Comments on: Cyber

By: JoeC

JoeC — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:58:20 +0000

That must explain the continuous probes of my VPN firewall. I used to trace some of the most common probing addresses, but since it is my home VPN connection, I didn’t put a lot of time into it. Unlike Lex (above) I run a software firewall on all my machines along with the hardware firewall, and antivirus, spyware catchers, registery monitors, process guard and all to the point sometimes I wonder how the cpu has any cycles left to do real work. I am a bit paranoid, people come to me for help because I am considered the “expert”, and I still got hit with a trojan that stole a credit card transaction. (fortunately the anti fraud software at the CC company caught an out of character charge and called me. Plus I have a credit watch on my account. It helps.) It is a cyber war out there, I wonder if the government will ever get serious about it?

The average PC user has absolutely no chance.

By: Jerry

Jerry — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:51:35 +0000

As someone who watches this “activity” all day, the end solution is removal of all index finger’s (mouse click anyone)!

Seriously, just sit on a registered IP class C subnet, and watch the logs. @ work, I’m the “voice” of doom when I re-cant what happened in the last 60 seconds on the “network”.
One time we started a pool, how long before a PC would be compromised if put out one the Internet. Out of everybody, I was the second “lowest” number in the pool. I guessed 60 seconds, one other indivual said 30 seconds. Most folks said anything from 8 hours, to weeks.

I fired up the sniffer, forced spanning tree to enable the port, …..

.7 seconds later, the PC was fully compromised and looking for “victims”.

Bottomline, we are being assalted daily by not only organized crime like the RBN (russian business network who apparently have moved to China, go figure), but state sponsored sourced from the Pac-Rim.

By: F4Jock

F4Jock — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:15:35 +0000

Battlestar Galatica got it right. Don’t mix and match your LANs!

By: Jeopardy

Jeopardy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:44:39 +0000

I agree that some of it has to do with funding, but in all honesty, it has more to do with utility. If you lock down an unclassified network to make it safe, you have to give up some functionality. Heaven forbid that permanent GS-9 can’t get to ebay in order to buy more chotchkies for their desk, or the SES who didn’t get the email from his wife about picking up milk on the way home.

By: SSG Jeff (USAR)

SSG Jeff (USAR) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:55:28 +0000

I can’t believe that someone was so stupid as to connect networks containing classified information to the internet in any way, shape or fashion.

Air gap!

By: F4Jock

F4Jock — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:01:12 +0000

The COLD war has gone to the CYBER War!

It is now fought with high speed modems, keyboards, and kids from Russia!