Hackers took control of a unclassified email system in Pentagon in 2015

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  16 Dec 2016 , 08:54

Russian hackers seized control last year of the unclassified email system used by the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, CBS News reported on Thursday, citing an interview with then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey.

Dempsey, who did not appear on camera, said he was alerted to the August 2015 attack by an early morning phone call from the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, according to CBS. The email system is used by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, an organization of some 3,500 military officers and civilians who work for the chairman.

The hackers seized the passwords and electronic signatures used by Dempsey, an Army general who retired in September 2015, and hundreds of other senior officers to sign on to the network, according to CBS. The only way to stop the attack was to take the network down, CBS said.

The attack, which U.S. officials now blame on Russia, was not spying, but a full-on assault whose only apparent purpose was to cause damage and force the Pentagon to replace both hardware and software, which took about two weeks to accomplish, according to CBS.

The motive for the attack was believed to be Russian anger at economic sanctions orchestrated by the Obama administration in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and interference in Ukraine, CBS said.

The Pentagon declined to comment. U.S. officials have accused Putin of supervising his intelligence agencies’ hacking of the U.S. presidential election in an effort to help Republican Donald Trump. Russian officials have denied accusations of interference in the Nov. 8 election won by Trump.

Reuters

Google self-driving cars may reduce fatalities, but what about human error

The week began with reports about Google’s autonomous car being involved in what it calls its worst ever accident. And, a human is to be blamed.

So, a van ran into a red light and rammed into the driverless car, damaging the right door and window. You can see the photo here. The Interstate Batteries van was to be blamed as the light is said to have been green for at least about ‘six seconds’ before the Google car entered the intersection.

This is neither the first time that a Google car is involved in an accident, nor is it the first company testing autonomous car to be facing the wrath. In the recent past we’ve seen Tesla involved in an accident that killed the driver. A DVD Player was found in the car that was on autopilot, and a truck rammed into it killing the driver. Again, a possible human error. However, some witnesses claimed that there was no movie or music playing in the car.

Earlier this year, Google car had hit a bus. The company did take up some responsibility for the hit. “We saw the bus, we tracked the bus, we thought the bus was going to slow down, we started to pull out, there was some momentum involved,” Chris Urmson, the head of Google’s self-driving car project, had told The Associated Press.

Can one rely on software guided cars?

If you read how the accident unfolded, one could never say who is at fault. It was plain ‘predicting the other’s move’ gone wrong. Google then said its computers had reviewed the incident and engineers changed the software that governs the cars to understand that buses may not be as inclined to yield as other vehicles.  However, in certain cases, who takes the responsibility of the accident? This also means users may not trust a software driving them around that won’t really take any responsibility.

In June, we heard how Google software is designed to see a 360 degrees view, improvement in honking algorithms so that it is more human like. Read here to know more. But, on a larger scale, the algorithm is still software that can fail or go wrong. And, the new worries on the forefront show how the car could rather foresee or avoid human errors. For example, in the recent case, the car entered the intersection after the light turned green, but it was the van that tried to zip in the last few seconds.

Predicting human error

So, unlike previous cases, wherein there was the chance of a system failure, bad prediction or likewise, this is a new worry for autonomous car makers. How can the smart car accurately foresee a human error? This also proves we are a long way to go until these cars take on drivers completely. Though driverless car is the most sought after category these days with major interest from global players including and not limited to Tesla, Google, Uberand nuTonomy, it may take a few years for a refined technology

In support of its autonomous cars, Google has been talking about how it will reduce fatalities caused by human error. Google said it  aims to develop a fully self-driving technology to make roads safer. But, here is the case of a smart car crash due to a human error. We wonder how long it would take to build a system that could cut through human errors and is designed to predict the move accurately

Hacker Who Helped ISIS to Build 'Hit List' Of US Military

A computer hacker who allegedly helped the terrorist organization ISIS by handing over data for 1,351 US government and military personnel has been sentenced to 20 years in a U.S. prison.

Ardit Ferizi, aka Th3Dir3ctorY, from Kosovo was sentenced in federal court in Alexandria, for "providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and accessing a protected computer without authorization and obtaining information in order to provide material support to ISIL," the Department of Justice announced on Friday.

The 21-year-old ISIS-linked hacker obtained the data by hacking into the US web hosting company's servers on June 13, 2015.

Ferizi then filtered out over 1,300 US military and government employees' information from the stolen data and then handed them over to Junaid Hussain, according to court filings [PDF].

The stolen data contains personally identifiable information (PII), which includes names, email addresses, passwords, locations and phone numbers of US military service members and government workers.

Junaid Hussain, who was a British jihadi and believed to be the then leader and creator of a group of ISIS hackers called the Islamic State Hacking Division (ISHD), posted the names and personal data of 100 US service member's families online.

The Hussain's statements included:

"We are in your emails and computer systems, watching and recording your every move, we have your names and addresses, we are in your emails and social media accounts, we are extracting confidential data and passing on your personal information to the soldiers of the Khilafah, who soon with the permission of Allah will strike at your necks in your own lands!"

Hussain, who was also known as Abu Hussain Al-Britani and used the moniker TriCk, was later killed in a US drone strike in Syria in August last year.

The US authorities also tracked down Ferizi to Malaysia, where he was arrested by the local authorities on October 6, 2015, while trying to catch a flight back to Kosovo.

Before helping ISIS, Ferizi had served as an alleged leader of the Kosova Hacker's Security (KHS) hacking group and hacked into a number of government sites belonging to the Presidency of Macedonia, the Greek Ministry of Education, the Greek Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace (DAMT), Lifelong Learning and Religion. He also stole data from IBM and Greek mobile telecoms firm OTE.

Ferizi was pleaded guilty on June 15, 2016, and faced a sentence of up to 35 years in prison, but the sentence was reduced to a maximum of 25 years after agreeing to plead guilty. However, defense lawyers said he meant no real harm and asked for a six-year sentence