How Iran hacked super-secret CIA stealth drone

O.K. the U.S. knows about a flaw in the security of the Drones we fly around the world (even here) yet the idiots in charge do nothing!

Iran, takes advantage of this by jamming the system on board a RQ-170 drone and basically taking control of it!

Nice goin idiots, what a way to make the U.S. look stupid with technology; by being fucking lazy!

RT
More damage is being dished out to the US intelligence community as sources in Iran admit to hacking the CIA’s lost drone and bringing it down with not much more than computer navigating know-how.
Engineers with the Iranian military are admitting to the Christian Science Monitor that the dramatic disappearance of a multi-million dollar stealth drone aircraft suffered by the United States two weeks ago was indeed a result of their own doing, claiming now that they managed to hijack the system inside the craft with ease and bring it to a safe landing without incident.
The United States originally denied they lost a drone over Iran before changing their story and insisting that they lost contact with the craft during a surveillance mission over neighboring Afghanistan. Iranian officials quickly corrected Americans by displaying footage of the spy-plane and revealing that it was apprehended over 100 miles from the country’s border with Afghanistan.
RT has reported throughout the ordeal that the downing of the drone could have resulted from a budding cyber war between American and Iranian intelligence. Now officials overseas are insisting that they did indeed hack the craft to quietly bring it down.
Speaking to the CSM, an engineer responsible for the interception speaking on condition of anonymity says that technicians managed to hack into the craft’s GPS navigation, which the official describes as “weak.”

Israeli Military Reportedly Plotting to Cripple Iran in Cyberspace

Excellent, this is exactly what the U.S. should be doing against China and any other country that tries to pull off a cyber attack against us!


Foxnews
Israel has set up a military cyber command to wage a computer war againstIran as senior officers become increasingly concerned that a conventional attack on Tehran’s nuclear sites could end in failure, London's The Sunday Times reported.

The new cyber command will report directly to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who has placed the program at the heart of Israel’s defense capability.

“Israel must turn into a global cyber superpower,” he told a meeting of cyber warfare experts recently.

The center, which has been set up under the auspices of military intelligence unit 8200 has already conducted a series of “soft” espionage missions, including hacking into Iran’s version of Facebook and other social networking sites.

The Stuxnet malware virus, which dramatically affected Iran’s nuclear program in 2009 by sabotaging the delicate centrifuges needed to enrich uranium, is widely believed to have been developed by Israeli and American technicians.

McAfee uncovers massive global cyber snoop

McAfee vice-president of Threat Research Dmitri Alperovitch said the attacker was looking for information in military, diplomatic and economic domains.

China, why we do not retaliate is beyond comprehension.

CBR
China masterminded 'Operation Shady RAT' targeting over 70 organisations, governments, say analysts

Computer security company McAfee has said that it has discovered a massive global cyber spying operation targeting several US government departments, the UN and other governments across the world for five years or more.

Analysts say it is likely that China is behind the cyber espionage dubbed 'Operation Shady RAT' by McAfee. RAT stands for "remote access tool".

The Guardian reported that security experts at McAfee had discovered a "command and control" server in 2009 that was used to control the operation. On revisiting the server this March, experts found logs which revealed all of the attacks.

Victims of snooping campaign include: governments of Canada, India, South Korea, Taiwan, the US and Vietnam; international bodies such as the UN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency; 12 US defense contractors, one UK defense contractor; and companies in construction, energy, steel, solar power, technology, satellite communications, accounting and media, said an AFP report.

McAfee said there is evidence that security breaches date back to mid-2006.

Pentagon Unveils New Cyber Strategy

The Pathetic thing is the pentagon along with the rest of the U.S Government are so far behind everyone else on Cyber security.

Why is China allowed to continually hack our Systems?
Why is their never any retaliation?

The U.S. Gov. needs to pull its head out of its collective ass when it comes to what is going on in Cyber space, playing catch up with China will not be fun or easy.

China actively seeks out the best hackers in china to breach our systems, we should at the least do the same.

(RTTNews) - The Pentagon on Thursday unveiled a new cyber strategy emphasizing mostly on defensive tactics and admitted that it had suffered a major hacking attack in March in which sensitive information was stolen from one of its defense contractors.

Announcing the new strategy in an address to the National Defense University in Washington, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said it was aimed at strengthening and defending U.S. military computer networks against future cyber attacks.

"In the 21st Century, bits and bytes can be as threatening as bullets and bombs. It is a significant concern that over the past decade terabytes of data have been extracted by foreign intruders from corporate networks of defense companies," Lynn said.

The new Pentagon cyber security strategy designates cyberspace as an "operational domain" like sea, air and land with the aim of preventing others from using it for hostile purposes targeting U.S. military interests.

