The Cyber War: Complete Coverage

The International Monetary Fund,IMF, is the latest high-profile organization to become a victim of network intrusion by hackers. According to several media reports, the IMF has suffered asubstantial security breach,of which the full extent is not yet known. Over the last few months, cyber attacks have increased in both frequency and severity. The group of cyber activists,Anonymous,are currently involved in 9000 attacks on governments and corporations aroundthe world. Check out the stunning details.

You still have the power to stand up for good. Do NOT come between us and our freedom. Youhave been warned.

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According to the New York Times, quoting an unnamed official, the IMF intrusion is a “very major”  one, and has been going on for several months. The actual dimensions of the attack are still unknown. The IMF says that the Fund is “fully functional” and that the organization is investigating the incident. Sony, Citibank, Acer, Epsilon, RSA , NASA, Lockheed Martin - even  Al-Qaeda and the FBI  - everyoneseems to get hacked these days!

The IMF declined to say who might be behind the intrusion, NYT reports.

A Bloomberg story, however, cited an unidentified security expert as saying that the attackers were believed to be connected to an unspecified foreign government and that e-mails and other documentshad been taken.Dealing with the global financial crises, international trade and other monetary matters, the IMF is privyto sensitive economic information regarding a number of countries data that could be extremelyvaluable to investors and of great interest to governments.

The organization has also been criticized for its policies and accused of being responsible for crises.The breach is the latest in a series of headline grabbing hacks that have involved the likes of  computer security company RSA,several U.S. military contractors,search giant and Web-based e-mail purveyor Google,and Sony entertainment behemoth.

Shutting Down the World Bank.....

Cyber espionage and cyber warfare have been making headline news consistently for quite some time. Bloomberg quotes a memo to IMF employees by the organization’s chief information officer, warning the staff to be vigilant: “Last week we detected some suspicious file transfers, and the subsequent investig ationestablished that a Fund desktop computer had been compromised and used to access someFund systems. At this point, we have no reason to believe that any personal information was sought for fraud purposes.”

The memo also says that the IMF’s network connection to the World Bank (which is headquarteredacross the street from the Fund) have been shut down “as a precautionary measure.”

An earlier memo to employees has warned the IMF staff of phishing attacks, saying:
”Staff is strongly requested NOT TO OPEN emails and video links without authenticating the source.”

Bloomberg writes that the recent network breach is not associated with the group Anonymous,which had earlier threatened an attack on the Fund in association with IMF activities involving the economically hobbled country of Greece.On Saturday, law enforcement officials in Spain said they had arrested several members of Anonymous in connection with attacks on entertainment giant Sony, as well as on governmentsand financial institutions

Hackers Go Wild

A wave of cyber attacks has left corporations and government organizations in a state of shock and confusion.
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The Hacker News reports that they have received a message from the hacking group, Pakistan Cyber Army - PCA - claiming the group has hacked Acer Europe’s server and stolen sensitive information.

THN have posted a screenshot of the data reportedly collected, which included the personalinformation of 40,000 customers, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mailaddresses, and the names of products they had purchased.

According to The Hacker News, the PCA plans to release more data within the next 24 hours, and will follow that up with a press release discussing its reasons for hacking Acer’s Europe division.

Acer did not immediately respond to a request for comment, CNET.com reports.

The Anonymous, which made headlines last year by hacking financial institutions and other sites in defense of  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange,recently made public more than 10,000 e-mails it stole from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to the International Business Times, quotea source who have viewed the
documents, most of the files are passports and visas, relate to an “oil meeting.”
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NATO Gets a Warning

The organization has also launched a new operation it’s calling Op NATO Black Fax/E-mail Bomb.

Users can surf to the OpNATO page and send a free prewritten fax to the North Atlantic TreatyOrganization in defense of Anonymous. The organization has posted a list of fax numbers to the page, and has asked supporters to send “as many [faxes] as you can” to those numbers.

“It has come to our attention that you have classified Anonymous a ‘potential threat to thesecurity of *your+ member states,’ and that you seek retaliation against us,”  reads the letter to NATO, which is made up of the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., among other countries. Anonymousgoes on to ask the member nations to “retaliate against us in any manner you choose.” However, even if some of its members are jailed, the letter reads, the nations will find “that  Anonymous continues to live on.”
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Anonymous’ letter ends with the following threat:

Think carefully before you continue from here,” the letter reads. “You still have the power to stand up for good. Do NOT come between us and our freedom. You have been warned.

Hacking With Humor

According to a Daily Telegraph report,the British intelligence organization, MI6, hacked into an al-Qaeda online magazine recently and replaced a recipe on bomb-making with a recipe on making “The Best Cupcakes in America.”

The latest string of hacks started in earnest in April when hackers launched a sophisticated attack against Sony’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. The hackers also breachedSony Online Entertainment.

After discovering the breach, Sony was forced to take the services down.

The company reported that the personal information of more than 100 million users had been exposed.

Sony reassured users at the time that credit card data was encrypted. It has also said noidentity theft has been reported because of the breach.

So far, Sony hasn’t been able to pinpoint who overcame its defenses, but the company did finda file named “Anonymous” on its servers.

The file contained part of the hacking organization’s slogan - “We are legion.”

The Anonymous says it is not responsible for the Sony attack. It did acknowledge, however, thatsome of its members might have acted independently to hack Sony.

Though Sony might have hoped it was out of the woods following the PlayStation Network breach, the company still faces attacks from hackers

Yesterday, a hacking organization called LulzSec posted links on its Twitter account to data it had stolen from Sony’s internal networks, as well as from the networks of Sony Pictures, SonyMusic Belgium, and Sony Music Netherlands.


“We recently broke into SonyPictures.com and compromised over 1 million users’ personal information, including passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses, dates of birth, and all Sony opt-in data associated with their accounts,” LulzSec wrote on Pastebin, the site where it  posted some data. “Among other things, we also compromised all admin details of Sony Pictures (including passwords) along with 75,000 ‘music codes’ and 3.5 million ‘music coupons.’ ”
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The group claimed the data was not encrypted and had been left for the taking. Sony confirmedthe attack this evening, saying it had contacted the FBI in an effort to track down the individualswho posted the data.

LulzSec’s attack on Sony was the second major hack the organization engaged in over the past week. This past weekend, the group showed off its hacking ability by engaging in what it called a “fun battle” with the Public Broadcasting Service.

LulzSec also posted a fake news story on the PBS site,saying that musical artist Tupac was still alive, and reportedly published log-in data for the PBS workforce.
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The hack was a response to an airing of a PBS “Frontline” episode called “WikiSecrets” that presented WikiLeaks in a somewhat unfavorable light.

The LulzSec hack followed a statement earlier this week from Google claiming it had “detectedand disrupted” a phishing attack that attempted to give the hackers access to hundreds of  Gmail accounts belonging to senior U.S. government officials.

Google said it believed the attacks originated from Jinan, China, but stopped short of blamingthe Chinese government.

The US government has denied that state-run e-mail accounts were hacked, but it has launchedan investigation into the possibility of officials’ Gmail accounts being targeted.

“Speaking on behalf of the US government, we’re looking into these reports and seeking togather the facts,”  Caitlin Hayden, deputy spokesperson for the National Security Council, said ina statement to CNET.com.

“We have no reason to believe that any official US government e-mail accounts were accessed.”

Now, that’s waving a red flag in front of a raging bull.
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