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The Start of the Cyber Cold War?

Friday, 08 February 2013 13:16 Yaron Vorona
From CNAS:
 
In his commentary The Internet Yalta, Alexander Klimburg, Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, argues that the December 2012 meeting of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) may be the digital equivalent of the February 1945 meeting of the Allied powers in Yalta: the beginning of a long Internet Cold War between authoritarian and liberal-democratic countries. Klimburg contends that the battles over Internet governance that surfaced at WCIT are not just about competing visions of the Internet: They are also about two different visions of political power.
 
 

Chinese Military Connection to NY Times Attack

Friday, 01 February 2013 00:00 Yaron Vorona
From Wired and New York Times

The New York Times has been hacked, prompted by an investigation by the New York Times into the amassed fortune of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's family. 

The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. They apparently used the same university computers that hackers working for the Chinese military used previously to attack Defense Department contractors.

Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most of them outside The Times’s newsroom. Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not ...

In Amenas Attack Predicted in Advance

Wednesday, 30 January 2013 00:00 Yaron Vorona
From CNBC
Exclusive Analysis, a London-based risk assessor and forecaster, warned twice last year that oil and gas assets in southern Algeria and foreign personnel employed there could be the target of kidnapping and attacks by Jihadist militants.

In an ominously near-accurate prediction, intelligence experts at the firm referred to the In Amenas gas plant by name, warning foreign employees working there "would be at risk" from kidnapping for ransom.

[...]"Weeks before September 11 the U.S. intelligence warned against plane hijacking but the White House couldn't address the threat appropriately because it wasn't specific enough," said Dr. Gal Luft, a senior adviser to the United States Energy Security Council and a former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces.

"Issuing a warning is easy; acting on them is a whole different matter," Luft added. "My main takeaway from the episode is t...

Dr. Gal Luft on Energy Terrorism

Thursday, 24 January 2013 00:00 Yaron Vorona
From Bloomberg News:
Algeria Attack No Outlier as Oil Targeted 3 Times a Week: Energy
By Brian Swint on January 23, 2013

While the attack in Algeria that killed at least 38 hostages was the deadliest raid on the oil industry in five years, it’s far from unprecedented.

From Colombia to Yemen, oil workers have suffered violence for decades as militants strike an industry seen symbolizing political and economic power. The bloodiest attack came in 2007 when 72 people died after a secessionist group in Ethiopia overran a camp run by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028), according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. Each week about three attacks were made worldwide on oil employees and installations in 2011, the data show.

“This attack has surely got some attention, but I wouldn’t say it’s an outlier,” said Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global...

DHS: Energy Targeted by Cyber Attacks

Thursday, 24 January 2013 00:00 Yaron Vorona
The Department of Homeland Security reports that in 2012, ICS-CERT responded to a steady stream of cyber incidents, coordinated ICS vulnerabilities with vendors, and produced alerts and advisories to notify the ICS community of emerging cyber risks. 

For fiscal year 2012, the largest single target for cyber security incidents was the Energy sector, accounting for 41% of attacks, followed by water (15% ) and internet-facing (11%).

In fiscal year 2012, ICS-CERT received and responded to 198 cyber incidents as reported by asset owners and industry partners. Attacks against the energy sector represented 41 % of the total number of incidents. Notably, ICS-CERT assisted 23 ONG sector organizations with incident response and recovery efforts following a targeted spear-phishing campaign. Analysis of the targeted systems indicated that information pertaining to the ICS/SCADA environment, including ...
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