 pandora Premium join:2001-06-01 Outland
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| 60 Minutes piece on cyber security last night
Did anyone else watch the 60 minutes piece on cyber security last night? If our Pentagon can be hacked, who is safe? What do you experts think? I'm just a person who does some banking from home.
A couple of selected quotes from the transcript at - »www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/···tentBody
"In 2007 we probably had our electronic Pearl Harbor. It was an espionage Pearl Harbor," Lewis said. "Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don't know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA. They broke into all of the high tech agencies, all of the military agencies, and downloaded terabytes of information." ...
Last November, someone was able to get past the firewalls and encryption devices of one of the most sensitive U.S. military computer systems and stay inside for several days.
"This was the CENTCOM network," Lewis explained. "The command that's fighting our two wars. And some foreign power was able to get into their networks. And sit there and see everything they did. That was a major problem. And that's really had a big effect on D.O.D."
Asked what he meant by "sit there," Lewis said, "They could see what the traffic was. They could read documents. They could interfere with things. It was like they were part of the American military command."
Lewis believes it was done by foreign spies who left corrupted thumbnail drives or memory sticks lying around in places where U.S. military personnel were likely to pick them up. As soon as someone inserted one into a CENTCOM computer, a malicious code opened a backdoor for the foreign power to get into the system.
Lewis said the Pentagon has now banned thumbnail drives. ...
Even the country's most powerful weapons are targets. So technicians at the Sandia National Laboratories make their own microchips for nuclear weapons and other sophisticated systems. Jim Gosler - one of the fathers of cyber war - says most commercial chips are now made abroad and there are concerns that someone could tamper with them.
"So you're worried about somebody being able to get in and reprogram a nuclear weapon, or get inside and put something in there that would make it
," Kroft asked.
"Well, certainly alter its functionality," Gosler said.
Asked what he means by "alter its functionality," Gosler said, "Such that when the weapon needed to be to go operational, it wouldn't work."
"Have you found microchips that have been altered?" Kroft asked.
"We have found microelectronics and electronics embedded in applications that they shouldn't be there. And it's very clear that a foreign intelligence service put them there," Gosler said. -- "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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  jefe Premium join:2001-05-19 Northport, NY
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1 edit | Yes....I watched it.
I'm not normally a tin hat kind of guy, but that piece scared me plenty.
The entire piece was frightening, but what scared me most was the potential for damaging the banking infrastructure.
"I know that people in the audience watching this are going to say, 'Could somebody steal money out of my bank account or could somebody attack a bank that would wipe out my life savings?'" Kroft asked.
"And the answer is yes, that's possible, but that is not the major problem. The more insidious issue is, what happens when the attacker is not attempting to steal money, but to destroy the process that accounts for money? That's the real issue we have to worry about," McConnell said.
"It's all record keeping. It's accountability of the wealth and the movement of that money through the system that had to be reconciled at the speed of light. So if you impact or contaminate the data or destroy the data where you couldn't have reconciliation, you could have cascading impact in the banking system," he added.
Asked to describe the consequences, McConnell said, "If everybody goes down to take the money out, it's not there. So that's the issue. Since banking is based on confidence, what happens when you destroy confidence?"
I don't find the threat to the power grid, or even to the military, as scary as the threat to our basic currency. Talk about a way to bring down the country...... |
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 seldom
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| reply to pandora I'm not very smart but I found it very deceptive and not much more than a scare tactic to stir up fear in those who know even less about such things than even I. My 78 year old mother who knows a web browser from her left elbow only because one was itching saw that show and was concerned enough to tell me about it. It's nothing more than more of the "we might have to shutdown the Internet on account of the flu" garbage.
