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| Science & Technology |
| Cyber attacks against govt expose fatal cracks in Pakistan's digital fence |
| 2015-05-20 |
| [DAWN] While the government focuses on fighting terrorism and extremism under the National Action Plan (NAP), another threat seems to be looming on the horizon: cyber warfare. Sources have told Dawn that government assets are now increasingly coming under attack from hackers and subversive elements that may be looking to steal sensitive information or intercept privileged communications. The threat of cyber attacks really raised the hackles of the country's security establishment when, just before the recent visit of Chinese president XI Jinping, computers at the country's Foreign Office (FO) were hit by a cyber attack. The fact that it was the FO's China desk that was targeted alarmed many and, sources within the department say, intelligence agencies are currently investigating the nature of the attack. Although an FO spokesperson denied that anything like this had occurred, this account does figure into the larger picture: coordinated cyber attacks against governments, corporations and militaries around the world have picked up steam and some of the world's leading cyber security firms are attributing a recent spate of state-level cyber attacks to Russian state-sponsored hackers. In a report titled 'APT28: A Window into Russia's Cyber Espionage Operations', leading US network security firm FireEye has tracked attacks on government, defence and educational infrastructure in at least 26 different countries, including Pakistain. According to the report, Russian hackers used the technique known as 'phishing emails', which involves sending a user emails with content of their interest, which usually has a malicious software embedded in it. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 their omnipotent electrical and telecommunications grids are vulnerable, for the 8-10 hrs a day they function? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2015-05-20 09:06 |