China’s Cyberattacks — a policy discussion

China’s Cyberattacks — At What Cost? | ChinaFile: " . . . if U.S. policy is in part to advocate for human rights in China by enabling dissidents to communicate and subvert Chinese censorship--i.e., to do something to protect the very sorts of people who the Chinese hackers appear to have been looking for--then we have very little interest in international rules to restrict hacking. Presumably you don't hear about U.S. hacking in China because the National Security Agency’s tradecraft is a lot more solid (and it's lost in the noise of the tremendous insecurity and noise in domestic Chinese networks), as well as because the target set in our case is more focused on national security rather than economics. Furthermore, the activist hacking from the U.S. that isn't directly promoted by the U.S. government is hard to expose because if it is detected, as it must be often, then to publicize it the Chinese would have to publicly talk about internet controls which don't officially exist. . . . "

Twitter hacked, 250,000 users affected | ZDNet: "According to Bob Lord, Twitter's Director of Information Security, the attack was the work of professionals, and Twitter is actively cooperating with law enforcement in an attempt to prevent further damage caused by these attackers. What can you do to protect your Twitter account? Ensure that in case you receive a password-reset email from Twitter, it indeed points to Twitter's domain, as opportunistic cybercriminals could easily start impersonating Twitter, and mass mail millions of emails in an attempt to gain access to your account. If you do receive a password-reset email from Twitter, ensure  that you're using a strong password, and that you've changed it from a malware-free host."

50 million cameras exposed to hackers due to massive security breach — RT: " . . . Internet routers that use a protocol called Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) allow network-connected devices such as computer and printers to make themselves easily discoverable, but new research by the security firm Rapid7 shows that this discoverability can be exploited by hackers. Many routers are set to use the UPnP by default, thereby subjecting all network-enabled devices using the router to the damage that hackers are able to inflict. As many as 50 million unique devices can be exploited and about 6,900 products are vulnerable to software bugs that have already been found in three different implementations of the protocol. Vendors including Cisco’s Linksys, Belkin, D-Link, and Netgear produce routers that make themselves and their connected devices susceptible to software bugs. . . . "


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