cyberwar

A cyberwar is under way between two companies over a recent move made by one.

Spam-fighting organization, Spamhaus, which works with e-mail providers around the globe to block spam from entering in-boxes, has been in a battle over the last week that has seen distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks exceed by several times the typical attacks inflicted on organizations.

Spamhaus hosts a blacklist made up of servers that, it believes, are designed to send spam around the world. Recently, the organization added a Dutch Web hosting company named Cyberbunker to its blacklist. Cyberbunker, which gets its name from its … Read more

The Pentagon is expected to announce today the creation of a medal that can be awarded to drone operators as well as to individuals fighting in the cyberwar trenches.

This would be a first. The Distinguished Warfare Medal, a nearly two-inch-tall brass pendant below a ribbon with blue, red and white stripes, will be handed out to people judged to have racked up "extraordinary achievement" directly tied to a combat operation but at a far remove from the actual battlefield, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the news. This is said to be the first new … Read more

China is the top cyberthreat to the U.S. and has been intensifying attacks on U.S. businesses to identify data that will help the country gain economically, according to a recently obtained national security document.

Over the past five years, the Chinese have focused their efforts on businesses operating in finance, technology, and aerospace, among others, according to the Washington Post, which published information from the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a document that includes data and analysis from all U.S. intelligence agencies. The Post obtained information related to the report from unidentified individuals.

The cyberwar between the U.… Read more

The hacking collective Anonymous has clarified that it has no plans to fade away in the New Year. It issued a statement over the weekend that warned the world to "Expect us 2013."

Along with the statement, the group created a video that boasts of its campaigns and exploits carried out in 2012. The video details the group's temporary shutdown of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music, and the Motion Picture Association of America's Web sites in protest of the U.S. government's indictment of the operators of popular file-hosting site … Read more

The United States has been charged with launching a cyberattack against France -- a claim the U.S. government has categorically denied.

According to L'Express, a French news outlet, sources with knowledge of a cyberattack that occurred in May have said the U.S. was behind the attack. The news outlet claims that the attack occurred a few days before the country's presidential election and targeted "the team of [former French President] Nicolas Sarkozy."

L'Express' sources say the hackers worked their way through Sarkozy's team to attack his closest advisers. In order to climb … Read more

As the Syrian civil war continues to escalate, pro-government forces are allegedly carrying out a cyberwar against local dissidents.

Syrian activists, journalists, and government opposition groups are under a barrage of targeted malware attacks, according to the watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation. What this malware does is deceptively install surveillance software into a computer under the guise of protecting the computer from viruses. Its name is AntiHacker.

Once the malware is installed in the computer, with promises to "Auto-Protect & Auto-Detect & Security & Quick scan and analysing [sic]," it actually begins to spy on the user. Using … Read more

Even for a Congress whose antics faintly remind one of the last days of the Weimer Republic, this was a bit much.

The United States Senate last week was unable to bring up the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (PDF) for a final vote because of -- shocker -- party politics.

Had it passed into law, the bill would have made sure that operators of critical infrastructure -- stuff like nuclear plants and water treatment facilities -- satisfied certain minimum cybersecurity standards, an idea championed by heavy hitters in the defense, national security, and intelligence circles. Not this time, though, as … Read more

A top defense and cybersecurity expert says the U.S. should stop trying to take aim at expert hackers and start doing a better job of recruiting them.

"Let's just say that in some places you find guys with body piercings and nonregulation haircuts," U.S. Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla said in an interview with The Guardian published today. "But most of these sorts of guys can't be vetted in the traditional way. We need a new institutional culture that allows us to reach out to them."

Arquilla argues that there are … Read more

If you roll your eyes at the term "Digital Pearl Harbor," you have my sympathy. We've been warned about the specter of an enemy attack via bits and bytes for several decades, with no real evidence that this is a realistic possibility and not mere hype.

Still, a new worm that's been spying on infected computers in the Middle East has been called a "cyberweapon," and while we're not talking outright combat, it's clear that malware is increasingly playing a part in geopolitical diplomacy and conflict.

This week brought news of not … Read more