NSA = Not So Adept: Hackers Loot Brash Stash Of NSA Exploits & Data

Who watches the watchers?  Apparently, now it’s…well, everybody with a computer.  A massive hack against the NSA has revealed a treasure trove of previously-private exploits and other data, and it doesn’t make our “security agency” look very secure at all…

If the future won't let us have space-war, we'll have cyberspace-war.
(Image courtesy techworm.com.)

IS Hacks U.S. Central Command Twitter Feed, Posts Prankish "Leaks" Like The Trolls They Are

It seems that our once-raging war against terrorism has now, at least publicly, been downgraded to some unpleasant cyberbullying.

As reported by the BBC, the United States Central Command's Twitter account was hacked by the revolutionary Islamic fundamentalist group IS, who referred to their online troll brigade as "the CyberCaliphate" in the attack.  Their "CyberJihad" didn't seem to accomplish much more than ruffling a few feathers, despite the "leak" of "secrets" like a few upper-echelon bureaucrats' mailing addresses.

Nerdy terrorists.  Great, just what we need.
(Image courtesy bbc.com.)

The Centcom Twitter account, which was known to report on strikes against IS (before the account was taken down after the hack-attack), provoked a standard "appropriate measures" response as to what was being done in retaliation.  The hack occurred while President Obama was giving a speech on cybersecurity.

Several maps and diagrams were "released" by the hackers, but these appeared to be vague logistics of maritime armaments along the Chinese coast, as well as maps of various installations in North Korea.  Nothing was more of a "secret" than a little googling couldn't uncover, with much of the (completely non-threatening) information sourced from U.S.-based think tanks.

The full feed.  This could easily be an Islamic twelve-year old.
(Image courtesy Reuters.)

According to Reuters, The Defense Department wasn't flustered, stating the government "views this as little more than a prank, or as vandalism...It's inconvenient, it's an annoyance but in no way is any sensitive or classified information compromised," Pentagon spokesman Army Colonel Steve Warren said.Nevertheless, when posted in conjunction with incendiary (fake) headlines reading "PENTAGON NETWORKS HACKED!", the IS troll brigade probably raised a few heartbeats in Washington.  For a minute.  Then we continued bombing them in real time, without needing to tweet about the success.  The "CyberJihad's" silence in America will speak to that.

Unfortunately in France, the AnonGhost cyberterrorism group, a pro-Islamic organization, have tried to terrorize French websites in wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks.  The UK Mirror reports that larger and more notorious computerized collective Anonymous have vowed revenge for the Charlie Hebdo attacks and have been plaguing IS sites throughout the last week.  This e-poking might escalate to even further name-calling and photoshopped images of completely unbelievable terrorist victory.  In the meantime, they can continue to spam the internet with narcissistic content worthy of a facebook-addicted tween.

Just...no.  Not happening, guys.
(Image courtesy mirror.co.uk.)

Energy Companies E-Sabotaged? Dragonfly Cyberattacks Target Industrial Control Systems

Beginning by targeting defense and aerospace companies in 2011, the online organization called Dragonfly has now changed its target to American and European energy companies. The cyberattackers, thought to be members of a government agency due to their high degree of technological prowess, wreak computerized havoc on industrial control systems (ICS) of petroleum pipelines as well as ICS all over the energy grid (including energy industry industrial equipment providers.)

The operation was multifaceted and well-funded. According to Symantec.com, "The group initially began sending malware in phishing emails to personnel in target firms. Later, the group added watering hole attacks to its offensive, compromising websites likely to be visited by those working in energy in order to redirect them to websites hosting an exploit kit. The exploit kit in turn delivered malware to the victim’s computer. The third phase of the campaign was the Trojanizing of legitimate software bundles belonging to three different ICS equipment manufacturers."

Symantec was quick to offer solutions to protect computer systems from these attacks, which resemble the Stuxnet virus (aimed at the Iranian nuclear program, it was the first major malware ICS sabotage.) The goal of the recent attacks was further-reaching, intending to achieve a level of cyberespionage that could play a major role in sabotaging any of the infected systems.

Secret Service Using Totally Cool Sarcasm Detector While Watching Social Media

The United States Secret Service has escalated their social-media surveillance methods as of late, and it makes things soooo much better for the common person. If you don't have a specially-crafted program to filter that sentence, it contained sarcasm, which has become a problem for Big Brother by creating false positives for threats during their nitpicking of our online brain droppings.

The new technology is considered superior than tasking agents with creating fake profiles to gather and assess the public's social media commentary.  According to www.nextgov.com, the technology also includes the abilities for “sentiment analysis,” "influencer identification," "access to historical Twitter data," “ability to detect sarcasm," and "heat maps" or graphics showing user trends by color intensity, agency officials said.

The program will operate in real time and totally respects your opinion.

NSA Website Bumped Offline By Alleged DDoS Attack

What goes around comes around.  From NBC:

The official website of the National Security Agency, NSA.gov, is offline and has been for several hours. Not only that, but the rumor being jubilantly spread around the net is that it is a deliberate denial-of-service attack.  Downtime-tracking service Isitdownrightnow.com reports that the site has been unavailable since about 2 p.m. ET.

Large government webpages don't tend to go down for hours for no reason, but it has not been confirmed yet whether this is an attack or simply a technical problem.