cyberwarfare

The Chinese military wants to beef up its cyberdefense efforts as it anticipates greater threats originating from the U.S.

"The U.S. military is hastening to seize the commanding military heights on the Internet, and another Internet war is being pushed to a stormy peak," the Chinese military wrote in its official newspaper, Liberation Army Daily. "Their actions remind us that to protect the nation's Internet security, we must accelerate Internet defense development and accelerate steps to make a strong Internet army."

Though Liberation Army Daily isn't an official mouthpiece for the Chinese … Read more

The International Monetary Fund has become the latest high-profile organization to fall victim to a network intrusion, according to various media reports, suffering a substantial breach, the full extent of which is not yet known.

Reporting the incident earlier today, The New York Times quoted an unnamed official as saying the breach was a "very major" one and that it had been taking place over the last several months.

The Times said the actual dimensions of the attack were unknown and that the IMF would say only that the Fund was "fully functional" and that the … Read more

Iran's official news agency said today that a sophisticated computer worm purportedly designed to disrupt power grids and other such industrial facilities had infected computers at the country's first nuclear-power plant but had not caused any serious damage.

The Stuxnet worm, which some see as heralding a new era of cyberwarfare, appeared in July and was already known to be widespread in Iran. In fact, its high concentration there, along with a delay in the opening of the Bushehr plant, led one security researcher to hypothesize that Stuxnet was created to sabotage Iran's nuclear industry.

In addition … Read more

If the United States wants to defend itself against cyberattacks, it needs to focus on four key areas, according to United States Cyber Command head and NSA Director Army Gen. Keith Alexander.

Speaking Tuesday on the first day of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's LandWarNet conference in Tampa, Fla., Alexander discussed the dangers to the country's military networks and what the U.S. must do to safeguard them.

The general said the threat of cyberattack affects more than 7 million different computers on more than 1,500 individual networks maintained by the Defense Department.

"On … Read more

U.S. Air Force recruits will be trained in the basics of cyberwarfare, according to statements made by four-star Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler.

Though details of the plan are still being worked out, according to the Associated Press, the Air Force intends to provide brief training sessions on cyberwarfare to new recruits, most likely an hour or two, to cover the fundamentals. The training would cover basic principles, such as the use of firewalls and passwords, according to Kehler.

The general, who runs the Air Force Space Command at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, spoke about the … Read more

Nothing has ever changed the world as quickly as the Internet.

Less than a decade ago, "60 Minutes" went to the Pentagon to do a story on something called information warfare, or cyberwar as some people called it. It involved using computers and the Internet as weapons.

Much of it was still theory, but we were told that before too long it might be possible for a hacker with a computer to disable critical infrastructure in a major city and disrupt essential services, steal millions of dollars from banks all over the world, infiltrate defense systems, extort millions … Read more

Civilians recruited by Russian language social networking sites and using Russian Mafia-associated botnets perpetrated many of the cyberattacks on Georgian government Web sites during the five-day Russian-Georgian war in 2008, according to a recent report.

However, while the cyberattackers appear to have had advance notice of the invasion and the benefit of some close cooperation from a state organ, there were no fingerprints directly linking the attacks to the Russian government or military, according to the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit (US-CCU), an independent nonprofit research institute that produced the report.

Much of the material in the report was already … Read more

Seven NATO allies signed an agreement Wednesday to open a cyberdefense center in Estonia, according to the Associated Press.

The center, which is scheduled to become operational in August, is designed to offer training and research on cyberterrorism and simulate cyberwar games, the report states. The NATO allies will kick in funding and a staff of 30 cyberexperts to operate the center.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Slovakia signed the agreement, while the United States signed aboard as an observer of the effort.

Last spring, Estonia's public and private institutions were hit with a major denial of … Read more