Big DoD Hardware Cyber Attack

Blog friend Martin at Blogbat called it: BIG DOD Hardware Cyber Attack.  He has written an amazing article:

I would rather be wrong here, but I wasn’t.

 

Fox News is now reporting that the Pentagon has been “hit by an unprecedented cyber attack” and says the open door which allowed it was rogue hardware.  “As a result of the cyber attack”, Fox News says, “the Defense Department has banned the use of external hardware devices throughout a vast network of military computers.”

 

I hate to be the one to say this, but I warned about this explicitly, among other rogue hardware security risks, right here on this blog on last month.  On 10 October, I pointed to the chorus of voices from the Secretary of Defense to the private sector calling on the DOD to only allow hardware devices that were manufactured in the U.S. and to tightly control their use in light of China's interest in creating chips and other hardware with "built-in" malware capabilities, to say nothing of their aggressive HUMINT (human intelligence) information gathering on our soil. Maybe now someone will listen and take the threat seriously. One can only hope. I have to say it is extremely frustrating to see the lack of common sense and serious availability of resources that weaken the very core of our defense infrastructure. More worrisome: the Obama administration likely promises to do little to make things any better, if not entirely the opposite, although we can always hope – I think that was a slogan once.

 

The problem is that there is so much that is not right and quite dysfunctional in the area of information security these days, not only in our defense apparatus, but literally everywhere: our private sector – banks, shops, online retailers, the medical industry, corporate CEOs (who may be blackmailed); our public sector – DMV and other records, public officials (who may be blackmailed), and so forth; yet, we don’t seem too anxious about doing a thing to change it. As disappearing laptops with the information for thousands of clients, citizens, and bank records become a daily drone in the headlines, identity theft becomes the biggest crime out there, and network attacks and break-ins continue to skyrocket, very few seem to get that an economy, a government, and a military all built on the needle-head of technology can all be brought tumbling down with a single blow as never before. The Chinese and Russians and certainly the terrorists know this, which is why they are investing so much in prowling our networks and trying to infiltrate our systems to set them up for a catastrophic information meltdown – and each one of us for personal ruin. It is why the Chinese are making consumer electronic devices that connect to our computers – such as digital picture frames or flash drives or the very chips that go into our computers that contain Trojan horses and other malware intended to open up back doors to our systems and phone home to the Communist regime. Incidentally, in case you are new to China and its sundry unfriendly exploits and failed in infer anything from their making rogue hardware, China is not our friend and never will be until it is democratic. What’s worse, we fed that alligator until it became strong enough to eat us, and eat us it will unless we wake up and develop a realistic defense strategy similar to that which Reagan brought forward and implemented to defeat the Soviet Union under eerily similar circumstances.  (continue reading at Blogbat)

 

You really need to go read the entire article, it's amazing.

Comments

[Debbie]

Martin: Thanks, I'll go look at the images now.

[Stormwarning]

There are idiots inside of the Beltway? No one who knows anything about cyber security minimizes the threats posed by China (and a hackers in a few other wily countries). Pix are nice...BT/DT

[Martin]

Thanks for posting the link! You're right and I've gotten the feeling on numerous occasions that our military knows full-well what's out there; it's just those idiots inside the Beltway that need to be stir-fried. :D Btw., I just added a couple photos of the Pentagon event to the post c/o the Army news agency, for anyone who's curious to see what it looks like in there.

[Skunkfeathers]

Eternal vigilance is NOT a waste of time OR paranoia. History proves time and again that it is reasonable, prudent, and wise.

Anything less is living down to Lenin's "useful idiots" status.