Cyberwar (1)

It isn’t just Google, and it isn’t just China. Security experts say there’s a raging, worldwide cyberwar going on behind the scenes, and governments and businesses across the globe need to be on alert.

Security analysts say 20 countries, in addition to China, are actively engaged in so-called asymmetrical warfare,a term that originated with counterterrorism experts that now commonly refers to cyberattacks designed to destabilize governments. Countries engaged in this activity range from so-called friendly nations, such as the United Kingdom and Israel, to less friendly governments like North Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

“There are least 100 countries with cyber espionage capabilities,” warns Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, an information security and training firm. Today there are thousands of hackers working on such programs around the world, “including al Qaeda cells that are acting as training centers for hackers,” he said.

“It’s been a widespread problem for some time,” says University of Texas at San Antonio professor and cyber security researcher Ravinderpal Sandhu. Paller and others agree, adding that the recent Google incident — in which the Internet giant discovered e-mail and corporate sites had been extensively hacked by programmers on the Chinese mainland — represents just the tip of the iceberg.

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Notes:

If you use social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter — do your banking on the net — maybe you should give your head a hard shake.

The net is far from “secure” and “I know” — people are not going to stop their banking from their computer but they need to think about it. I was once logged on to Scotiabank and could use the net connection. I began to become very uncomfortable with it and stopped using it for security reasons (hidden keytrackers that come down in an innocent email). I logged onto facebook and left within a few days for the very same reason. I don’t trust Twitter or a host of other social networking sites for the very same reason.

Identity theft.

If you don’t need to do that you don’t go there. That’s my view.