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Update: As of around 6 o'clock on June 15th The Huffington Post is reporting that Lulz Security hacked into the CIA's website. I think they may actually be doing us a favor, maybe our Nation's vital infrastructure will get it's shit together so we can prevent more serious cyber attacks in the future.
Reading headlines this morning, I stumbled upon a news story that involved our US Federal Government being hacked by a group called Lulz Security (that story can be read here). Now, the attack didn't put any of our information at risk, but it got me thinking.
Reading headlines this morning, I stumbled upon a news story that involved our US Federal Government being hacked by a group called Lulz Security (that story can be read here). Now, the attack didn't put any of our information at risk, but it got me thinking.
I remembered to a few years back when China's Government successfully hacked into the Pentagon (to jog your memory) and I decided to find out how often these kind of hacks into our vital Governmental systems actually take place.
What I found was pretty shocking. All according to the Office of Management and Budget, there are more than one hundred cyber attacks against Federal agencies everyday. In 2009 there were about 30,000 cyber attacks against us, and in 2010 Federal agencies reported 41,776 cyber incidents. That represents a 39% increase in cyber attacks going from '09 to '10.
The worst part is, most of the attacks came from instances of phishing, also known as filling out that e-mail form for your free trial of Viagra. The fact that the people that run our country are constantly falling for fake forms to fill out and clicking dirty links is frightening to me. These people should have to go through some classes or something on how to protect US interests.
Just knowing that the US Government has the Office of Management and Budget on the case for cyber attacks tells me that we are obviously not prepared to handle an attack, we should have a specialized Office of Cyber Attacks or something, these things are pretty serious. I really don't want a group of Government hired accountants in charge of keeping our information safe, I don't even want them to be the ones keeping track of how often we are attacked.
Two pieces of advice for the US Government. One, helping that Nigerian Prince isn't going to help US foreign relations, and sure as hell isn't going to get us any more oil (hint: he isn't really a Nigerian Prince).
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you really think expanding our government more would solve the problem? our government has almost doubled in size since bush left office
ReplyDeleteI never suggested an expansion of our Federal government, I merely suggested a transfer of responsibilities that are already being taken on by a government institution, into a more specialized institution. The Government would not get more powerful, just more efficient in that a group that knows something about cyber attacks would be in charge of cyber attacks, rather than a group of accountants being in charge of such a thing.
ReplyDeleteAn efficient government??? Is that like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have learned about hacking is first off the term "hacking" is like an umbrella term for anything nefarious one can do to another person's computer. Secondly it isn't as hard as one would think because from what I have learned, people are fairly stupid and the most basic form of "hacking" can be done by just doing a small amount of research on your mark. Also most people give away the information that they use in their "security questions" all the time on their PUBLIC facebook page. I hope this lulzsec issue has taught everyone a thing or two.
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