Sunday, June 30, 2024

Bill Crawford: Digital Terrorist Attack U.S. Daily

Hostile nations make war on the U.S. every day, attacking critical military and civilian infrastructure. If they were using traditional weapons, we know that our military preparedness would yield a quick and deadly response. Sustained attacks in this new digital world, however, don’t get that intensity of response. Our preparedness continues to be lacking.

In February an article in The Hill, responding to a presentation by FBI Director Christopher Wray, concluded, “The American homeland has been under (hacker) attack for the past two decades, with little in the way of meaningful response.”

“The Department of Defense’s pool of contractors and related resources is under constant threat of digital harassment and foreign influence campaigns,” reported C4ISRNET in October 2022.

“A Chinese, state-sponsored hacking group has embedded itself in critical U.S. infrastructure and is waiting to ‘foment terror’ and ‘societal panic’ through cyberattacks – an effort that military leaders said persists undeterred,” reported Military.com in May.

"We've seen this actor – China – grow in scope, scale and sophistication," Maj. Gen. Lorna Mahlock, the commander of the Cyber National Mission Force, a joint unit that deploys globally to track and "neuter" – as she put it – enemy capabilities, told Military.com. "We've also seen that they're undeterred."

The Chinese hacker group Volt Typhoon was behind attacks on U.S. bases in Guan in 2023.

Russia-sponsored groups are active also. Reports identified BlackSuit was behind the June attack on automotive software provider CDK Global that disrupted operations at thousands of car dealers; Clop was behind an international attack on MOVEit software; and Revil was behind attacks in Florida and Texas.

Following Chinese and Russian infiltration of the U.S. power grid in 2009 and a Russian hack on NASDAQ in 2010, the FBI in 2012 predicted that hackers would become “the number one threat to our country.”

Six years later, Congress created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with a mission to strengthen cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. (Uh, hackers breached CISA’s system in January.)

Who are these hackers?

They generally fall into three categories – groups sponsored by hostile nations, criminal hackers pursuing profit, and activists often called hacktivists.

“A series of high-profile cyberattacks from Russia, China and criminal networks in recent years have served as a wake-up call to the Defense Department that cyberwarfare has changed,” reported Politico last September.

DHS sees China-sponsored “malicious cyber actors” among “the greatest and most persistent threats to U.S. national security.”

We don’t label it terrorism yet, though we should. And the now awake DOD should go after digital terrorists as aggressively as it does traditional foreign terrorists.

“Let the nations be roused” – Joel 3:12.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not to worry, as sleepy Joe is on top of this...as soon as he has his nap and ice cream cone.

Don Drane said...

And we will remain in the shitter (in this regard) as long as our critical technological and top level hires are based on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion rather than hiring the most qualified people in the world!

Several other nations (individually and in concert with each other) will far outpace us while we concentrate on hiring transexuals, non-binaries and persons of certain pigmentation.

We can't even begin to compete in the cyber-arena as long as we concentrate on skirt length and sexual deviance in the hiring process.

Bob Kahn said...

And, it's not just hackers in dark rooms thousands of miles away. I'm betting that more than a few have crossed our southern border. It can be as easy as a night cleaning crew member finding that there's one sloppy worker with a password on a post-in note under their keyboard, or worse a really stupid password like "12345678". Or, an unlocked IT closet where they can insert a USB stick and upload malicious software. IoT everything is not necessarily a good thing, and the "smart grid" is only as secure as its weakest link.

Anonymous said...

the current state of cybersecurity in the USA is an absolute joke. Nothing but DEI bootcampers and hilariously inept former military. Basically, if you hire someone who doesn’t have competence using PowerShell at a minimum, then they are incompetent. Most of these “cybersecurity experts” have a cert in SolarWinds and maybe attended a Kali linux bootcamp. How can you be a cybersecurity expert if you can’t subnet and dont even understand the OSI model?

Anonymous said...

Darn, I am going to have to change my password for my six devices. 10:12 AM guessed it!

"password 1234" should work.

Anonymous said...

8:22 If it makes you feel better to blame every shortcoming on DEI then go ahead. Be sure to look under your bed cause you know there's a commie under there too. There's money in hacking. Simple as that. Our enemies can pay huge sums to talented people, many of whom are American citizens, to disrupt cyber systems. It's cheaper than buying bombs. We will ultimately pay huge sums and the best and brightest will be hired at enormous costs, while you can worry about DEI or whatever.

Mary Sue said...

@8:59
You tell ‘em girlboss!
Mediocre white males can’t stand being replaced by strong queens!

Anonymous said...

@8:22, so would you exclude those people from the job market?

Anonymous said...

And China, what a prize would come to their hand, too, once their grand scheme of “taking over” America via hacking is complete. Trash-lined streets rutted with potholes; tattooed tranny freaks and screeching blue-haired college girls with spools in their ear lobes and rings in their noses for a workforce; grocery shoppers so fat they can’t buy their own food without an electric cart in which to squire themselves back to get another couple of cases of Diet Coke and Doritos before the weekend; white boys who care for nothing but pr0n and “The Game”; their women creating drama on Fakeboob, the real housewives of Murka; ghetto gangstas shooting it up while their preachers hold yet another prayer gathering for peace and reconciliation; a school system stuffed with government bureaucrats (aka “teachers”) and dull-witted “scholars”; infrastructure that can’t be repaired or replaced because the money can better be spent for Taiwan, for Ukraine, for — well, of course — Israel; and you and I both could go on for the rest of the day and into next week.

Nobody wants what the US has become, but for 80 years now there has always been a new Hitler — Stalin, Castro, the Ayatollah, Ho Chi Min, Mao, Gaddafi, Saddam, Osama bin Disappeared, Daesh, al Qaeda, Putin, Xi, and more — just over the horizon and about to “take over” and kill us all in our beds.

But they never come. They don’t even get close because they just are not desirous of coming into possession of a shithole country. The US isn’t the world’s crown jewel like the mainstream media and our leaders — but I repeat myself — tell us it is.

Now if we can just get on with making America at least mediocre again, we will be on the right path.

Anonymous said...

This is the first time the U.S. has had a part time president. We should expect other countries to take advantage of our country. With our president only available between 10 AM and 4 PM it leaves quite a few hours a day for other countries to plan things that they would not have if we had a full time president.

Anonymous said...

Sleepy Joe has the watch between 10 AM and 4 PM**, but "Dr" Jill has it between 4 PM and 10 AM, which covers the infamous "2 AM phone call."

**When Sleepy Joe is at the beach, or Camp David, or eating chocolate chip ice cream, he is not available.

Anonymous said...

"@8:22, so would you exclude those people from the job market?"

No. But I damned sure will not move them to the head of the line based simply on what they look like instead of their qualifications and value to the organization.

"In considering a leader, look to the men with whom he surrounds himself".

In the case of Pervy-Joe, it's lesbians, non-binaries, transexuals and assorted others based entirely on their appearance and cult membership. In that regard, we are the world's laughingstock.

Not that this post will be approved.


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