Lynn, however, stressed that the Pentagon was "committed to protecting the peaceful use of cyberspace," and said: "Establishing robust cyber-defenses no more militarizes cyberspace than a Navy militarizes the ocean.

"Our strategy's overriding emphasis is on denying the benefit of an attack. If an attack will not have its intended effect, those who wish us harm will have less reason to target us through cyberspace in the first place.

"If there is massive damage, massive human losses, [or] significant economic damage, it would be in those circumstances that I think the President would consider all the tools that he has — economic, diplomatic and as a last resort, military," he added.

Cyber-weapons developed by Pentagon to enter online warfare soon

It is about time, for years I have been wondering why the U.S. does not do this.
Every other country does and we should be a least ready to defend it.

International business times
The Pentagon has designed a list of cyber weapons which include viruses that can disrupt important networks belonging to the enemy, a report in the Washington Post said.

A senior military official, on condition of anonymity, said the list of weapons is classified but has been used for several months and approved by other US agencies such as the CIA. The official added the listed weapons are ready to be employed against the enemy at any time.

The weapons, which can be anything, ranging from a tank to a computer virus, have been programmed in a way to make it easier for the army to handle and use them as per orders.

The official added the development of cyber-technology in the military warfare sector has been one of the most significant advancements in years.

The military will need presidential orders to install the cyber virus as a mode of weapon that can later be activated. However, orders will not be required to study other cyber-capabilities of the enemy. The most the military can do is to leave a beacon in the enemy’s stronghold to later activate the virus, upon getting orders, he said.

Pentagon Pentagon: Cyber Attacks Can Count as Act of War

A new age of war.
the pentagon will have a tough go at even getting this off the ground, so many factors come into play that you have to consider when judging where a cyberattack originated.

Do I think that some cyberattacks are acts of war, hell yeah, a portion of them are directly targeted attacks and should be dealt with.
America is a little behind the times when it comes to fighting cyber warfare, when China actively recruits hackers to implement cyber attacks, why is the United States not doing the same?

Foxnews
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact.

Iranian cyber war?

Iran has expressed it's desire to head into a Cyber War, with everyone that is against them; This may be one of the first attempts to make a strike.
Iran will surely loose this one, unless the Obamasiah has anything to do with it.
This apparently was very close to being pulled off.


Wired
In a fresh blow to the fundamental integrity of the internet, a hacker last week obtained legitimate web certificates that would have allowed him to impersonate some of the top sites on the internet, including the login pages used by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo e-mail customers.

The hacker, whose March 15 attack was traced to an IP address in Iran, compromised a partner account at the respected certificate authority Comodo Group, which he used to request eight SSL certificates for six domains: mail.google.com, www.google.com, login.yahoo.com, login.skype.com, addons.mozilla.org and login.live.com.

The certificates would have allowed the attacker to craft fake pages that would have been accepted by browsers as the legitimate websites.

....

Report: U.S.-Israel Tested Worm Linked to Iran Atom Woes

The Times said the worm was the most sophisticated cyber-weapon ever deployed and appeared to have been the biggest factor in setting back Iran's nuclear march. Its sources said it caused the centrifuges to spin wildly out of control and that a fifth of them had been wiped out.


From the onset of the Stuxnet Virus/worm, it was clear that it was designed to attack Iran.

Awesomely nice Job!


foxnews
WASHINGTON -- Israel has tested a computer worm believed to have sabotaged Iran's nuclear centrifuges and slowed its ability to develop an atomic weapon, The New York Times reported Saturday.

In what the Times described as a joint Israeli-U.S. effort to undermine Iran's nuclear ambitions, it said the tests of the destructive Stuxnet worm had occurred over the past two years at the heavily guarded Dimona complex in the Negev desert.

The newspaper cited unidentified intelligence and military experts familiar with Dimona who said Israel had spun centrifuges virtually identical to those at Iran's Natanz facility, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium.

"To check out the worm, you have to know the machines," an American expert on nuclear intelligence told the newspaper. "The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out."

China's Internet?

China's growing ability to control and manipulate Internet traffic

This is a big Big Problem!
But it is doubtful anything will be done about it.


Computerworld - A report submitted to Congress on Wednesday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission expressed concerns over what the commission claims is China's growing ability to control and manipulate Internet traffic.

The report points to two specific incidents that happened earlier this year where actions taken inside China had a direct impact on Internet traffic in the U.S. and other regions of the world.

In one of the incidents, traffic to and from about 15% of all Internet destinations was routed through servers belonging to China Telecom, a state-owned telecommunications company.

The rerouting happened on April 8 and lasted for about 18 minutes. The traffic hijacking impacted U.S. government and military networks including those belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corp., the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Commerce, NASA and the U.S. Senate.

