretty much whatever it wants including crops, farm equipment, vehicles, boats, aircraft and fuel to “prepare” for the national defense. This includes making people work for free. You think I’m kidding about the free labor? Here’s a line straight from the EO that says, “. . . to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation. . .” This is authorized even in peace time! They have eliminated our 4th Amendment (NDAA) and are going after our 2nd Amendment through the back door. What’s next, the 1st Amendment?
It is a joke what the Americans will tolerate. The president just announced via the Fast and Furious Department of Justice "Memo" that Obama can assassinate US citizens and where's the outrage? There is none!
What is it going to take to get the sheeple to wake up? Not that it won't be hilarious when the presstitutes propagandize that there is a suppository bomber. The sheeple after getting radiated and molested will be bending over at the airports and all public places.
If you don’t see what is happening you are blind
America used to be Land of the Free and Home of the Brave now we are Land of the Detained –“war on terror” - debt slaves and Home of the Cowards! My how far we have fallen! What the Hell are we anymore?
Probably the same "Experts" who said Iraq was full of WMD. How did that turn out for us?
Instead of taking the meanest, most ruthless computer people and sponsoring them to further their security skills, as China and Russia has done, the U.S. gives scholarships to minorities and hopes for the best.
TFNJ
More like the "Borg" - Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated.
nice! I'll have to try that one out some day :)
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability...
Agent Smith....The Matrix (1999)
ATTENTION ALL AMERICANS!!!
Do not let the Military Industrial Complex lure you into another costly war from which they will profit and you will be left picking up the tab. The country is broke and we cannot afford another one of these bull@!$%# wars.
This whole story is horse@!$%#. NBCNews is just another propaganda machine for the real owners of this country.
"the so-called leading security expert is no other than a paranoina 14 year old kid running his mouth in an online hacking chatroom"
One thing that confuses me is why they call cyberwarfare an asymmetric warfare technique, if it's something that the US, Russia and China are developing to use against each other and only the three countries have in full measure. Yeah, Iran may be trying to develop some capability, but even this article makes it pretty clear the US already has the cyberwarfare capability to use cyberwarfare to completely cripple Iran's infrastructure, so, yeah..
If this a new weapon of choice for superpowers, then, by definition, it isn't asymmetric. It's use is symmetric and subject to the usual arms race dynamic of other weapons systems, among the great powers.
And by all accounts, it's a race we're still ahead in, thank goodness.
Easy solution: make me president and I will tell China and Russia the following, and mean it. ONE MORE hack, and we will no longer buy goods from you, or sell any to you. Oh, and that money we owe you, Try and collect, sue me.
oh, this would mean that all those "multi-national" companies can go take a flying @#$%. Wanna make goods in china, (GM) then get the heck out of America. The Monroe doctrine is sounding better and better every day.
One subject, often neglected, is the "rouge" elements. Ether it's an independent programmer or even a script kiddie, these "lone wolves" can cause havoc. Just take a look at the group Anonymous!
We must start bombing China now. Russia and Iran too. We can not show our enemies any weakness or mercy. We must destroy the world to save ourselves
Lets have a Worldwide hacking contest.Top 10 winners get a $10 Walmart Gift Certificate, 1 Microsoft Windows 8 OS, 1 Bottle of Vodka, 1 Sony Playstation 4 Console, 1 Turbin,1 Camel and a Yugo. I'd lay odds that in those top 10 that there are going to be a Chinese(He gets the giftcard), An American(He gets the Microsoft OS), A Russian (He gets the Vodka and the Yugo), A Japanese( Sony Playstation goes to him), A Arab and a Iranian(They can fight over the Turbin and the Camel). That contest can be held in Obama's basement.
IReadYou,
A to your comment to Culheath who said:
You are right about how we used to do things. If you go back far enough there were no real electronics involved and all the power devices were electro-mechanical. Most sub-stations had a tender and communication was via dedicated self powered/battery operated, hardwired phone lines. A load dispatcher at a higher level on the grid would communicate by voice to the different substations and the tenders physically opened and closed the breakers. Elaborate systems had miles of control cable running back and forth supplying analog data and sometimes relay control to do the switching remotely. Some systems even used an analog version of "digital" control not unlike old dial telephones. That enabled one pair of copper lines to do multiple functions.
