Is the United States Cyber-Safe? Experts Respond to the Recent Cyber ​​Terrorist Attacks

US officials have been short on public statements and reassurances following the recent cyber attacks affecting many US and South Korean security and financial institutions but emergency notices were sent to federal agencies and departments alerting them to the situation and advising situations with the wake of the cyber terrorists attacks that are suspected to have originated in North Korea.

Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's US Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."

Just last year, following similar cyber attacks that were linked to China, security experts warned that America was more vulnerable to a cyber-attack than other forms of conventional threats.

In May, President Obama announced the establishment of an inter-agency cyber-security office and the Pentagon added a military Cyber ​​Command to supplement the civil effort.

Despite the warnings and these cyber-safety steps, this past week key US agency web sites, including Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department sites, were affected by the cyber terrorist attacks in the US and many South Korean institution web sites, including bank web sites were strangled as well.

While the US government has not been very vocal, many security experts have helped to explain the outcome of the cyber terrorist attacks and gives the rest of us a realistic picture of just how significant these cyber attacks were.

- A spokesperson for Keynote Systems, a California-based mobile and website monitoring company, describe the outcome of the cyber attacks as "significant outage."

- The chief technology officer for SANS Internet Storm Center described the cyber attacks as a "pretty massive attack," although "nothing really terrible sophisticated. If just floods the websites," and "prevents the websites from responding."

- Ben Rushlo, director of internet technologies at the firm, described the transport departments web site problems as "very strange." Rushlo added, "Having something 100% down for a 24-hour-plus period is a pretty significant event."

Questions Linger Over North Korean Involvement

Cyber ​​experts seem to agree that the cyber attacks originated from a place with in North Korea but they have different opinions on what this means. Is this a communist nation attack via a technology battlefield or was this simply an attack orchestrated by hackers using zombie computers from North Korea?

- Philip Reitinger, deputy under secretary at the Homeland Security Department, said in an interview with the Associated Press that, "the far-reaching attacks demonstrate the importance of cyber security as a critical national security issue." The fact that a series of computers were involved in an attack, Reitinger said, "doesnt say anything about the ultimate source of the attack." "What it says is that those computers were as much a target of the attack as the temporary Web sites that are targets," said Reitinger, who heads DHS cyber security operations. "They're just zombies that are being used by some unseen third party to launch attacks against government and non-government Web sites."

- Rod Beckstrom, former head of the US cyber-security center says, "If Pyongyang is behind the attacks, it probably establishes a new pattern of behavior. going to get better. "

Jack Thomas Tomarchio, head of Nicor ​​Cyber ​​Security is concerned about North Koreas initiative because "they play by their own set of rules, so it is more difficult to calibrate how they're going to respond." Tomarchio also says that, "The attacks overall show that the federal government is still very vulnerable in terms of its cyber security and that agencies have miles to go to plug the holes .."

This was only a DOS, or denial of service attack, but attacks like this one make us more fearful of attacks such as an attack on the FAA tracking of airlines or the New York Stock Exchange monitoring of stock prices. Sure, this sees a movie of the week theme that could not really happen, but after 9-11 and a series of cyber terrorists attacks, Americans are learning to never say never.

"This is not Pearl Harbor. I'm not trying to alarm the country," Tomarchio adds, "But we do have a serious intrusion problem."

Source by Lisa Carey