Commercial sites including those belonging to Microsoft, Dell and Yahoo were also impacted.

Intel Chief: U.S. at Risk of Crippling Cyber Attack

He said one critical "factor" is that more and more foreign companies are supplying software and hardware for government and private sector networks.

"This increases the potential for subversion of the information in ... those systems," Blair said.


Like Maybe China ?

Just three words " Deaf , Dumb ,Blind " !

Foxnews
The United States is at risk of a crippling cyber attack that could "wreak havoc" on the country because the "technological balance" makes it much easier to launch a cyber strike than defend against it, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday.

Blair, speaking to the House Intelligence Committee, said U.S. tools are not yet up to the task to fully protect against such an attack.

"What we don't quite understand as seriously as we should is the extent of malicious cyberactivity that grows, that is growing now at unprecedented rates, extraordinary sophistication," Blair said. "And the dynamic of cyberspace, when you look at the technological balance, right now it favors those who want to use the Internet for malicious purposes over those who want to use it for legal and lawful purposes."

Blair said the United States must "deal with that reality," and warned of the catastrophic consequences of a major attack.

"Attacks against networks that control the critical infrastructure in this country ... could wreak havoc," Blair said. "Cyber defenders right now, it's simply the facts of the matter, have to spend more and work harder than the attackers do, and our efforts frankly are not strong enough to recognize, deal with that reality."

He said one critical "factor" is that more and more foreign companies are supplying software and hardware for government and private sector networks.

"This increases the potential for subversion of the information in ... those systems," Blair said.

Blair also told Congress Tuesday that the Internet is providing the fuel for the growing problem of "homegrown radicalization."

"That ... has been one of the most dangerous uses of the Internet," Blair said, explaining that foreign groups are using the Internet to organize attacks, give instructions and arrange financing.

China's Internet backdown lauded by firms, activists

"This was the result of combined pressure from domestic Internet users and an array of forces at home and abroad," said Wen Yunchao, an editor at the popular Chinese website Netease (www.netease.com).

Yeah it could not have to do with the fact that green dam is a stolen software And the company that made the original software Solid Oaks , Ordered a Cease and Desist to all PC manufacturers (Except Mac ) and filed a claim against green dam and China !
One thing china is not and that is Original ,They Consistently steal software and Ideas from the U.S and other countries , They have launched Attacks on many Computer systems including the u.s. defense systems and one that involved some nasty viruses in e mail Attachments to Solid oak the maker of Cybersitter , the net nanny that china "renamed" Green Dam !Washington post /reuters
BEIJING - China's ambitions to strengthen control of the Internet with filtering software became a show of the limits of its power on Wednesday, as activists and industry groups welcomed AN abrupt delay of the contentious plan.

The surprise climbdown was reported late on Tuesday by Xinhua news agency, which said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology would "delay the mandatory installation of the controversial 'Green Dam-Youth Escort' filtering software on new computers.

Officials said the software was intended to stamp out Internet pornography, and computer companies had originally been told that from Wednesday they had to bundle "Green Dam" with any personal computers heading to stores for sale in the country.

But the order was assailed by opponents of censorship, industry groups and Washington officials as rash, politically intrusive, technically ineffective and commercially unfair. [ID:nN24196133]. PC companies have mostly avoided making firm public statements on the issue.

Cyberspies penetrate electrical grid:

Many people don't see it the way I do , This is a war ! China for years now have actively pursued a cyberwar , with the United States !  ,  I feel that the U.S. is failing the test of Cyber security and very soon could be Damaged by these Idiots , if nothing is done !
 Not being the smartest cookie in the bunch , it makes sense to me to play along !  Maybe our best and brightest Should return the favor of Infecting our system ?  we are better at doing things better in the first place ! my favorite would be to rip their underwater internet cables right off the ocean floor ( on accident of course )

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls, the newspaper said, citing current and former U.S. national security officials.

The intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but officials said they could try during a crisis or war, the paper said in a report on its website.

"The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid," a senior intelligence official told the Journal. "So have the Russians."

The espionage appeared pervasive across the United States and does not target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official.

"There are intrusions, and they are growing," the former official told the paper, referring to electrical systems. "There were a lot last year."

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was not immediately available for comment on the newspaper report.

Authorities investigating the intrusions have found software tools left behind that could be used to destroy infrastructure components, the senior intelligence official said. He added, "If we go to war with them, they will try to turn them on."

Officials said water, sewage and other infrastructure systems also were at risk.

Protecting the electrical grid and other infrastructure is a key part of the Obama administration's cybersecurity review, which is to be completed next week.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions, which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems, suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists.

While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they do not appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.