DDOS attacks in Sweden

The DDOS attacks, impacted the availability of the websites of train operators SJ, as well as those of south Swedish public transit operator Skånetrafiken, Region Skåne, and Sweden’s alcohol retail monopoly Systembolaget.

A group of 16 year olds have claimed responsibility, but this is not yet confirmed. No reason yet apparent on why this was done. Perhaps a disgruntled customer? More in English here.

If you have any updates, opinions on whats behind this, please post, I am very interested!

Cyberattack $45 million stolen

How can this happen? I guess PCI DSS is not working, although it is the prepaid debit card companies themselves that have been exploited. Apparently they are less secure than other financial institutions? But are they not financial institutions per se themselves?

They are not naming the Visa and Mastercard prepaid card companies in the US that were compromised. I wonder why 😉

I find it amazing that after the first attack in December, that there was an identical one in February. It seems to be that the ring leaders were caught, but what about all the hackers sitting behind this operation? I am sure they are still out there hacking away and getting away with it.

CISPA

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISA) is not aligned with civil and privacy rights of the individual according to privacy advocates such as Electronic Frontier Foundation and Avaaz.org.

Neither Microsoft or Facebook support this bill. Imagine that everything you post on FB to be available for government authorities? Fine if you trust them I suppose, but I don’t.

Why is not crowdsourcing used more in the fight against terrorism? Transparency and the power of the people, of whom most want a safe society could provide an all encompassing safetynet. Crowdsourcing for example is starting to be used to locate missing persons and children, it is very powerful. There are so many people out there that can make a positive difference to this broken world we live in.

No surprises……you are being hacked by your government!

Everything you do online is probably being hacked/surveilled by your government. This includes, activities on Facebook or any social networking sites, Skype conversations, chatting, texting from your mobile phone, anything that is stored or transmitted digitally.

Companies are now selling, and they are selling hot in all countries, of-the-shelf hacking and surveillance products to governments… all in the name of national security. These tools have been used by middle-east during unrest earlier this year. There was a secret conference held in Dubai earlier this year that was not open to the public, and reporters were not welcome to attend sessions. Read more here.

Security innovation

David Lacey made a post concerning the (lack) of innovation, in how decisions in cyber-security in government are taken, not only the amount of money allocated to this work but how it is spent.

Apart from what David discusses I see that one of the biggest challenges when it comes to being innovative or visionary is that often decisions are based upon where we are today and then making a plan forward. When in fact there is only one way to really innovate in whatever area it may be, and that is to take that quantum leap into the future, 5-10 years ahead is enough, and visualize how it will feel, what will be our experiences, challenges, and then look back to understand how we got there. There is a whole load if visionary videos and tools out there that one can use to aid the process.

This comes up with a completely different picture to what comes up from starting from today and planning forward, over the quantum leap forward and looking back.

Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure

Although unconfirmed as of yet, there seems to be some evidence that cyber attacks to the critical infrastructure of the US has occurred. Some hackers, probably from Russia hacked into a water-plant and sabotaged the system. The water-plant was not sufficiently protected, and I would imagine didn’t see themselves as a potential target.

This is the first of many to come.

I am often thinking how we don’t appreciate how critical our work is. There are many of us that secure critical infrastructures although we don’t see that we save lives, as a doctor or nurse example can. I remember a conversation I had with a colleague around 5 years ago, he wanted to move into the fire-service, because there he could make a difference. However, we each one of us make a difference where we are today, building and securing critical services and infrastructures of our respective countries. We don’t see how many lives we save or how many peoples lives we make a difference to because of our work. However, we do save lives and we do make a difference!