At a conference of chief technology officers in 2016, General Michael Hayden, former head of, at different times, both the NSA and the CIA, told the audience, “Cyberwar isn’t exactly war, but it’s not not-war, either.”
Recent news articles have all been talking about the massive Russian cyber-attack against the United States, but that’s wrong on two accounts. It wasn’t a cyber-attack in international relations terms, it was espionage. And the victim wasn’t just the US, it was the entire world. But it was massive, and it is dangerous.
The recently discovered SolarWinds hack holds obvious lessons for governments around the world, particularly after a year in which cyber attacks on critical infrastructure have surged. International action is urgently needed, not to write new treaties or codes of conduct, but to enforce existing norms.
Some kinds of online aggression are “noisy,” almost certain to draw attention, as the multifaceted Russian attack on the 2016 presidential election was. And some are “quiet,” more reminiscent of the subtle spy-vs.-spy operations fictionalized in the novels by the great John le Carré, who died Dec. 12.
Cybercriminals are leveraging the recent rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines globally in various cyberattacks – from stealing email passwords to distributing the Zebrocy malware.
A series of cyberattacks is underway aimed at the companies and government organizations that will be distributing coronavirus vaccines around the world, IBM’s cybersecurity division has found, though it is unclear whether the goal is to steal the technology for keeping the vaccines refrigerated in transit or to sabotage the movements.
The Justice Department on Monday unsealed charges accusing six Russian military intelligence officers of an aggressive worldwide hacking campaign that caused mass disruption and cost billions of dollars by attacking targets like a French presidential election, the electricity grid in Ukraine and the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
IT experts investigating a cyberattack that paralyzed computer systems at a major hospital in western Germany say one of the trails they are following leads to Russia, German media reported Tuesday.
German prosecutors have opened a homicide investigation into the case of a patient who died after a hospital in the city of Düsseldorf was unable to admit her because its systems had been knocked out by a cyberattack.
On the morning of Jan. 3, an email was sent from the Indonesian Embassy in Australia to a member of the premier of Western Australia’s staff who worked on health and ecological issues. Attached was a Word document that aroused no immediate suspicions, since the intended recipient knew the supposed sender.