Partly due to a desire to reduce manpower and partly to improve efficiency and response, things started shifting to electronics. The old electro-mechanical devices require enormous amounts of maintenance time, testing and adjusting. Early electronic devices required big clunky, dedicated terminals to do the interfacing and controlling functions. You needed at least one of these 100lb monsters at every control point. Still, systems required a fair amount of manpower and the amount of data and control that could be passed remotely was still limited. These early systems were still relatively local and a lot of human coordination was necessary between higher levels in the system. But the efficiency and performance made a grand leap from the time prior to using electronics.
As control advanced and became more complex you needed more sophisticated equipment. It went from coordinated descrete electronic devices to microprocessors. "Portable" computers started entering the scene and early "laptops" were control geek devices to access the new sophisticated equipment. In those days, these weren't Windows based operating systems. All the while, the power system was continually expanding and the needs and coordination was becoming more and more complex.
The size and complexity drove the development of true distributed control. No doubt some of the expansion was about eliminating people. Someone monitoring a station might spend most of their time recording meter readings and killing time. Maybe a couple times each day they might actually have to do something besides watching and waiting for trouble. It takes a lot of people at a lot of places to do this around the clock, 24hrs/day. And when system become reliable, the humans involved tend to make mistakes when a rare crisis arrives.
At a point it became obvious and cost effective to use a standard PC as an interface device to the controllers. Still though, the controller processors operate on different and often obscure proprietary operating systems. But PCs are typically used as a programming interface and data can be sent back and forth between the controller's memory and other computers via a variety of network protocols.
In some original systems, there was very little in the way of security because the only people with access were the trained specialists who understood the systems and often the only interface was a proprietary device. In some cases you can make systems which are on their own dedicated local networks. This is in fact how the Iranian Uranium enrichment facility operated. It did not have a connection to the Internet. This idea works OK when there is no need for external communication to remote facilities. However, when data needs to be sent back and forth across many miles to remote locations, the Internet makes a useful tool for doing that. Yes, the money can be invested to make this a unique private network. However, often the machines that communicate with the controllers also can potentially be connecting to the Internet.
Stuxnet likely got into the system in Iran by a file on a Russian technician's infected laptop PC. It may have been planted there or even transmitted to him through an e-mail or some other Internet borne means. When you look at how many devices ultimately may have a connection to the controllers, it is extremely difficult to keep the outside world, completely out, even if the local controller network never make a direct connection to the Internet. Even with the most disciplined procedures it is very difficult to totally 100% block everything. It can be made extremely difficult, but making it foolproof is just making it more challenging.
But just getting access won't necessarily create havoc unless the person getting in has a good working knowledge of the controllers unique programs. To crash a system is one thing, but doing major damage takes a much higher level of expert knowledge. However, a lot of problems could potentially be caused by just by crashing these systems depending on the process it controls. Most big systems use the SCADA concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA
This is heavily used in the power grid, water treatment, pipelines and many industrial and infrastructure systems. Sometimes these are isolated form the Internet, but often they aren't. The inner workings are relatively obscure and not well known by those outside the industry. It takes special knowledge to figure these systems out and do specific actions. Your teenage hacker in the basement is not likely to create too big a mess here, but the nation based cyber attackers will have enough of the right people knowledgeable enough to do major damage. Still, depending on how well designed the system was in the first place can make a big difference. There are many systems out there running right now that never had much thought about security from the begining. Often these systems may have started out as totally isolated, but as companies get bought out or grow there is often a desire to link to these systems.
This just creates vulnerabilities. Some parts might be secure while others might be very weak. A weak point itself can serve as a path to other points in the system. So even though the network might be secure from the outside world, an attack could be launched from within the closed network. Think about unmanned facilities with relatively weak physical security.
