Reporting from Washington -- Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia -- an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security.
Defense officials would not describe the extent of damage inflicted on military networks. But they said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that oversees U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected computers in combat zones. The attack also penetrated at least one highly protected classified network.
The full article from The Los Angles Times can be found here.
This is or could be a biggy, something very serious, something a bit unnerving. To someone who is not familiar with the possible fallout from a cyber infection, it might not seem like much. (I'm thinking McCain, here.) It could be BIG.
The article leaves a sense of unknown.... what was the extent of harm and are we protected from it happening again. If a virus got in, was it able to send info out or do internal harm. I just didn't get a feeling of "don't worry, all has been taken care of." Not an ounce of feeling.
5 comments:
I'm confused, what kind of news coverage were you thinking? LA Times National news seems like pretty good coverage.
The military systems underwent a complete overhaul over a week ago, and has been revamped and secured. This, I know.
I was thinking of the tv news. At the time of posting this entry, I had not heard it mentioned on the newscasts... then, of course, I did. I was wondering if the tv news would just give it one sentence and that's all. But now that I think about it, if there's no new info coming in about it, there wouldn't be anything to report. (just thinking out loud.)
Its good to hear that they've completed a complete overhaul.
Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding, when I said 'this is a biggy', I did not say it as a criticism of the system nor the safe-guards, nor the people involved. I was simply saying "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!!" haha oh gawd, I'm in a silly mood now. Sorry. I was just making note that this "event" could be very serious....as in kind of a 'heads up' message.
Maybe I got it right with 'the sky is falling, the sky is falling'... maybe that was my smarter half trying to tell me to stop creating angst. (but if something comes along later I will most likely say something like "remember when I said this was a biggy?"
In any event, no criticism was intended. Just a "hey... look at this."
CC you are a good source of information...
In answer to your question about our "black outfits" for the picture...Quite by accident but we all got a laugh, because all three of my daughters, my daughter-in-law, and her mother all had on black tops....We said...what is this, "Black Thanksgiving"...Thus the black outfits. I wish my other daughters would let me post them, we could have had a black quartette!!
This is the first time Julie has let me post her....!!!
LOL:Wanda
You're right, this is something they should take very seriously. Judging from their briefing of the Prez, it looks like they are.
While I am worried about this, I'm not too worried because I am certain they've watched for events like this for some time and taken appropriate action.
As evidence, did you notice that during Sept (I think) the US Gov went to both McCain and Obama campaigns and told them their computers had been hacked? This tells me the govt had been monitoring their machines from some other location and could tell an inappropriate access had been attempted. Pretty telling, eh?
Plus, just the fact that the govt knew of inappropriate access at CENTCOM and knew where it came from speaks volumes. I would be more worried if we never read about them detecting these sorts of things...that wouldn't mean they weren't happening, it would mean we aren't equipped to even detect them. That's a far more dangerous situation.
Great posts here on your site, thanks!
Good points made, J. Thanks for commenting.
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