Source: Jim Crogan, Fox News
“The security forces of President Bashar Assad has moved ahead on multiple fronts. An estimated 10,000 people have been arrested and there are reports that some dissidents have been tortured to reveal their Facebook passwords. Foreign journalists have been banned from entering the country and access to the Internet and the mobile phone network has been curtailed.
Meanwhile, a shadowy group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) has orchestrated an array of cyber attacks in three key areas: spamming popular Facebook pages, such as President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of State, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Oprah Winfrey with pro-Assad propaganda; defacement attacks against Syrian opposition group websites, and defacement of Western websites.
“It’s the first case of an open, organized and orchestrated pro-government web attack group with a public presence on a national network in the Arab world,” explained Helmi Noman, a senior researcher with the OpenNet Initiative, a collaborative partnership between the Citizen Lab inside the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, the SecDev Group in Ottawa and the Berkman Center at Harvard University.”
For full original article, click here.
Tag Archives: InfoWar
Syria Uses Cyber Warfare to Attack Pro-Democracy Supporters
Internet-based attacks on critical systems rise
“Internet-based attacks on critical systems such as gas, power and water have increased around the world, a report suggests.
Security firm McAfee surveyed 200 IT executives working for utility companies in 14 countries.
Eight out of 10 said their networks had been targeted by hackers during the past year.”
From BBC News
Mitigative Counterstriking: Self-Defense and Deterrence in Cyberspace
“In short, the current situation with cyberattacks is ominous, and more effective methods must be provided to potential victims to permit them to protect themselves. The time to act is now, and we must legally solidify the right to use self-defense in cyberspace, while also protecting the rights of potential uninvolved third parties who might be harmed by mitigative counterstrikes.”
From Jay P. Kesan
China’s Silent Cyber Takeover?
“According to the Go proverb ‘Play on the Point of Symmetry,’ when right and left have the same shape, there’s play in the centre. The ancient Chinese game of Go provides an apt metaphor for how China and Russia are leveraging US multinational corporations’ economic requirements to accomplish strategic goals that could quite plausibly include covert technology transfer of intellectual property, access to source code for use in malware creation and backdoor access to critical infrastructure.”
From The Diplomat
In cyberspy vs. cyberspy, China has the edge
“As America and China grow more economically and financially intertwined, the two nations have also stepped up spying on each other. Today, most of that is done electronically, with computers rather than listening devices in chandeliers or human moles in tuxedos.
And at the moment, many experts believe China may have gained the upper hand.
Though it is difficult to ascertain the true extent of America’s own capabilities and activities in this arena, a series of secret diplomatic cables as well as interviews with experts suggest that when it comes to cyber-espionage, China has leaped ahead of the United States.”
From The Globe and Mail
RSA SecurID attack details unveiled – lessons learned
“RSA said the attack started with phishing emails sent to small groups of low-profile RSA users (presumably employees). The emails were surreptitiously titled “2011 Recruitment Plan” and landed in the users’ email Junk folders. (At least RSA’s SPAM filters were working, even if their social engineering training for employees was not).
Attached to the mysterious email was an Excel spreadsheet with recently-discovered Adobe Flash zero day flaw CVE 20110609. With the trojan downloaded, the attackers then started harvesting credentials and made their way up the RSA food chain via both IT and non-IT personnel accounts, until they finally obtained privileged access to the targeted system. The targeted data and files were stolen, and sent to an external compromised machine at a hosting provider. RSA saw the attack, using its implementation of NetWitness, and stopped the attack before more damage could be done.”
From Gartner
The “new cyber military-industrial complex”
Ron Deibert, Director of The Citizen Lab and The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, and Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of The SecDev Group share their thoughts on the emerging “cyber military-industrial complex” in today’s Globe and Mail.
Data storage maker’s anti-hacking division hacked
“The world’s biggest maker of data storage computers on Thursday said that its security division has been hacked, and that the intruders compromised a widely used technology for preventing computer break-ins.
The breach is an embarrassment for EMC Corp., also a premier security vendor, and potentially threatens highly sensitive computer systems.
The incident is a rare public acknowledgement by a security company that its internal anti-hacking technologies have been hacked. It is especially troubling because the technology sold by EMC’s security division, RSA, plays an important role in making sure unauthorized people aren’t allowed to log into heavily guarded networks.”
From The Globe and Mail
Iran launches cyber attack on ‘enemies’ of state: report
“Iranian hackers working for the powerful Revolutionary Guard’s paramilitary Basij group have launched attacks on websites of the “enemies,” a state-owned newspaper reported Monday in a rare acknowledgment from Iran that it’s involved in cyber warfare.
The report followed an announcement in January that Iran had formed its first cyber police unit in an attempt by authorities to gain an edge in the digital world.”
From The Globe and Mail
HBGary emails out Morgan Stanley as Aurora victim
“Chinese hackers that attacked systems at Google and Adobe also infiltrated global financial services firm Morgan Stanley, according to internal emails stolen from HBGary, a security firm that was working with the bank.
In the emails, made public earlier this month by the activist hacker group Anonymous following a vengeful hack, an HBGary researcher said Morgan Stanley provided him details of the attack but asked that the information be kept secret.”
From SC Magazine