This kind of infrastructure/industrial attack is not the kind of thing for average hackers but for those with the right knowledge and the intent, it is entirely possible. Fixing the vulnerabilities isn't as easy as it sounds and may require a complete re-engineering of some systems. Things like the power grid are such a conglomeration of different technologies and different generations, that cleaning this up is a massive job. Parts of the grid in fact have equipment that is 100 years old and have been interfaced in some very unique ways. And there's an enormous amount of stuff that may be 30-40 years old, designed long before anybody even considered security.
Get all American employees of the federal gov. including armed forces to flood the Chinese gov. web site at the same time. an hour latter, pick the largest company in china and do the same thing. they will either retaliate and cause the internet to be useless costing everybody tons of money, or they will get the point that they live in a glass house and should stop throwing stones.
Or the pres can simply say, "one more attack and we send every ship from china back to where it came from and start making our own cheap toys and cooking utensils."
OH, and as for that money we owe you, try and collect"
**** The Warm-Up ****
Refer to photo: WHY the heck is the Air Force guy wearing camouflage... INDOORS !! IN A SERVER RACK EQUIPMENT ROOM??? I thot these guys wear BLUE for indoors. The only indoor forest is made of non-camouflage CAT5 cable.
**** The Main Point ****
My Fellow 'merkins, QUIT BUYING ITEMS MADE IN CHINA. That's ALL that needs to be said. I thot 'merka does not deal with Communist countries. (WTF ?!?)
*** Secondary Point ***
The USA counter-hackers need to be clever enough to move Chinese money to pay off all debt owed to China, as "paid-in-full", and delete all historical debt info.
countries will shut off the pipe
like iirc Egypt did while Murabak was being ousted.
"countries" might, but not the US. Our oligarchy of corporations own those pipes and they are getting filthy stinking rich selling out the rest of us. When the stuff hits the fan they'll simply buy an island off Panama and it's "asta la vista baby" to the ol USA. They will not look back.
Hehe.....we have a cyber warfare expert named Borg....... :-)
If you really want to be creeped out, consider this: all our computer equipment, with little exception, is manufactured in China. The state of the art now is to be able to embed bad code in nanoparticles. While we tear our hair out defending against hacks and looking for their malware on servers, etc., it could actually be right there - in the hardware that China ships us - just waiting to be activated!
To the point that "S. Williams-430936" makes, there have been several recent reports about routers and computers that have back doors allowing Chinese advertising in. So far it has only been annoying and not taken very seriously but it is a real threat.
Our single biggest problem is our own people know more about what is happening at the Oscars than they do about world events. This lack of knowledge will eventually criple us all.
@ IReadyou
Nice post, you get it.
People posting on these sites want to blame the government and don't realise it's Big Business and the Uber Wealthy that are quite content with the current state of things.
I'm not saying the government is not complicit in the mess, but Big Business has the government captured. What Big Business wants Big Business gets.
S.Williams, you have just done the unthinkable. Yours is the FIRST intelligent post that I have ever seen in this forum. I'm not joking. ^5.
I find the person held in regard as an expert
Shades of Star Trek: The Next Generation - it seems the "Borgs" have come back to the past in order to save the US! LOL
Seriously though, as comfortable we are with the internet and what we accomplish on it from information, banking, paying bills etc. If the cyber attacks infiltrate the economic infrastructure: electricity, transportation and so forth, there could be a lot of people dying such as air traffic control loses contact/control with over 1000 aircraft over the US, the death toll would be astronomical.
GM, Jack. And with pilots flying around saying "Have you ever seen a grown man naked"? it could get really bad. Have a good one, have to "take off" shortly myself.
"Ludicrous speed"........... "They've gone to plaid".
Eric-mine is Airport! I believe yours is Spaceballs-if I want/need a good laugh either is great!
Stonepipe2,
Not to be overly picky, but yours is "Airplane" Airport was a series of aviation related disaster movies, usually with the year following the title, like "Airport 77"
Dave, Oops! Thanks, one more senior moment.
This is crap. All that is needed is a closed network or manual controls that were used in the 1980s.
