Cyber War on the U.S. has Begun

Unseen, All-Out Cyber War 

on the U.S. has Begun

Security pros and government officials warn of a possible cyber 9/11 involving banks, utilities, other companies, or the Internet.

InfoWorld —

There's a war going on, and it's raging here at home -- not in the streets or the fields, but on the Internet. You can think of it as a war on the digital homeland. If you work for a power company, bank, defense contractor, transportation provider, or other critical infrastructure type of operation, your organization might be in the direct line of fire. And everyone can become collateral damage.

"The cyber war has been under way in the private sector for the past year," says Israel Martinez, a board member of the U.S. National Cyber Security Council, a nonprofit group composed of federal government and private sector executives.

"We're finding espionage, advanced persistent threats (APTs), and other malware sitting in networks, often for more than a year before it's ever detected," Martinez says. He says U.S. entities are being targeted on multiple fronts by China and Iran for espionage and intellectual property theft, by interests in Russia and Eastern Europe for syndicated crime such stealing cash and identities, by social-agenda "hacktivist" groups such as Anonymous, and by increasingly skilled individual criminal hackers.

The cyber war now raging in the digital homeland

Such attacks have been going on for years, but what's new is the cyber war brewing between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran in the other, says Emilian Papadopoulos, chief of staff at Good Harbor Security Risk Management, a consulting firm focused on cyber threats.

"We have seen cyber attacks evolve from espionage attacks that steal intellectual property or monitor communications to disruptive or destructive attacks. ... Destructive and disruptive cyber attacks are relatively uncharted -- and troubling -- territory,"

                                                                                           

The private sector owns and operates the infrastructure and systems that form the backbone of the Internet, and attacks on that system could break down trust in the Internet, with major economic and operational impact.

Such cyber attacks on U.S. companies and their overseas partners, as well as on the Internet infrastructure, could be as devastating as the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, warned Leon Panetta, the U.S. Secretary of Defense. And Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, warned just last week that a cyber 911 attack could happen any time.

Recently, there were reports of banks seeking help from the National Security Agency, Papadopoulos says. "How will the government's role change if we see more and more attacks against companies and they are more and more disruptive or destructive?" he says. That's a question many more people may ask if the world cyber war indeed escalates.

One thing is clear: The era of cyber warfare is here, and it's happening on the homefront.

This story, "Unseen, all-out cyber war on the U.S. has begun," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in information security at InfoWorld.com. For the latest developments in business technology news, followInfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Full article: http://www.cio.com/article/727691/Unseen_All_Out_Cyber_War_on_the_U.S._has_Begun?page=1&taxonomyId=3089

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Norton Antivirus Hacked

Symantec Hack Exposes Antivirus Source Code

By Nicola Leske

(Reuters) - Symantec Corp, the top maker of security software, said hackers had exposed a chunk of its source code, which is essentially the blueprint for its products, potentially giving rivals some insight into the company's technology.

The developer of the popular Norton antivirus software said the hackers stole the code from a third party and that the company's own network had not been breached, nor had any customer information been affected.

     COMPROMISED?

 Hacker group known as Lords of Dharmaraja

"Lords of Dharmaraja" leak Symantec source code

The developer of the popular Norton antivirus software said the hackers stole the code from a third party and that the company's own network had not been breached

Nicola Leske

The software maker would not confirm the claim of a group called the Lords of Dharmaraja, who said that they had obtained Symantec's source code by hacking the Indian military.

Some governments ask their security vendors to provide their source code to ensure there is nothing in the code that could act as spyware, said Rob Rachwald, director of security strategy at data security firm Imperva.

Microsoft Corp, for example, in 2003 began allowing governments including Russia and international organizations such as NATO to look at the source code for its Windows operating system to dispel rumors that it had a secret "back door" built in to let the U.S. government spy on its users.

Symantec downplayed the risks, saying the exposed code was several years old.


A software maker's intellectual property, specifically its source code, is its most precious asset. Symantec's Norton Internet Security is among the most popular software available to stop viruses, spyware, and online identity theft.


"The workings of most of the anti-virus' algorithms have also been studied already by hackers in order to write the malware that defeats them," Rachwald said in a blog on the Imperva website.

Unlike hackers who aim to get around firewalls and software protection, rivals could be more interested in having the source code to study the market leader's software, Rachwald said.

On Thursday, the Lords of Dharmaraja said on the information-sharing website pastebin that it would soon list a Norton antivirus source code package. A person using the handle "Yama Tough" posted several items in an effort to prove the group had accessed the code.


(Reporting by Nicola Leske in New York, additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, editing by Matthew Lewis)


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