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Brian4Liberty
10-26-2012, 01:26 PM
Panetta pounding the war drums...


Citing no hard evidence, U.S. government officials have been stoking fears that the Iranians are out to get us.

Make a Comment | Mathew J. Schwartz | October 26, 2012

Just in time for Halloween, there's a new bogeyman in town: the Iranian government-sponsored cyber attacker. As with other phantasms, related sightings are growing more numerous, though they remain unsubstantiated by hard evidence.
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Cue Iran as the culprit again for the Shamoon malware attack against the network of Saudi Aramco, which is the world's largest exporter of crude oil. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said earlier this month that the attacks against Saudi Aramco managed to "virtually destroy" 30,000 PCs. An internal Saudi Aramco investigation more recently revised that estimate to 50,000 PCs. According to an August blog post by Eugene Mayevski, CTO of security firm EldoS, Shamoon also included a copy of the company's commercial master boot record wiper, RawDisk, which he guessed had been stolen from one of the company's customers.

Many observers read Panetta's speech as a thinly veiled threat against Iran, made as a nuclear standoff with Iran becomes more likely. The U.S. government is also reportedly developing contingency plans for a strike against Iran -- not of the cyber variety -- as the country improves its uranium-enrichment capabilities.
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But the case against Iran may not even be that, as digital forensic investigators this week also confirmed earlier reports that -- counter to U.S. government officials' assertions -- Shamoon was an amateurish, copycat Flame attack, carried out by a single individual. Thanks to the individual having incorrectly configured the malware, it not only did less damage than intended, but it helped investigators trace the infection back to a USB stick that had been plugged into the employee's PC while he was logged in. Saudi authorities, according to news reports, have arrested a suspect.

Panetta continued to insist this week that the Shamoon malware had been "a very sophisticated tool." To be charitable, that may have been true five years ago, but the state of the art in malware has rapidly advanced since then.

What's fueling those rapid advances? Start with Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame, MiniFlame, or any other government forays into cyber weapons. "This is where I get nervous: Oh, great, a massive training ground for criminals and other groups -- here's how you build a massive command-and-control center for criminal attacks," said Eric Byres, CTO of Belden's Tofino Security, in a recent phone interview.

In other words, tomorrow's crimeware update will likely incorporate tricks developed by our own country's cyber weapons program. Like so many Frankenstein monsters, what comes for us in the digital dead of night bears a startling resemblance to something of our own making.

https://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/frankenstory-attack-of-the-iranian-cyber/240009731

Brian4Liberty
11-01-2012, 12:53 PM
Napolitano: Sandy Shows What Cyber Attack on Utilities Could Look Like (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/napolitano-cyber-security-threat/2012/11/01/id/462364)

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/napolitano-cyber-security-threat/2012/11/01/id/462364

gatomalo
11-01-2012, 02:42 PM
Panetta and others have been beating the cyber security drums for budget reasons (and No-Bid contracts 4 friends) - We have such a deficit of security people that getting them into the lower paying Gov. jobs well these young studs are looking for the money and private pays more- So should we have more Gov. contracts to solve the problems - we all saw what happen with HBgrays. That's one issue.

I remember the soviets would march down red square with these gigantic missiles, we did the same thing-/ it's a deterrence of sort's -I'll show your mine IF you show me yours. Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame, mini-Flame are all a show of WMD cyber war-toys that can cripple a country with one keyboard.

I am a security researcher - just published "The Deep Dark Web" Amazon*- we learned so much doing the research for the book about the bad guy's - bad-actors, state-actors they are all the same -complex systems break in complex ways - thats a fact jack and if your connected - you will be hacked - The mistake that Panetta makes as well as others is not understanding your cyber enemy.

12 year old punk, bringing down the world -is just movie talking - these attacks take time, planing, and lot's and lot's of time and money (China). With simple OSINT -(open source Intelligence) "Google, Yahoo, Bing," you can find anything in the clear web - but we have Tor onion Network that is were the first level of secrets are being secrets--//| because it's simple math and cryptology global bankers and governments fear it. It's not the bad guy's using Tor IT'S THE GOOD GUY'S... People go into Tor and say naw there is nothing there but the bad guy's -- WHY because if they keep the normal people of this network they can keep their secrets only to the few that know were to look...like a cyber gAtO mEoW

I have a project -Tor Directory Project - that does just that to map out the DARK WEB / like google for the Dark Web// - it scared the FBI real fast, we been talking they wanted to know my name when I started looking in the cyber cookie jar...WHY? did they not jump on it to have a map of the Dark Web - because THEY ARE PRIME USERS -- CIA NSA and others-

So Yeah they are screaming " the sky is falling" but it is because we don't have our young studying Cyber security, I tried to setup The Air Force Cyber Patriot program here in RI and no one wanted to do it- WHY stop free cyber education for kids to get high paying cyber security jobs, Senator, Reed, Whitehouse nobody wanted to help RI become a cyber security center.

So if you hear the sky is falling Yes it's true but there are layers upon layers of what we can do and how we can all help -
I am for FREEDOM OF SPEECH in cyberspace and I share all my information with everyone-- no secrets -- In my blog this week I have posted about:
uscyberlabs

Happy Satoshi Nakamoto -Bitcoin- Day Nov 1
How To- Digital Money Laundering
What Is Digital Currency:
Cyber-War Digital -Vs- Global Currency
The Deep Dark Web -Book Release
Diary Of A Professional Botmaster

By the way Bitcoins are a Libertarians Dream - but global bankers are trying to kill any Digital currency that they don't control - Were is Ron Paul when you need him --

Happy SATOSHI NAKAMOTO day

IMHO- my 2 cents - gAtOmAlO