Group items tagged

Some Cyber intruders are homegrown, but many come from dozens of other countries, in particular China and Russia.

Intruders search, steal, destroy and unbeknownst to their hosts, alter data.

But these bad electrons, on the Internet, hide in plain sight.

The Russians still seek a military advantage. But, perhaps in an attempt to diversify a natural resource-dependent economy, they focus on securing financial data and viewing proprietary information. Mikhail Fradkov, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, said publicly:

The Chinese come for these reasons and more. They're sophisticated and very good. They use at least 100,000 full-time cyber-warriors, plus thousands of hackers-for-hire.

The French, North Koreans, Estonians and our Israeli friends, are deep into this game.

In 1994, less than 16 million people were on-line…and dial-up was king.

We considered using the Internet to empty the bank accounts of key Serbian leaders.

But it was also a wake-up call. In taking this step, we'd open Pandora's Box.

Yes, we'd could probably inflict great damage.

China, Russia and other countries, in an effort to reduce time and capital investments in research and development, at the expense of the United States, continue to use traditional human and technical methods of espionage.

Chinese attackers have extracted sensitive data from Google, Adobe, Yahoo, Dow Chemical, Symantec and the US Chamber of Commerce. The PRC, of course, denies its involvement. But with improvements in detection, tracking and occasional slip ups on their end, we'll know where they've been, or better yet, when they are in the act. Yet, even with these improvements we've found that many organizations are compromised for 6--12 months and even longer without detecting it.

And ultimately we'll need international protocols in order to corral hackers before they send bad electrons our way.

It will take much discussion within the US and around the globe, but increased cooperation will add value to the Net and save all legal participants a great deal of money. Secondly, cyber security is improving. But we need to invest in its constant improvement.

We probably have the technology now that can do this. We need the legislation, and the will to get it done.

The effort to protect a global Internet is not too different from when people debated how to decrease the number of airline hijackings.

But in the 1960's there were literally hundreds of hijackings.

The first recorded hijacking took place in 1931, when armed revolutionaries took over a plane in Lima, Peru.

The advent of Cuba as a preferred destination sure didn't help. And the friendly hijacking skies of North Africa also probably spurred on these airborne bandits. By the 1970's, almost every nation, including Cuba, which by then was seeing hijackers fly both ways,

So Nation states came together and hammered out agreements.

China and Russia have both experienced intrusions. But not many. Yet, if the Net remains the same, they like the Cubans before them will probably see the advantage of bringing genuine law and order to the cyber world.

the Chinese may just want to come to the bargaining table sooner, rather than later. Over Christmas holiday, Saint Nick hackers visited the Middle Kingdom spreading not-so-good-cheer across China's piece of the Internet. They picked up over 100 million Internet usernames, pass words and email addresses from some of China's most popular on-line sites …

This medieval icon shows a portion marked as "Terra Incognito"-- the unexplored territories, beyond the edge of the then-known world. A famous Latin phrase warns, "Here be Dragons." And yet there brave and resourceful men, then as now, who ventured into the unknown, discovered a new world, and unleashed one of the most expansive economic periods in history.

In 21st Century America, some worry about the dangers that may emerge from the cyber world, as well they should.

It's our tradition to actively meet the future with hope, optimism, and energy, as we step forward prepared to meet the unexpected.