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Tag: cyber attacks
North Korea Slams ‘Loser’ Obama For Regime Collapse Remark

North Korea Slams ‘Loser’ Obama For Regime Collapse Remark

Seoul (AFP) – North Korea Sunday described U.S. President Barack Obama as a “loser” over his criticism on its regime, accusing him of being obsessed with hostility towards Pyongyang.

The comment from the North’s foreign ministry came after Obama spoke of the eventual collapse of the regime ruling what he called “the most isolated, the most sanctioned, the most cut-off nation on Earth”.

“We will keep on ratcheting the pressure, but part of what’s happening is… the Internet over time is going to be penetrating this country,” Obama said in an interview on YouTube from the White House last week.

“Over time you will see a regime like this collapse,” he said, adding the U.S. was looking for ways to accelerate the flow of information into the country.

A spokesman for the North’s foreign ministry lashed out at the remarks, describing them as “rubbish”.

“The recent wild remarks made by Obama are nothing but a poor grumble of a loser driven into a tight corner in the all-out standoff with the (North),” the spokesman told state news agency KCNA.

“We cannot but be shocked to find that Obama… is so preoccupied with the inveterate repugnancy and hostility toward a sovereign state.”

Attempts to topple the regime — led by Kim Jong-Un — would only strengthen unity among its people, he said.

The North has often used bombastic and sometimes racist rhetoric to slam Obama and other U.S. leaders.

Last month its top military body chaired by Kim compared Obama to a “monkey” over his support for the screening of a Hollywood comedy hated by Pyongyang.

The Interview — about a fictional plot to assassinate Kim — was released online and in theaters last month, despite devastating cyber attacks on its producer Sony Pictures.

Washington blames Pyongyang for the attacks, a charge the North has angrily denied.

AFP Photo/Roberto Schmidt

Holder Urges Congress To Adopt Standard For Cyber Attack Notification

Holder Urges Congress To Adopt Standard For Cyber Attack Notification

By Daniel Rothberg, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — After a spate of large-scale cyberattacks on retailers, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urged Congress to adopt a national standard for notifying consumers of a security breach.
Holder said creating such a law would bolster the Justice Department’s ability to combat crimes and hold organizations accountable for failing to protect private information.

The announcement Monday comes just weeks after lawmakers called for tighter notification standards during congressional hearings into recent commercial cyberattacks, including high-profile cases at Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus. Several legislators, including Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), have recently introduced bills on the issue.

During the holiday season, an attack on Target’s systems compromised the security of 40 million payment card numbers as well as the names, addresses and phone numbers of as many as 70 million customers. The Justice Department and Secret Service are investigating the incident.

Not long after the Target attack, executives at upscale retailer Neiman Marcus discovered malware on its system had exposed as many as 1.1 million payment cards.

Holder said a notification standard would benefit consumers and law enforcement.

“This would empower the American people to protect themselves if they are at risk of identity theft,” he said in a video statement. “It would enable law enforcement to better investigate these crimes — and hold compromised entities accountable when they fail to keep sensitive information safe.”

Exceptions to the notification standard would be made for harmless security breaches, Holder said.

Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have laws that dictate standards for disclosing a breach. Some state attorneys general and consumer advocates have voiced concerns that a federal law might preempt stricter state laws.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan warned of just that in testimony before a House subcommittee. Madigan said her constituents do not want the state’s law pre-empted but instead are “asking why companies are not doing more to protect their personal and financial information and prevent these breaches from occurring in the first place.”

Consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski said in an interview that he’s encouraged that Holder is engaged on the issue but cautions against passing a law that is weaker than the strongest state law. Another concern, he said, is that a federal law could prevent states from acting on future data security legislation.

But the National Retail Federation argues that for businesses that currently must comply with a patchwork of laws, one pre-emptive law would greatly simplify the notification process.

In written testimony Feb. 3, the retail trade group’s general counsel, Mallory Duncan, said a federal standard would allow businesses “to focus their resources on remedying the breach and notifying consumers rather than hiring outside legal assistance to help guide them through the myriad and sometimes conflicting set of 50 data breach notification standards in the state and federal jurisdictions.”

AFP Photo/Al Seib

Report: NSA Taps Offline Computers With Secret Bug

Report: NSA Taps Offline Computers With Secret Bug

Washington (AFP) – The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has developed a secret technology to spy on computers via radio signals, gathering information even when the devices are offline, a report said Wednesday.

TheNew York Times reported that the NSA has implanted software on 100,000 computers around the world to be able to conduct surveillance, and which gives the spy agency “a digital highway” for launching cyberattacks.

The Times, citing unnamed sources, said the agency has used the program code-named Quantum since at least 2008, relying on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers.

It said the radio technology has helped solve a key problem for U.S. intelligence agencies, by getting into computers of adversaries that are hardened against attacks. But it noted that the radio frequency hardware must in most cases be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.

The report said the NSA and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have used these techniques against the Chinese Army, which has been accused of cyberattacks on U.S. firms.

It has also been used against Russian military networks, Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and documents cited by the newspaper.

In a statement to AFP, the NSA did not directly comment on the report but said the agency “deploys various foreign intelligence techniques to help defend the nation.”

“As we have previously stated, the implication that NSA’s collection is arbitrary and unconstrained is false. NSA’s activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only against — valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements,” the statement said. “In addition, we do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about the report, echoed the NSA comments.

“I won’t discuss specific tools. But the NSA operates under heavy oversight and is focused on discovering and developing intelligence about valid foreign intelligence targets such as terrorists, human traffickers and drug smugglers,” Carney told reporters on Air Force One. “They are not interested in the personal information about ordinary Americans.”

President Barack Obama is due to unveil proposals Friday to reform U.S. intelligence in the wake of a series of revelations which have stunned U.S. allies and others on the vast data-gathering capabilities of the spy agencies, based on leaked documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb