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US federal agencies have been hacked in a way that may have let a foreign power monitor government communications.

And all federal civilian agencies have been told to disconnect from SolarWinds Orion, a computer network tool being exploited by "malicious actors".FireEye, a company that provides US government cyber-security, says it identified the problem after its own hacking tools were stolen last week.

SolarWinds said its 300,000 global customers included all five branches of the US military, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Office of the President of the United States - and all users of its Orion platform should upgrade immediately to address a "security vulnerability".

Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments,

The hack is so serious it led to a National Security Council meeting at the White House

The U.S. government has not publicly identified who might be behind the hacking

Hackers brought down dozens of Ukrainian government websites on Friday and posted a message on one saying, “Be afraid and expect the worst,” a day after a breakdown in diplomatic talks between Russia and the West intended to forestall a threatened Russian invasion of the country.

Diplomats and analysts have been anticipating a cyberattack on Ukraine, but proving the source of such actions is notoriously difficult.

A Ukrainian government agency, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which was established to counter Russian disinformation, later issued a statement more directly blaming Russia for the hack.

Over the months that Russia amassed more than 100,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine

Ukraine is vulnerable to a major cyber attack

Ukraine has repeatedly been a target of cyberattacks, especially since the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea. In the years since Crimea's annexation — which is unrecognized by the international community — near-constant cyber warfare, much of it from Russia, has targeted almost every sector in Ukraine, from its power grid to its treasury to its media companies.

Mandiant, the U.S. firm contracted to investigate cyberattacks against U.S. corporations, says it was able to track an extensive hacking campaign back to the Chinese military in part by exploiting China’s own Web restrictions.

China’s “Great Firewall” blocks Web access to, among other things, Facebook and Twitter. People in China can get around the firewall, and very Web-savvy Chinese often do, by using something called VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks. But Chinese hackers already have access to what is presumably an extremely sophisticated VPN: the very servers they use for their foreign hacking.

according to Mandiant, some of the hackers got lazy. “The easiest way for them to log into Facebook and Twitter is directly from their attack infrastructure,” the company’s report explains. “Once noticed, this is an effective way to discover their real identities.” When the hacker uses the “attack” servers to log in to Twitter or Facebook, he or she unintentionally links the espionage servers with specific Facebook and Twitter accounts — in other words, with specific human beings.

American vigilante hacker sends Russia a warning

"Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message," he wrote. "Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed."

Stolen emails have been taken by Russia and published by WikiLeaks. Russia and President Vladimir Putin have denied involvement. The Jester referenced Putin's denial in his webpage graffiti.

It is only with effort that the leaders of Europe have managed to compose themselves after the U.S. election, torn between pure shock over the result and the necessity of preserving what can be preserved of the West and the Atlantic relationship.

this is the end of the West as we know it.

For more than half a century, this story of phenomenal success has been built on a commitment to freedom and democracy, free trade, solid alliances and reliable friendships.

in the nearly three years since he joined the State Department, Stengel has seen the rise of what he calls a “post-truth” world, where the facts are sometimes overwhelmed by propaganda from Russia and the Islamic State.

“We like to think that truth has to battle itself out in the marketplace of ideas. Well, it may be losing in that marketplace today,” Stengel warned in an interview. “Simply having fact-based messaging is not sufficient to win the information war.

How do we protect the essential resource of democracy — the truth — from the toxin of lies that surrounds it? It’s like a virus or food poisoning. It needs to be controlled. But how?

"Wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?"

President Obama's feckless handling of Russia has been so embarrassing that it may have emboldened Putin to annex Crimea, and terrified NATO allies along Russia's border.

When Trump takes office on January 20, he will have to contend with a slew of issues that demonstrate the extent to which Russia and America are strategically interdependent

Obama Orders Review of Hacking During Election 2016

President Barack Obama has instructed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate hacking activity aimed at meddling in the 2016 election, one of his top security advisers said Friday.

The administration was short on details about what the report would cover, and it wasn’t immediately clear how it would differ from the investigations that intelligence agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Homeland Security Department have already conducted.

Russian security chief says country seeing more cyberattacks

MOSCOW –  The head of the Russian Security Council says the country recently has seen a marked increase in attempted cyberattacks from overseas.

The alleged cyberattacks included penetrations of the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Sessums received a notification from Facebook that the post violated the company’s “community standards” and that he was barred from posting for 24 hours.

“What will the cyber world be like under a Trump administration?” he asked, referencing Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s support of the president-elect. “This is chilling to me.”

For Sessums, the temporary banning was particularly significant because he uses his Facebook page as a “personal blog”. The author has about 20,000 friends and followers, and he considers his frequent posts a “meta-memoir”

he preeminent cyber-prophet of the day

The next frontier—devices that can detect an authorized user based solely on the quirks of how they interact with it—is just around the bend.

Will new unlocking methods enjoy the same Fifth Amendment protections that prevent the government from forcing a person to give up their passwords?

The drive to reinvent school has also set off an explosive clash with teachers unions and backers of more traditional education. Partly, it's a philosophical divide. Critics say that cyberschools turn education into a largely utilitarian pursuit: Learn content, click ahead. They mourn the lack of discussion, fear kids won't be challenged to take risks, and fret about devaluing the softer skills learned in classrooms. "Schools teach people the skills of citizenship—how to get along with others, how to reason and deliberate, how to tolerate differences,"

A teacher in a traditional high school might handle 150 students. An online teacher can supervise more than 250, since he or she doesn't have to write lesson plans and most grading is done by computer.

In Georgia, state and local taxpayers spend $7,650 a year to educate the average student in a traditional public school. They spend nearly 60% less—$3,200 a year—to educate a student in the statewide online Georgia Cyber Academy, saving state and local tax dollars. Florida saves $1,500 a year on every student enrolled online full time.

Flame is the biggest and most high-functioning cyberweapon ever discovered, various cybersecurity experts said. It is comprised of multiple files that are 20 times larger than Stuxnet and carry about 100 times more code than a basic virus, experts said.

The most alarming feature, experts said, is that Flame can be highly versatile, depending on instructions by its controller. The malware can steal data and social-network conversations, take snapshots of computer screens, penetrate across networks, turn on a computer's microphone to record audio and scan for Bluetooth-active devices.

Experts said they believe Flame reports back the information to a central command-and-control network that has constantly changed location. Analysts found servers in Germany, Vietnam, Turkey, Italy and elsewhere, but haven't located the main server.

The world system is currently being challenged by two new forces: a rising superpower, called China, and a rising collection of superempowered individuals, as represented by the WikiLeakers, among others. What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to superempower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy — from a global bank to a nation state — as individuals.

A China that can choke off conversations far beyond its borders, and superempowered individuals who can expose conversations far beyond their borders — or create posses of “cyber-hacktivists” who can melt down the computers of people they don’t like — are now a reality. They are rising powers. A stable world requires that we learn how to get the best from both and limit the worst; it will require smart legal and technological responses.

The alternative today to a world ordered by American power is not some cuddly multipolar system — half-Sweden and half-heaven. It is half-China and half-superempowered individuals.