Those Russians are good, good at hacking…
A suspicious outage was reported and interesting that Obama was there too. The Warsaw Summit hosted by Poland where several distinct events happened. 1. There was an agreement to strengthen the alliance with military presence in the East that includes Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 2. The alliances also agreed to operational strength of ballistic missile defense as well as cyber defenses and applying cyberspace as an operational domain. 3. For Afghanistan, a resolution was approved to continue the mission and funding forces through 2020. 4. A comprehensive assistance package for Ukraine passed. 5. The NATO website/domain was likely hacked.
So….the chatter at more casual breakout sessions and in formal session did include escalating protections in the cyber realm. Obama got the message. Certainly on the heels of the Hillary emailgate scandal, Barack Obama finally admits there things still to be done to tighten up security.
Obama says U.S. government must improve cyber security
Reuters: U.S. President Barack Obama said on Sunday that the U.S. government has to improve its cyber security practices for the modern age of smart phones and other technology, saying that hackers had targeted the White House.
“I am concerned about it, I don’t think we have it perfect. We have to do better, we have to learn from mistakes,” Obama told a news conference in Madrid. “We know that we have had hackers in the White House,” he added.
Concerns have been raised about the security of government information after the head of the FBI said presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email servers may have been accessed by foreign actors when she was Secretary of State.
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In 2015, Obama held a cyber security summit. Also there was an Executive Order. He wants better coordination between government and the private sector to fight online threats. Companies on board include Apple and Intel. It was a busy year in 2015 as Obama Announces New Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal and Other Cybersecurity Efforts.
Earmarking $19 billion for cyber programs by Obama also included a czar, Howard A. Schmidt. So how smart is Schmidt, or rather how UN-smart is he?
So far, there is no official proof that any country has ever engaged in a cyber attack, although certain malware attacks have been linked to different nations. The Stuxnet worm, which disrupted Iran’s nuclear facilities, has been attributed to the United States and Israel and the recently uncovered cyber espionage operation Red October is rumored to be either a Russian or a Chinese operation.
To avoid a cyber arms-race and an escalation in cyber attacks, Kaspersky has openly advocated for more online regulation, including international treaties limiting the use of malware — just like there are treaties against biological and nuclear weapons.
For Schmidt, that’s not a viable solution because it would be hard to enforce such a treaty. “At some point in the future maybe that will work but right now, number one, we have enough difficulty enforcing treaties of physical things that you can actually count, whether it’s weapon systems or whether it’s export import of these things, it’s extremely difficult,” he said.
Instead of a treaty that will take decades to become reality, Schmidt thinks countries should just respect the rules of engagement that already apply in real warfare. In war “we don’t just arbitrarily start shooting at people, we don’t send planes, we have respect for airspace, we have respect for a lot of the international laws,” he said. “Cyberspace should not be any different.” More here from Mashable.
One more thing to Obama and Mr. Schmidt….don’t forget the Office of Personnel Management, that experienced one of the largest intrusions of data belonging to and managed by the Federal government. Furthermore, that lady, Mrs. Katharine Archuleta who ran OPM never had any security experience with cyber and directly after the hearings on the cyber hack of the agency, well….she quit.
Cyber doom is here and no one talks about it….most of all the media…it is the best kept secret and classified condition inside the beltway.