I simply refuse to believe anyone could launch an ICBM or take down a power plant over the Internet and if it is possible whoever is charge of "cybersecurity" in those places is an outright idiot and should be fired immediately for gross incompetence and put in front of a firing squad.
peace, seldom |
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  swhx7 Premium join:2006-07-23 Elbonia
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| reply to pandora The part blaming a power outage in Brazil on hackers was junk. »erratasec.blogspot.com/2009/11/b···ers.html
said by article : So why is CBS passing on these rumors? The answer is the same as the witch trials in the 1600s. The people who were accused were usually in some sort of conflict with their neighbors. ... All [CBS's] sources are from the government ... [story] says that the US power grid is insecure, and claims that the reason it's insecure is because it's not regulated by the government. ... The federal government's computers are even less secure than the power grid there is no reason to think that Congress can secure the power grid if they can't secure their own computers. Conversely, all the energy companies belong to the National Energy Regulatory Commission or NERC, which is does indeed regulate the cybersecurity of the power grid. The reason the CBS story exists is because somebody else, such as the DHS or NSA, wants to take control away from the NERC.
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  NOVA_Guy Obama- Commander in Thief Premium join:2002-03-05
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| reply to jefe Didn't Tom Clancy author a story where something like this was part of the plot? IIRC, one of the targets was Wall Street and screwing up all transactions that happened on it over a period of time or something. I also seem to recall that the folks who instigated this came over from Asia-- not sure if it was Japan, China, or someone else. Sum of all Fears comes to mind as the title. -- To all liberals: I am NOT one of your parents, so get the heck out of my wallet. It's time for you to grow up and take some personal responsibility for taking care of yourselves, which means not relying on the government to give it all to you. |
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 pandora Premium join:2001-06-01 Outland
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| reply to seldom said by seldom :I simply refuse to believe anyone could launch an ICBM or take down a power plant over the Internet Read your history, stuff like that has been done since 1982! Long before the internet as we know it, imagine what can be done today? - »www.industrialdefender.com/gener···sion.pdf
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official. Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, describes the episode in "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War," to be published next month by Ballantine Books. Reed writes that the pipeline explosion was just one example of "cold-eyed economic warfare" against the Soviet Union that the CIA carried out under Director William J. Casey during the final years of the Cold War.
At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it.
'Programmed to go haywire' "In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes. "The result was the most monumental nonnuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space," he recalls, adding that U.S. satellites picked up the explosion. Reed said in an interview that the blast occurred in the summer of 1982. "While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation." Reed said he obtained CIA approval to publish details about the operation.
-- "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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  jefe Premium join:2001-05-19 Northport, NY
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| reply to NOVA_Guy said by NOVA_Guy :Didn't Tom Clancy author a story where something like this was part of the plot? IIRC, one of the targets was Wall Street and screwing up all transactions that happened on it over a period of time or something. I also seem to recall that the folks who instigated this came over from Asia-- not sure if it was Japan, China, or someone else. Sum of all Fears comes to mind as the title. I don't think that was the theme of Sum of All Fears but if it wasn't a Clancy novel, it could've been. |
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  rcdailey Dragoonfly Premium join:2005-03-29 Rialto, CA
| reply to jefe Ron Paul says all our money is fiat money (not related to the Italian automaker, necessarily).
Everyone can't go down to every bank at the same time and take out their money because it really is not there. There is nothing new in that. -- In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being. |
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  trparky Bite My Shiny Metal Ass Premium,MVM join:2000-05-24 Cleveland, OH clubs:
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2 edits | "Live Free or Die Hard" was a movie that was part of the "Die Hard" series that as far as I'm concerned was the most scariest movie ever made. Not because it was in of itself scary, but because it could truly happen.
The premise of the "Live Free or Die Hard" movie was that it was an inside job. They knew everything about the whole system. They shut down the power grid, the banking system, the communication system, everything. The whole nation was shut down in an instant and nobody knew what to do. -- Tom |
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  jefe Premium join:2001-05-19 Northport, NY
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| reply to rcdailey said by rcdailey :Ron Paul says all our money is fiat money (not related to the Italian automaker, necessarily). Everyone can't go down to every bank at the same time and take out their money because it really is not there. There is nothing new in that. And I'm sure because Ron Paul says it, it must be true. 
