While we were watching Michael Jackson's funeral... Cyber Warriors apparently began to imitatemovies like "Live Free and Die Hard and a wew weapon of mass destruction was unleashed.
I happened to notice this because I looked at my E*Trade portfolio over the weekend and found that despite huge losses in oil stocks my net worth had doubled, some stocks having increased 500% while others dropped as much. NEP (China Nrth East PT hldgs LTD COM) was a $4 stock one day and a $36 stock the next.
In a context of Gates asking for more protection against cyber warriors,... and Panetta revealing that a few bad apples in the CIA routinely lied to Congress for most of the last decade at least,... it turns out that North Korea is apparently capable of
Some suspect North Korea launched the cyber attack whose targets included the White House and the NYSE. South Korea was also hit.
Julian E. Barnes and Josh Meyer reported from Washington on July 9, 2009 that the attacks began on July 4 and that North Korea was a suspect.
I know we are always prepared to fight the last war, in this case a nuclear war; but the question being raised is whether a "Fire Sale" might be even more devestating if it were pulled off for real.
At its height, the attack involved 50,000 private computers infected with a virus that caused them to continuously contact websites in an effort to overwhelm them. The "denial of service" attack, as it is known, appeared to wind down by Wednesday.
I guess the basic denial of service attack with a mere 50,000 zombie computers is now old hat. I'm thinking that the NSA and the CIA have the people who used to be the worlds best hackers (LOpht and all the various iterations of its descendants down through InQTel) working for them now.
The attack temporarily disabled several federal government websites, including those operated by the Treasury Department, the Transportation Department and the Federal Trade Commission.It also appeared to target the White House, State Department and Defense Department websites.
Still, despite all the downplaying, this could still be a feint or a slight of hand designed to distract while other things are ongoing.
John Wheeler, a former Air Force official who worked on computer issues, speculated that North Korea might have shifted its weaponry from missiles to electronics. He said the attackers could have deposited malicious software on the websites that could be activated later.
It could be that our geeks want to scare us into giving them some money so they can invade our privacy even further. It reminds me of the bronze age tjecker and the peleset whom you paid to deliver your cargo lest it be set upon by pirates and the scotish cattle barons who invented the black watch whom you paid in order to ensure your cattle weren't robbed.
Other security experts played down the incident."This is as bad as a cyber attack gets, and it was mostly not noticeable to ordinary Americans," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies for the Cato Institute. He said the attack could not be equated to a military strike.
I don't know how you define "ordinary American" I know I don't expect aybody speaking for any think tank to be giving me the straight dope on anything.