I bet you everythings got backup switches. Like so if they shut down the electric its not a big deal cause someone just needs to go out and turn all the switches back on manuely. So it would only be shut down for a hour and everybody can find something else to do for a hour besides being online.
exactly!
why on earth would we put our countries most valuable systems on the internet...that is just stupidity at its finest.
Americans, why are we so afraid of being unplugged? Mechanics work perfectly fine..no www needed. I feel bad for kids being born into a world that is played out on a screen over the www. How horrible is it for them to feel so "shut out" from the world if they cant log on...I remember the 80s, it was fun, we rode bikes and felt wind
it wasn't until my facebook account was deleted (my choice) that my family/friends call and ask if im ok......where do i live....what is "going on" in an emergency type voice of concern...my facebook...not a call from the emergency room or the jail...facebook!
makes me feel sick I even talk to them at all
Not really. I wish it were as easy as turning on switches. Discovery, PBS, Frontline, or Dateline (sorry, I don't remember which) did a story on how vulnerable the power grid is. It still uses the same old infrastructure as it did decades ago. The problem is when power gets knocked out in one area, the now-excess power gets sent to other circuits which causes an overload and trips breakers, sending more excess power to more and more circuits. This is what happened a few years ago in New York.
If our hackers are that intelligent. They need to hack into the United States credit score and debt we owe and lower it.
I never thout of that. I bet those hackers give themselves free money all the time.
me me me, they can hack me (#5)
most special (#5.1), from what I have learned this is how it kinda goes....im going to use a mmorpg as an example.
World of Warcraft has hackers that will steal an entire group (aka guild) money (aka gold) which could lead to real money, in-game items (which are turned and sold for game or real $$), and much more...they get real kids to get their parents ccard and pay real $$ for in-game money, which was stolen to begin with from innocent players...the game industry does a lot to combat this..but it happens all the time..
now, just insert your bank and your entire family's accounts and we have a real world issue, not just a silly game problem.
Roadlesstraveled you are absolutely correct. There are people who make their living playing WOW. I play and my account got hacked a two years back. Now on the flip side of that the security that Blizzard uses to protect actual account and credit information is much more secure. They took items off my charecters and the gold out of my banks but they did not get access to my credit card information.
Crazywolf71,
So, did you buy plat, items, or use a levelling service? Or were you just foolish and didn't get an authenticator from Blizzard? I haven't played WoW in 3 years, and I had one 2 years before I quit. I still need it to play D3 and StarCraft2.
It wasn't that hard to keep from being hacked.
nerd wars. what happened to good old bombs, bullets, and fists?
and drones.
They are going the way of the dinosaurs just like the GOP.
Well if the future lies in the hands of the Democrats...... bring on the extinction. Some things are worse than death like living with Joe and Bo on Brokebank Mountain.
Here go the American idiots again. Go Nimrods Go ....
Everyone in USA isn't stupid. Where you at anyways cause theres stupid people everywhere. And just cause USA has more stupid people we have more smart people to.
Warren has no education and lives everyday in envy over something he has right in his own backyard...
jealousy is the first indication of a lack of intelligence
And where would you be from sweetheart? Let me know cause I'm sure I can pull a few fun facts about your glorious country out of my hat for you.
Its like everything else. If we have it its good and if they have it its bad. As long as they don't steal my money thats in my bank acount then idc. But ima buy stamps soon for investing cause they go up in value fast then all my money wont be in the bank and i can just keep them in my room somewhere.
So the only thing that would hurt you is them stealing your money from your bank account ?
Warren-1380094 Do not presume that all of any group is an idiot or a Nimrod, whatever you define that to be. I do admit, the US government's behavior and the citizens' opinions generally appear to be idiotic. However, I consider myself an exception. That is why I consider it my obligation to attempt to enlighten them, but ignorance abounds everywhere and I, by no means, would feel it wise to limit my efforts to one self-identified nationality or another. It is rampant nationalism that causes the human race to struggle against itself. Can you imagine what our world could be like if we eschewed destructive acts and sought to work together? Of course, this is idealistic but without becoming idealistic, our efforts will be as Shakespeare wrote: "Life is but a poor player that struts and frets its hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
I think your comment helps explain why the old timers wrote the bible.They did the best they could at the time,but in this ever changing world it would be nice to have a more enlightened edition. Insanity begets insanity.
