BE SMART ABOUT ID THEFT.
BE PROACTIVE AND PREVENT IT.

Nov 2010. In the United States, when a person thinks of an identity thief, the picture that immediately comes to mind is an illegal immigrant. Although this is a falsity, it is not altogether unfounded.

First, let me make myself very clear: Identity thieves come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and nationalities. They could be your mother, brother, employee, or best friend. In pursuit of money, or “living large,” some people will do outlandish things without caring how it affects the lives of others. <Read Full Article on Immigrants and Identity Theft>

As the wife of a retired military officer, I enjoy the benefits of terrific medical care, strong banking institutions, and much more. With that care, you would think that you’d also have the benefit of feeling sure that your identity is also secure.

Not so. In fact, hackers, terrorists, and thieves all love to target federal institutions. It could be spite, it could be a game, it could be a national threat. No matter. Just because we use TriCare, USAA, and the VA does not mean we are protected from identity theft. Not by a long shot. <Read Full Article on Hackers of Government Web Sites>

What is Cyber Terrorism?

The latest talk in the media regarding terrorism is what will be the next event, and when? Many more questions arise. What type of event will it be? Bombing? Chemical or gas release? Poison in our water system? Cyber attack?

Most experts believe that the next major successful attack (many potential attacks are thwarted and we never even find out about them) will be a breach of “cyber security”. What does this mean, exactly? It sounds like a giant computer virus that would wipe everyone’s computers.

It’s actually much more than that. Let’s explore the basics of cyber terrorism, and how it can affect the civilian population.

The formal definition of the term, as described by Princeton University’s WordNet lexical database is “an assault on electronic communication networks”. To be more specific, these networks are those that have direct impact on our daily lives.

According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, cyber terrorism is any "premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs, and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents."

Unlike a nuisance virus or computer attack that results in a “denial of service”*, a cyber terrorist attack is designed to cause physical violence or extreme financial harm. According to the U.S. Commission of Critical Infrastructure Protection, possible cyber terrorist targets include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers, and water systems.

Cyber terrorism is sometimes referred to as electronic terrorism or information war.

Computer networks and information technology infrastructure are fragile and easily brought crashing down. With vulnerabilities commonplace in operating systems, software, and IT infrastructures, terrorists are now using computers, Internet communications, and tools to perpetrate critical national infrastructures such as water, electric, and gas plants, oil and gasoline refineries, nuclear power plants, and waste management plants.

Massive computer networks run everything around us—our lights, our water, our financial systems, our roads, and on and on. And although many of the weaknesses in computerized systems can be corrected, it is effectively impossible to eliminate all of them. Even if the technology itself offers good security, it is frequently configured or used in ways that make it open to attack. In addition, there is always the possibility of insiders, acting alone or in concert with other terrorists, abusing their access capabilities.

In Russia in 1999, the state-run gas monopoly, Gazprom, was hit by hackers who collaborated with a Gazprom insider. The hackers were said to have used a “Trojan horse” to gain control of the central switchboard, which controls gas flows in pipelines, although Gazprom, the world's largest natural gas producer and the largest gas supplier to Western Europe, denied the report.

In 2009, Dr Andrew Colarik, an information security consultant explained that the goal of terrorism is to cause severe disruption through widespread fear in society, meaning "our dependency on digital material”. "The majority of our currency is not paper, it's digital. And like money, if we loose confidence in the underlying system, we will have insolvency." The U.S. is a real target because of our dependency on the online system. The majority of the countries that represent a threat to the U.S. don't depend on the digital system and so they have an opportunity to attack without the risk of suffering from similar counterattacks.

So what does all this data mean to us? That we are all vulnerable and there is not much that we can do about it, without moving into a cabin deep in the forest. In the mean time, just to be safe, limit the amount of information that you store on the Internet cloud, and even digitally on a home storage device. If you have paper copies of records, keep them. Without electricity, digital backup is useless.

* A denial of service (DoS) attack is an incident in which a user or organization is deprived of the services of a resource they would normally expect to have.