U.S. energy sector hacked by cyber terrorists from the Middle East

Following a series of cyber-terror attacks on their energy sector, the United States defense department is heightening security and cracking down on potential threats. The New York Times cites two senior government officials who believe the attacks came from somewhere in the Middle East.

You may remember the U.S. accusing China of hacking into corporate networks and stealing propriety information several months ago. “By contrast, the new attacks seek to destroy data or to manipulate industrial machinery and take over or shut down the networks that deliver energy or run industrial processes,” write David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth of the Times. “Two senior [U.S.] officials who have been briefed on the new intrusions say they were aimed largely at the administrative systems of about 10 major American energy firms, which they would not name.”

But is this simply a case of the U.S. government getting a taste of their own medicine? Hacking into a foreign nation’s industrial network is exactly how the U.S. destroyed Iran’s nuclear program years ago.
 
Trend Micro, a global leader in online content security, recently conducted an experiment by creating an alluringly-vulnerable ‘dummy utility corp’ in the U.S. energy sector. Within seconds, cyber terrorists began attempting to infiltrate the corporation’s system, “doing things that would change the water pressure, or temperature, or stop the flow on a water pump,” said a Trend Micro employee.

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Finger-pointing: who's behind whose cyberattacks?

Over the past month, the U.S. government has criticized China for reportedly hacking government and private corporation databases. Now, China’s the one doing the finger-pointing. According to a statement released earlier today by their Ministry of National Defense, the U.S was responsible for 63% of an average of 144,000 monthly cyberattacks last year. Says China, “Now who’s the bad guy?”

Apparently, world governments treat issues of treason and national security like kids on a playground running to teacher shouting, “But he… but she!” These allegations are just about as series as they come. Strained relationships, between any two countries nowadays, send ripples through the global economy that cannot be fully predicted. Unfortunately, when that happens, those ripples tend to cause a tsunami at one end of the world.

How can they tell who’s spying on who? IP addresses, of course. Don’t be fooled — every website you’ve ever visited, every link you’ve ever clicked, every email you’ve ever opened, sits floating around the infinity of the Internet, waiting to be traced and cataloged. A U.S. security firm by the name of Mandiant first brought allegations against the Chinese after they traced a hacking group to a Chinese military instillation. In their rebuttal, the Chinese government denied all accusations and attacked Mandiant’s report for a lack of empirical evidence.

“Everyone knows that the use of (stolen) IP addresses to carry out hacking attacks happens on an almost daily basis,” said Geng Yansheng, a representative for the Defense Ministry. Basically what he said was: “Everybody’s doing it… how could you possibly know..?”

In a move that one could only describe as the pot calling the kettle ‘black’, China now claims they’ve traced IP addresses back to U.S. military installations. But how can we believe anything they say if they’ve spent the past few weeks shredding IP addresses as so-called ‘proof’?

Cyber and drone warfare appear to be the two major players in the future of national ‘in’security. As these technologies improve, mankind will find ways to adapt to create new hacks; new holes in whatever system they poke and prod. Democracy and capitalism, systems which have gone digital over the last several decades, will become increasingly more vulnerable. We must protect intellectual property. We must preserve privacy. Without these things, the world will descend into primal chaos. When world super powers point fingers like whiny children, it begs the question: has technology made us all more primitive?