Computer Security Over the Last Several Years,

Computer Security

Over the last several years, cyber attacks have been continually rising. This is in response to emerging threats from nations such as China who are increasing their attacks on government and military installations. According to James Clapper (the Director of National Intelligence) these threats have become so severe that they are surpassing terrorism as the greatest challenge facing the nation. To fully understand what is occurring requires focusing on a recent attack and the underlying effects. Together, these elements will highlight the scope of the threats on government and military information systems. (Hosenball, 2013)

In early September 2012, the White House was the target of a cyber phishing attack. This is when hackers sent a fictitious email (which looked official) to this location. One of the staffers made a critical mistake in opening it. This infected a variety of computer networks and gave them access to some of the most sensitive information on their unsecured servers. Commenting about what was happening is Anup Ghosh ( the founder and CEO of security company Inincea) who said, "The attack originated in the form of a spear phish, which involves a spoofed inbound email with either a link to a malicious website or a weaponized document attachment such as a PDF, Microsoft Excel and Word file." This is illustrating how various kinds of tactics are utilized to fool government officials into thinking that they are receiving an important email. However, when they open it, is the point they can be providing hackers with access to their computer networks. (Winter, 2012)

After evaluating where the attack came from; it was determined that the Chinese government was responsible for the incident. According to White House officials, these incidents have become more blatant with them saying, "The cyber breach was one of Beijing's most brazen cyber attacks against the United States. In this instance the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any ex-filtration of data took place. Moreover, there was never any impact or attempted breach of any classified system. Over the past 24 months, China has been aggressively targeting America's corporations for their intellectual property and our government agencies and departments for critical national security information." This is showing how China has been focusing on U.S. government and military computer networks. What makes this incident so troubling; is they were able to create an official email and trick staff members into opening it. (Winter, 2012)

These facts are showing how more needs to be done to protect the nation's security interests. This attack is one of many such incidents that are conducted against the country's networks for both governmental and private interests. In many cases, the U.S. is lagging behind through not having the ability to isolate and retaliate against such attacks. To make matters worse many criminal organizations, terrorist groups and rouge states (such as: Iran) are becoming involved in these activities. Unless something is done, the odds are high that these tactics could be used to cripple major parts of America's infrastructure and to extract to secret files. When this happens, there is a possibility that these tools may make it difficult to protect the country and deal with critical threats. (Winter, 2012) (Schwartz, 2013)