Then show us yer Nogales, and throw the Book at the heathens !!
The government knew this for years. Hacking was going on for years look at the movie war games, I was hacking in the 70's and 80's before it became illegal again I wasnt out to cause trouble. Also look at the black hat conventions that are held in Vagas some of the greatest minds we have and they are noth backed by the government.
Last week on NPR there was a story about how the military uses vulnerability of programs as an offensive weapon. The story said that originally when security people found a flaw they notified the software manufacturer. However the military said they (US military) could exploit the flaw as a weapon so they would not allow the researcher to tell the manufacturer. Of course the US is using a lot of the same software and if our guy could figure it out they could too. With information in real time we tend to micro-manage everything. In the old days the guy on the battle field was told to take an objective. How he did that was his problem. Who he killed was their problem. Of course that was the last war we won.
As programmer who stated in the late 70s I can tell you most of this is the fault of operating systems which are built for convenience and not security. I remember having many conversations with my peers on how downright stupid Windows is in this regard.
True, in part. But, many attacks are the results of "social engineering." They rely on the weak spot in the system architecture ... humans. All the security in the world if someone gives up their credentials to a caller claiming to be from their company's "IT security department."
I can assure you that important databases are not housed on windows servers.
Which leads to the point that these Unix/Linux operating systems are not as secure as some people suggest. It is very possible to get viruses on these things but any system can be vulnerable to a human hacker on the other side.
I can assure that many are, and also Unix has NEVER been considered all that secure. I used to work at a LARGE semi-conductor company and at one point I figured out a way log into about a third of all UNIXs accounts on our network.
Cyber-wars, gotta love it! So "Star Trek" in the 21st. century! One big bully says to the other big bully, "If you phase me, i'll proton torpedo your ass"!!! LOL!!!
Will the bullying ever stop???
Will the fear mongering ever stop???
No, they will not stop.
btw its photon not proton lol
Jane Fonda is a traitor. She should not portray Nancy Reagan nor should we support her book.America, we must not forget!Those of us that were living in those years will never forget that she was a traitor and did a lot of damage to our boys. She has now been chosen to play Nancy Reagan in her life story.I am sending this one out because so many do not know this truth... and also because she was on 3 times this week talking about her new book...And how good she feels in her 70'sBarbara Walters said: Thank you all. Many died in Vietnam for our freedoms. I did not like Jane Fonda then and I don't like her now.
She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by without comment and see her "honored" as a "Woman of the Century." . NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!! And now President OBAMA wants to honor her......!!!! A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED.
This is for all the kids born in the 70's and after who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.
Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.'
BARBARA WALTERS WRITES: Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War.
The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat. In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ' Hanoi Hilton.' Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant’s feet, which sent that officer berserk. In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton. From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the ' Hanoi Hilton'...the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit. They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat... At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper... Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carriganwas almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day. We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals....' These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget....' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.
Did anyone else think it was interesting that the CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit's name is Borg?????
If it is "critical infrastructure" then why is it connected to an open system like the internet, that can be hacked from anywhere in the world. As far as that, why would we use any piece of equipment on our critical infrastructure that was made in another country...especially China. I remember a few months ago when our government was taking bids from China for special computer equipment to be used in our defense systems and that is one of the most ignorant things I have ever heard.
Hey, why not use Chinese junk - after all, Bill Clinton paid off his election debt to the Chinese by selling them missile control technology - programming and hardware. So they can get in, either by hacking or by buying a politician.
Seriously, do we need any further proof that it was stupid to send our manufacturing overseas, it is stupid to buy anything from overseas? Build it ourselves, if we can't build it, then do without until we CAN!
