philippines | DDoSInfo – Information about DDoS and Denial of Service Attacks

A new report from a South Korean government agency, the country is at risk of DDoS attacks ahead of the country’s possible election. South Korean authorities are reportedly worried about ramped up attacks from the country’s hostile northern neighbour. A recently released report predicted DDoS attacks, leveraging IoT botnets, would be used to attack government ministries. Authored by the state-run Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), the report warns of DDoS attacks just before the country’s upcoming elections. The attacks, which leverage widely insecure IoT devices, could be launched against government ministry, national infrastructure or social bodies to destabilise South Korea. Jeon Kil-soo, from KISA told South Korean news agency, Yonhap, that “there is the possibility that huge DDoS attacks could occur by using IoT devices from both home and abroad”. Kil-soo added that such attacks could be deployed against presidential candidates. Current president Park Geun-hye is currently faced with an impeachment motion, which, if adopted by Korea’s Constitutional Court, will trigger another election. The decision is expected to be made in the next two months. According to KISA’s report, such an occasion would be ripe for exploitation by, some expect, North Korea. South Korea are not the only country bracing themselves for cyber-interference in upcoming elections. Against a backdrop of accusation of Russian interference in the American election, top government officials from Germany, France and other countries have expressed fears about such threats. North Korea’s cyber-offensive activities have long been suspected. The North Korean government was reported to be behind the attacks on Sony Pictures on the eve of the 2014 release of The Interview, a comedy which satirised the country’s leader Kim Jong Un. In November 2014, Sony Pictures Entertainment was breached by a group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace”. The hackers released a slew of emails, personal information and other data from inside the company, prompting sanctions against the country. North Korean agents are also suspected to be behind the heist on the Bangladesh Central Bank. In early 2016, hackers stole US$81 million (£65 million) by impersonating legitimate money orders. The money was then laundered through Sri Lanka and the Philippines into the coffers of, some suspect, the North Korean government. This kind of activity takes on a new light when applied to South Korea. South and North Korea have technically been at war since the middle of the twentieth century. Split in two against the backdrop of the Cold War, the countries fought a war between 1950 and 1953. The war never technically ended and the countries remain separate with a Chinese backed opaque dictatorship under the Kim Jong family in the north and a liberal democratic regime in the south. The two countries exist in a state of formal hostility, and while not effectively at war are believed to regularly meddle in each other’s societies, the cyber-realm included. James Hoare, an associate fellow at Chatham House and the man formerly charged with setting up a British embassy in North Korea, “the report is all very speculative, with nothing much in the way of hard facts.” There are many such claims about North Korean cyber-attacks, “including claims of interference with aircraft landing at Inchon airport – though having watched the behaviour of people on flights into and from Inchon, I would not be surprised if some of the alleged attacks were in reality people on their mobile devices while the planes are taking off and landing.” These kinds of claims are common but “tend to be somewhat unspecific, but on at least one recent occasion, the North Korean released information that indicated that they had been approached to stage some sort of diversion at the time of an election.” Source: https://www.scmagazine.com/south-korean-authorities-worry-about-ddos-attacks-ahead-of-elections/article/633651/

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South Korean authorities worry about DDoS attacks ahead of elections

The sparsely populated Spratly Islands, a collection of hundreds of islands and reefs spread over roughly 165,000 square miles in the South China Sea, are very quickly becoming the center of one of the most contentious international disputes between world powers since the fall of the Soviet Union. Alarmingly, the use of cyber attacks in this dispute suggests we might already be in the midst of a new Cold War playing out in cyberspace — where America’s advantage is not as clear as it is with conventional armies and navies. The Spratly Islands are of economic and strategic importance. All of the countries in the region — including China, Vietnam and the Philippines — have made competing territorial claims to the region. In recent years, China has become increasingly aggressive in its claim, rapidly building artificial islands while also conducting military operations in the area. Beyond this conventional military build up, however, are complex and brazen cyber attacks by China that are leaving America and its allies increasingly concerned. A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack knocked offline at least 68 Philippine government websites in July, apparently in response to an international court ruling that denied China’s territorial claims in the region. Just days later, Vietnam’s national airline and major airports were targeted in a series of attacks by the Chinese hacking group 1937CN. Those are just the latest examples of China’s years long cyber campaign related to the Spratly Islands. (In another attack, the website of the aforementioned international court was infected with malware and taken offline last year.) While these “nuisance” attacks — and continued cyber espionage by China — are serious, targeted Chinese cyber attacks designed to impact America’s physical military systems in the South China Sea are the most substantial evidence that we may be on the brink of a more tangible cyber threat to American military power. China appears to be moving forward with plans to use electronic attacks designed to either disrupt or take control of American drones. With reports that the Chinese attempted to interfere with U.S. military drones at least once in recent years, the country has shown a willingness to use GPS jamming to prevent U.S. aircraft from conducting surveillance missions in the Spratly Islands. That 2015 instance appears to fit China’s public posturing on the ways it says it could use electronic GPS jamming to disrupt U.S. drone networks. One 2013 report in the Chinese journal Aerospace Electronic Warfare notes in technical detail how its military can “use network warfare to attack and even control America’s network” by disrupting the connection between satellites and aircraft. This sort of GPS jamming could be the largest electronic threat to the U.S. drone program. In fact, it has been widely speculated that Iran used a similar GPS “spoofing” technique to take control of a U.S. surveillance drone in 2011. The American military says it is preparing for these sorts of attacks with its new cyber strategy released last year. In addition to outlining how cyber will be included in military planning, the report calls for a hardening of the military’s cyber defenses to prevent the theft of military technology or cyber attacks against military infrastructure and weaponry. The challenge, as any expert in the cybersecurity world would tell you, is that the capabilities and sophistication of the Chinese, Russians and other state-sponsored and non-state hackers are increasing exponentially. One only has to read the news to see nearly daily evidence of this (e.g. the recent suspected NSA breech, hacks targeting Democratic political organizations, the attack against the State Department’s email system or the theft of military intel in the OPM hack). The relatively inexpensive cyber options being employed today by both state and non-state hacking groups make it an incredibly efficient “leveler” of power. A small group of hackers using simple spear-phishing tactics, for example, can have massive impact on military installations, government operations, critical infrastructure and potentially even weapons systems. The unconventional battle playing out in the South China Sea — where cyber attacks are taking the place of conventional fighting and other forms of diplomacy — is a new model of warfare. The growing cyber threat from China may pose the most immediate threat to America and its allies because, while the U.S. continues to have a clear conventional military advantage, our advantage in cyber is not as clear. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/21/cybersecurity-is-threatening-americas-military-supremacy/

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Cybersecurity is threatening America’s military supremacy