But that's a separate issue. I'm more thinking along the lines that a serious coordinated attack on database records at the ACH, and various large banks, could have us all waking up one morning and finding that nobody's money is there. |
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  rcdailey Dragoonfly Premium join:2005-03-29 Rialto, CA
| Yes, without the records, it would be nearly impossible to prove how much was on deposit for you or me. How many of us actually print out a bank statement anymore? Secure backups might still exist, but how long would it take to get the system up and going again? -- In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being. |
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  rcdailey Dragoonfly Premium join:2005-03-29 Rialto, CA
| reply to trparky Concerning power plants, you have to worry as we seem to be headed toward a really "smart" grid, which means the whole power grid will be linked to the internet, at least in some way. It would likely be subject to being hacked. -- In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being. |
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  jefe Premium join:2001-05-19 Northport, NY | reply to rcdailey Exactly. |
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  trparky Bite My Shiny Metal Ass Premium,MVM join:2000-05-24 Cleveland, OH clubs:
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| reply to rcdailey So, here's the dumb question of the year.
Why are we connecting the systems that our nation depends upon to function at the very core of our society to an open, free, and completely unregulated global network? Anyone else suddenly have a "WTF?" moment here? -- Tom |
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  jefe Premium join:2001-05-19 Northport, NY | I think that question has been posed numerous times before....and never satisfactorily answered. |
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 chimera
join:2009-06-09 Washington, DC
| reply to rcdailey said by rcdailey :Ron Paul says all our money is fiat money (not related to the Italian automaker, necessarily). Everyone can't go down to every bank at the same time and take out their money because it really is not there. There is nothing new in that. This has nothing to do with our money being fiat. Fiat currency is just currency which is not directly tied to any one resource and is instead valued based on the assumed relative value of a wide number of goods.
The bank issue is based on the nature of our money supply. The money supply we work with is greater than the number of physical bills in existence since banks have a multiplier effect on currency. The simple example goes as follows. If you have $100 and put $10 in a bank which then loans out $1 to someone else the money supply is now $101, but there are still only 100 physical dollars.
Our money supply rises and falls based on the strength of the economy, inflation, price levels, the saving rate and the velocity of money within the economy, but thit isn't related to us using a fiat currency. The same thing can happen with gold or any other currency if people can and do give each other loans. |
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  rcdailey Dragoonfly Premium join:2005-03-29 Rialto, CA
| reply to trparky Because our brilliant politicians are making the decisions. These are the same politicians who were overseeing the financial system, at an arms length, by way of their friends in top management. We can trust them to take the same care with our power grid as they took with the banks, brokerages, and insurance companies. -- In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being. |
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  rcdailey Dragoonfly Premium join:2005-03-29 Rialto, CA
2 edits | reply to chimera I know that, and that was my point. There is nothing new in the way that this works. It has always worked that way because if the money were simply kept in a bank, then it would be nothing more than a storage vault. There's be no interest earned or money loaned. You'd do just as well to build your own vault like Scrooge McDuck.
Oh, and we did have paper currency backed by gold and also by silver (silver certificates), but that imposed a limit on the amount in circulation that was not related to the economy. And, yes, the money supply is much more than just the currency in circulation.
-- In reality, there is no such thing as a clean human being. |
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 pandora Premium join:2001-06-01 Outland
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| reply to rcdailey said by rcdailey :Concerning power plants, you have to worry as we seem to be headed toward a really "smart" grid, which means the whole power grid will be linked to the internet, at least in some way. It would likely be subject to being hacked. Wouldn't this mean that at least for grid control systems that the NSA or homeland security should have involvement if not oversight? In my first post, someone from Sandia indicated he had seen silicon inserted into microchips by a foreign government agency.
No operating system can be secure if the supporting hardware has a backdoor waiting for an unusual trigger to either disable it, or to give supervisor state to an application. Our government should assure that chips and software controlling critical infrastructure are produced in the U.S. IMO. -- "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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  koam Pink Pecker Premium join:2000-08-16 East Puddle clubs: | reply to pandora 60 minutes is an entertainment show masquerading as news and information. They will shape any story any way they want in order to titilate the senior citizens. |
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