Jan. 27, 2019
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
THE AMERICAN ARSENAL IS VULNERABLE TO CYBERATTACKS
October 16, 2018
by Brian E. Finch Mr. Finch is a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, where he is a leader of the firm’s cybersecurity team. His clients include cybersecurity vendors that may support the U.S. Defense Department under Comply to Connect.
Modern American military history is replete with examples of poorly designed weapons. Submarine torpedoes failed to explode after hitting Japanese ships. M16 rifles only could be counted on to jam in the middle of a firefight in Vietnam. Pentagon planners have since spent countless hours and billions of dollars to create acquisition programs that wring the bugs out of U.S. arms before they reach the hands of soldiers and sailors.
Despite the hard work, the U.S. still fields weapons systems with dramatic weaknesses. A new Government Accountability Office auditthis month indicates that huge swaths of American firepower could be rendered inert by software flaws. There are solutions to the cyber weaknesses plaguing our arsenal, but bureaucratic inertia at the Defense Department is hampering their implementation. Faster action is needed to clear the logjam and harden America’s weapons before it’s too late.
The GAO could not have been clearer about the threat: “A successful attack on one of the systems the weapon depends on can potentially limit the weapon’s effectiveness, prevent it from achieving its mission, or even cause physical damage and loss of life.” American ships, airplanes, combat vehicles, satellites and other systems have design flaws that leave them vulnerable to debilitating cyberattacks. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is growing more reliant on automation and artificial intelligence.
Hackers working for Russia claimed “hundreds of victims” last year in a giant and long-running campaign that put them inside the control rooms of U.S. electric utilities where they could have caused blackouts, federal officials said. They said the campaign likely is continuing.
The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure, “air-gapped” or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative ease by first penetrating the networks of key vendors who had trusted relationships with the power companies, said officials at the Department of Homeland Security.
“They got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and disrupted power flows, said Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial-control-system analysis for DHS.
DHS has been warning utility executives with security clearances about the Russian group’s threat to critical infrastructure since 2014. But the briefing on Monday was the first time that DHS has given out information in an unclassified setting with as much detail. It continues to withhold the names of victims but now says there were hundreds of victims, not a few dozen as had been said previously.
It also said some companies still may not know they have been compromised, because the attacks used credentials of actual employees to get inside utility networks, potentially making the intrusions more difficult to detect.
With the threat from North Korea in the news on a daily basis, their high altitude missile launches are a perfect vehicle to attack the U.S. with an EMP(electro magnetic pulse) strike. The links below explain why an EMP strike would be devastating to our country with massive loss of life if our electrical grid is damaged. First to die would be those with pacemakers and other electronic life saving devices, then those whose medicines need to be refrigerated, hospitals will be affected, you won’t be able to communicate with your loved ones then because transportation will be at a standstill, grocery stores will run out of food and that is when people become desperate and society starts to break down.The last link is from Dick Morris who explains how ineffective our government has been in hardening our electrical grid that would protect us from an EMP. Is it going to take an national catastrophe before our government acts? NancyVIDEO AND ARTICLE –EMP: Technology’s Worst Nightmare
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a super-energetic radio wave that can destroy, damage, or cause the malfunction of electronic systems by overloading their circuits. Harmless to people but catastrophic to our critical infrastructure critical infrastructures–electric power, telecommunications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water–that sustain modern civilization and the lives of 326 million Americans.Given the current state of U.S. unpreparedness for an EMP event, it is estimated that within 12 months of an EMP event, two-thirds to 90 percent of the U.S. population would likely perish from starvation, disease, and societal breakdown.
WHEN, not if…
VIDEO
NatGeo – Electronic Armageddon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9z4EnE9baU
Listen to Dick Morris explain that through the inaction of our government, we are very vulnerable to an EMP strike
Dick Morris video – Commission On EMP, Which Can Destroy America, Will Expire On September 30TH –
Clinton campaign demands intel briefings for Electoral College members
ALEX SEITZ-WALD
Dec 12th 2016 3:52PM
X
Hillary Clinton‘s campaign has thrown its support behind an effort to provide members of the Electoral College with intelligence briefings on Russian breaches of U.S. political organizations before the College formally votes to elect Donald Trump president next week.
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security. Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed,” Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said Monday, responding to a request for briefings by a group of electors.
