Global Cyberwar and Terrorism

Keeping up to what is sure to continue long past the election, there is no doubt we are in the midst of a global cyber war.  This has been going on for decades and during the last years as I tried to alert people to the facts about hacking and intrusions, I was often called paranoid and delusional.

Now it looks like many of the power-hitters have jumped on board and the creators of Virus-proteciton software mega-companies not the least.

What happened really in terms of "the secret reports"?  Well they are not so secret.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-07/u-s-confirms-russia-behind-hacking-attacks-to-disrupt-elections

It can be probably summed up as "There were attacks conducted from Russian servers characteristic of those done in the past by Russian intelligence operatives." 

The Russians deny this.

"This is some crap again," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday when asked about the U.S. announcement. “There are tens of thousands of hackers attacking Putin’s website every day. Many are tracked to U.S. territory, but we don’t accuse either Washington or Langley every time,” he said, referring to the CIA’s headquarters near Washington.

comment: Well, as I said. We are at war and this as much with ISIS hackers as any others. The Middle East is importing or teaching people in the arts of hackiing and are improving. As far as finger pointing - who supposedly did it?

The intelligence community gained "high confidence" in attributing attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to Russia, said Timothy Barrett, spokesman for the Office of Director of National Intelligence.
 
U.S. intelligence "independently observed technical activity that is consistent with the forensic evidence identified by a private cyber-firm and is consistent with our general understanding of cyber activities by the Russian government," Barrett said.
 
Although Barrett didn’t name the company, CrowdStrike Inc. released technical details earlier this year pointing to the attacks being carried out by the Russian government.

CrowdStrike said it found evidence that hacking attacks were carried out by two Russian government hacking groups. One that it calls Fancy Bear is believed to be an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency. The other, which it calls Cozy Bear, is believed to be run by Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to Russia’s KGB, where Putin once worked.

comment: Yet the fine print of this or at least some observations is what was hacked?  The Wikileaks still have not been postively hooked to Russia. Is our Democratic process in danger or rather is our Internet and our Power Grid in even greater danger?

More likely the Internet and Power Grid. We won't be having any national elections for awhile and it might be more practical to hire a few older computer literate people to focus on this aspect rather than the Democratic convention which is over.

A primary reason more is not said, is that most of our communications in all forms are monitored and there is no privacy on the Internet.  That Russia may be hacking into conventions is far less important than the loss of privacy of people who live in fish bowls and their walking GPS and cameras on their smart phones which are tracked.

As with the revelations on Wikileaks - which are receiving far less attention as to content versus origin - they were bad.

The final war - one that shuts down your power and the net will probably be started without the firing of single missile. We will be standing around in the dark and some will have prepped and most will failed to. 

The elections will be forgotten as well as Congress which will be in a shelter deep below the ground and the rest of us will be trying to survive.

Medclinician