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Friday, June 19, 2015

Cyber Insecurity



Excerpt from Want To Know How China Was Able To Massively Hack Us? Because Obama Regime OUTSOURCED The IT Work To China!:
The technical details are a little difficult here so let’s put it this way – idiotic and utterly incompetent government officials outsourced IT management of highly sensitive information to companies that had some workers in China, and gave them complete and total access to that database.
Read the rest HERE.

What are the possible repercussions of this kind of major hacking?  Some things that should surprise and dismay readers of this blog post. Please watch Horribleness Beyond Measure: The Govt. Personnel Cyberattack. If you don't have time for the entire video, watch at least the portion from time marker 6:00 to the end:


We are all so dependent on the Internet: banking, bill paying, employment, payroll, social networking, personal data (including medical records), electrical grid, court systems. The list goes on and on! What kind of government would put all that at risk?

Additional reading: On a personal level, what can individuals do in this era of the hacking that puts our personal data and our monies at risk?  Kid of Diary of a Right Wing Pussycat has recently posted about the two absolute best things we as individuals can do to protect ourselves.

16 comments:

  1. Our digital infrastructure is far more fragile than the public knows....or the government will admit. One of the largest failings of our time is the obstinacy of our elected representatives in both protecting our digital landscape and shielding the utility [digital and analog] infrastructure from attack. I've long joked about prepping for the Zombie Apocalypse, but in truth, it's merely a euphemism for a collapse of our grid.

    Hacking can bring down our entire society, just as can an EMP/CME....it would just take place as a waterfall effect rather than a spontaneous event.

    Mark my words, there will be a catastrophic event of this nature within our lifetimes. Whether we can mitigate or recover is ultimately up to us, collectively.

    Kid has two very solid recommendations on his site, and it's not difficult to implement them for personal use. Unfortunately, while several 'sexy' areas of government uses 2-factor authentication [physical token and PIN or password], most of the 'unsexy' portions of government do not.....and utilize obsolete, vulnerable operating systems and LANs.

    Meanwhile, my wife and I both received our letters this week, letting us know that the Chinese have our security clearance background investigations. Yay.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. CI,
      Those first three paragraphs of your comment are grim! I'm sure what you wrote is accurate, however.

      So horrible to read that you and your wife received the letters! What can you do to protect yourselves? Anything?

      Delete
    3. Oh sure, we get a year of free credit monitoring. Whoopee.

      We have always taken some sensible precautions with identity....but nothing can truly stop a determined criminal with an SF86 [clearance investigation packet], which is a large part of what was compromised.

      Delete
    4. CI,
      we get a year of free credit monitoring

      Only one?

      Back in 2006, when our personal data were compromised because our accountant's firm was burglarized (Computers stolen!), we got seven years of free credit monitoring.

      Delete
    5. If the credit monitoring is from allclearID, it's a waste of time. They're incompetent. This is our free credit monitoring form having Anthem hacked.

      Delete
  2. YIKESERAMA said

    "... to massively hack us ..."

    I stopped right there. How could any properly educated person trust anything written by an author who is semi-literate at best?

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    1. Yikeserama,
      You should not have stopped right there! It's a blog headline, and very likely there are no proofreaders; therefore, I cut the author some slack because the content further on is so important. You are on the web and need to know before "the bad thing" happens to you.

      As for properly education person, very few people of a certain age know what a split infinitive is!

      Delete
  3. Everything CI said, and here's something else to keep you up at night. Really smart people, scientists, engineers, combined with industry professionals and federal law enforcement, hold symposia and education events on such topics as cyber security, EMP, etc, and they are hotbeds of foreign collection.

    Some events, although unclassified, do require US citizenship, but most don't. Also, as part of our internationalism, we have governments sending students here with the aim of collecting as much open-source research as possible.

    People imagine government cooks all this stuff up in sealed facilities, but much of the knowledge and technology is developed at universities open to all.

    Our government does have classified partnerships and tight integration with schools like MIT, but much of the ground-level research has wide-reaching civilian application, so it is wide open.

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  4. I thought it might be the Obamacare IT team.

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  5. CI: I got my letter, too.

    Here is what my wife and I have done, and I recommend it to others.

    Rather than just put a Fraud Alert with the three credit reporting agencies, we put in a permanent Credit Freeze.

    What that means is no one can get any credit whatsoever with your information. The downside is that means you can't either, but we rarely buy on credit, so it works for us. Existing credit instruments like credit cards still work as normal; you just can't get any new ones.

    If you're getting a mortgage, or a loan for that new Harley, you can get the freeze temporarily lifted so the creditor can grant you the loan, and then the freeze goes back on. In most state, you pay a modest fee for that. Here in Colorado I think it is $15.

    I also highly recommend all parents do that for their children's accounts. Scammers will get minors' SSN's and go to town. Most don't even realize it until they become adults and are shocked to learn their credit is already wrecked.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. SF,
      Good point about taking precautions with the children's accounts.

      Delete
  6. What did they expect? This recalls what the U.S. did with 'back doors' into banking software where 'we' could peer in. And thanks SF for the info, and concurrence by CI.

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    Replies
    1. It seems to be a truism that morons can be more easily duped. No matter if left, right or center. Consider the last presidential election.

      Delete

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