I have been asking the same questions. There is no reason for critical infrastructure to have a connection to the internet and any computers in offices within those utilities that do have internet access should be ISOLATED from the computers that run the infrastructure. If networking is needed to run or maintain critical systems then it should be a NONPUBLIC secured network. Also, critical infrastructure systems should have physical access control rivaling the physical access control on nuclear weapons.
Sometimes I think the government wants this stuff to be open to attack or it is already more secure and this is some syops stuff, because disconnecting critical infrastructure systems from public access and tightly controlling physical access is a simple logical and effective countermeasure.
Why would the control system for a power plant or water treatment system need to have a connection on an insecure public network? Heck, why would the control systems need to be even connected to office computers in the same building that have internet access?
I have worked around digital systems all my life and part of my job is digital security and I can tell you right now that the concept of isolation of a digital system from an attacker is vary well known. There are some companies and systems that, by their nature are always open to attack, like google and any other company that has systems that must be available to the public, but this just is not so for critical control systems.
I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated.
I have to wonder. Who was the first to trespass? Where will this lead to? What a waste of time and resources. Just another cause for alarm and concern. And Humans are thought of as being intelligent? Doesn't seem natural to me. I have learned to expect such things. Although I do not accept these acts as fair, reasonable, or otherwise. Just isn't a world of trust. Life goes on. Without sayin. Just sayin. I can't do anything about this. BUT! I won't do that. NO! I won't do that. NOPE.
You sound about as crazy as I am, and we're both from NJ. There must be a connection..
The internet is not a secure system.
When I was in the U.S. Army, I was responsible for cryptographic computers ( MOS 32G ) on the AUTODIN secure communications system. This was the system that allowed classified material to be transmitted worldwide. No one hacked the AUTODIN system.
Anything you publish to the internet is public information. You may think you can make an unsecure system secure by encrypting the information. Obviously, that doesn't work. The only way to be sure that the information you are storing/transmitting is secure is on a secure system.
Imagine that...and our bonehead president wants to cut everything under "His" plan!.. he once again blames congress, and it's his plan....Wake up America and hold this human accountable...It's ok that he won the election...now how about being a President and quit destroying my country!
Wait, I thought you hated him for spending but now it's about him cutting things????? The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me! So tell me wise one, what are you going to do to fix this country that is supposedly destroyed? Are you going to be President, a Senator, Governor? No? Didn't think so.....
Wait, I thought you hated him for spending but now it's about him cutting things????? The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me! So tell me wise one, what are you going to do to fix this country that is supposedly destroyed? Are you going to be President, a Senator, Governor? No? Didn't think so.....
media knew Fear sells articles, and anti-virus software vendors knew this type of news sell their software. If you don't know that, you are their perfect target.
The cut in defense budget is about to kick in, you can expect this type of news will pop up more often. Russia used to be the stand in bad guy. Now, china is getting big, so china replaces russia as the bad guy, but the plot is still the same.
There is no fear but fear itself
@Coby Lee
You said it, we always need a boogieman to keep our never ending war on war/terror.
Until we as a nation get our priorities realigned or this is a lost war. Our government gives tax breaks to companies to relocate to China and other countries. No jobs here means no money to support education, which leads to lower standards. The public won't approve and extra $100/year in school taxes but will gladly pay $300/month for cell phone service. We pay athletes millions of dollars but vilify teachers as lazy and overpaid when they hold the keys to our nations future. We as a nation need to rethink some things and realize we are sowing the seeds of our own demise.
Yup. People have no problem with military spending but God forbid we put any of our money into education.
Pretty soon our military will be outdated anyway and then we will really be in trouble.
Why are our critical components on the Internet anyway? How about a closed network WITHOUT any access to the rest of the world. Geeeezzzz!!!
Isolating critical systems isn't difficult. If our power grid, or other critical systems are vulnerable to cyber attack, we are idiots.
If we're talkin about, THEN we're Doin it to THEM!
Borg says you will be assimilated... resistance is futile!
Maybe that Bat Shiite crazy "Ted Kazinski" Uni-bomber guy was right after all?