cyber security

North Korea Cyberattacks On U.S., South Korea

by Andy Brudtkuhl on July 8, 2009

The Washington Post reports today that North Korea is suspected in at least 35 attacks on government web sites.

At least 35 government and commercial Web sites in South Korea and the United States came under major attack over the past several days, fueling suspicions of involvement by North Korea or its sympathizers.

Websites attacked include departments of Homeland Defense, Federal Trade Commission, Yahoo! Finance, Whitehouse.gov, and the Washington Post itself. The full list of websites attacked is available here. South Korean government websites were also attacked.

The attacks were of the DDoS nature – “Distributed Denial of Service”. The hackers gained access to a “botnet” – or a ring of 50,000 computers interconnected to implement the attack.

Can the U.S. survive a cyberwar? We aren’t sure – but thankfully the Obama administration is stepping up where the Bush administration totally failed.

Reuters – North Korea Suspected in Web Attack

Washington Post – Cyberattack Strikes Web Sites in U.S., South Korea

{ 0 comments }

The Cyber War in Iran

by Andy Brudtkuhl on June 17, 2009

This is one of the most advanced cyber battles I’ve seen and what is even more important is the involvement of citizens using social media to enter the trenches of this web based cyber war. Sides have been taken as protesters from around the world have collaborated and planned attacks, rallies, and protests via social media, especially Twitter.

via Wired – “Web Attacks Expand in Iran’s Cyber Battle“…

“We turned our collective power and outrage into a serious weapon that we could use at our will, without ever having to feel the consequences. We practiced distributed, citizen-based warfare,” writes Matthew Burton, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who joined in the online assaults, thanks to a “push-button tool that would, upon your click, immediately start bombarding 10 Web sites with requests.”

Distributed citizen based warfare… And I thought citizen journalism was cool – this definitely trumps that on a scale we’ve not seen before. Social Networks have provided millions of interconnected networks of people to band together and organize mass protests and attacks in an unprecedented manner.

[click to continue…]

{ 0 comments }