Podesta’s strongly worded statement signals a clear shift in strategy from Clinton and her team, who have until now shown no interest in questioning the legitimacy of last month’s election. And it could crack the door to further challenges or give succor to some Democrats’ long-shot hope that Trump’s election could be upended when the Electoral College convenes December 19.
A large trove of Podesta’s emails were released by WikiLeaks late in the campaign, and intelligence officials believe the emails were provided to the organization by the Russians.40 PHOTOS
Trump defeated Clinton in the general election by an electoral vote margin of 306-232.
Experts say electors’ ability to reverse the November 8 results remains virtually impossible, but mainstream Democrats have tried to create doubts about the outcome following news this weekend that the CIA formally concluded the Russian government worked covertly not just to disrupt the election, but to help Trump win. Four powerful senators — two Democrats, two Republicans — released a statement calling for a joint probe into Russia’s actions.
BILL WHITTLE VIDEOS – DEBATING HILLARYPublished on Oct 3, 2016 Part 1In Part 1 of this 6 part series, Firewall host Bill Whittle responds to the ECONOMIC issues left untouched in the first presidential debate.
Published on Oct 3, 2016 Part 2In Part 2 of this 6 part series, Bill Whittle flips Hillary’s claim that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by tax cuts for the wealthy, and explains who the REAL villains are
Published on Oct 4, 2016 Part 3During the debate, Mrs. Clinton returned to the same line we’ve been fed for eight years: there’s an economic boom waiting in the Green Economy. No, there isn’t. In Part 3 of this 6 part series, Bill takes apart Hillary’s energy plans and examines the consequences to the planet.
Published on Oct 5, 2016 – Part 4Surely there was no greater missed opportunity in the first debate than listening to HILLARY CLINTON talk about how “concerned” she is about the security of classified government information.Bill Whittle rushes in where CNN fears to tread.
Published on Oct 6, 2016 Part 5Hillary Clinton says she has a “plan” to “really squeeze ISIS in Syria.” It seems like Syria might be squeezed enough already. In Part 5 of this 6 part series, Bill Whittle lays out the historical facts that show that Clinton and Obama CREATED ISIS.
Most of the new report’s observations focused on counterterrorism, the central focus of the 9/11 Commission. But in speaking with many of the nation’s most senior national-security leaders, we were struck that every one of these experts expressed concern about another issue: daily cyberattacks against the country’s most sensitive public and private computer networks.
A growing chorus of national-security experts describes the cyber realm as the battlefield of the future. American life is becoming evermore dependent on the Internet. At the same time, government and private computer networks in the U.S. are under relentless cyberattack. This is more than an academic concern—attacks in the digital world can inflict serious damage in the physical world. Hackers can threaten the control systems of critical facilities like dams, water-treatment plants and the power grid. A hacker able to remotely control a dam, pumping station or oil pipeline could unleash large-scale devastation. As terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State grow and become more sophisticated, the threat of cyberattack increases as well.
Getty Images
On a smaller scale, but equally unsettling, ordinary building systems like electronic door locks, elevators and video-surveillance cameras (today, present in many homes) are also vulnerable to penetration by hackers. Even life-sustaining medical devices, many of which contain embedded computer systems connected to the Internet, could be disabled by cyberattacks. (more…)
www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/14/digital-jihad-isis-al-qaeda-seek-cyber-caliphate-to-launch-attacks-on-us/
FOX NEWS
Terrorism
Digital jihad: ISIS, Al Qaeda seek a
cyber caliphate to launch attacks on US
Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda – including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Gmail account – recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned.
Islamic militants brag online that it is only a matter of time before they manage to pull off a highly disruptive attack on America’s infrastructure or financial system. In addition, Islamic State, the terror group that claims to have established a caliphate across Syria and Iraq, boast openly of plans to establish a “cyber caliphate,” protected by jihadist developed encryption software from behind which they hope to mount catastrophic hacking and virus attacks on America and the West.
“The jihadists are investing a lot in encryption technologies and they have developed their own software to protect their communications and when western agencies work out how to crack them they adapt quickly,” said Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-DC-based non-profit that tracks jihadist Internet activity. “They are forward-thinking and are experimenting with hacking. In the future, the jihadist cyber army’s activities will become a daily reality.”
The terror groups are trying to add to their numbers to boost their capabilities, using social media to reach a larger pool of potential recruits and calling on militant-minded specialists to join them. The targets are the websites of U.S. government agencies, banks, energy companies and transport systems. (more…)
