Prepare for more cyber attacks on US

The “patch and pray” system within the United States has killed cyber security. Nobody is willing to commit any funds to protecting the system until something has already happened. Unless this way of thinking is changed and experts begin to go on the offense with cyber defense, America’s IT infrastructure is as good as dead.

 

Another week, another wave of cyber alarm in America. On Wednesday both the New York Stock Exchange and United Airlines suspended activity for several hours due to mysterious computing problems, while the Wall Street Journal’s website briefly went down. All three insisted that the outages reflected technical hitches, not malicious attack. But many are anxious after past assaults on mighty American companies and agencies.

In February Anthem, an insurance company, revealed that cyber hackers had stolen information on 80m customers. The Washington-based Office of Personnel Management said cyber hackers had taken data on millions of federal employees. Companies ranging from retailers to banks have been attacked, too.

Disease Expert Warns Terrorists Could Make Dirty Bomb Containing Ebola

ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta/AP) — A Cambridge University disease expert warns that terrorists could be able to build a dirty bomb containing the Ebola virus.

Speaking to The Sun, biological anthropologist Dr. Peter Walsh says that the risk should be taken seriously of terror groups getting their hands on the Ebola virus.

“A bigger and more serious risk is that a group manages to harness the virus as a powder, then explodes it in a bomb in a highly populated area,” Walsh told The Sun. “It could cause a large number of horrific deaths.”

KGB papers, kept in secret since 1992, released by British archive

Original documents from one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history — a who’s who of Soviet spying — were released Monday after being held in secret for two decades.

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Intelligence historian Christopher Andrew said the vast dossier, released by the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University, was considered “the most important single intelligence source ever” by British and American authorities.

Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB’s foreign intelligence headquarters — and a secret dissident. For more than a decade, he secretly took files home, copied them in longhand and then typed them and collated them into volumes. He hid the papers at his country cottage, or dacha, some stuffed into a milk churn and buried.

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The world did not learn of Mitrokhin until Andrew published a book based on his files in 1999. It caused a sensation by exposing the identities of KGB agents including 87-year-old Melita Norwood, the “great-granny spy,” who had passed British atomic secrets to the Soviets for years.

Is China buying influence at Cambridge University?

Beijing: A charity that gave £3.7 million ($A6.6 million) to Cambridge University to endow a professorship for Chinese development studies is run by members of the family of the country’s former prime minister, Wen Jiabao, according to a well-placed source in Beijing.

The donation from the Chong Hua Foundation in January 2012 raises serious questions over whether Beijing is buying influence at one of Britain’s most important universities, with one academic accusing it of allowing the Chinese government “to appoint a professor at Cambridge”.

Cambridge University had previously denied that Chong Hua had links to the Chinese government, but information recently received by The Telegraph indicates that the foundation is controlled by Wen Ruchun, the daughter of China’s former prime minister.

China waging a quiet three-front war against US: expert

China is waging three-front political warfare against the United States as part of a “Three Warfares” strategy to drive the US out of the Asia-Pacific region, according to US defense analyst Bill Gertz in an article for the Washington Times on Mar. 26.

Citing a defense contractor report published for Pentagon thinktank the Office of Net Assessment, Gertz said Beijing’s “Three Warfares” consists of psychological, media and legal operations. “They represent an asymmetric ‘military technology’ that is a surrogate for conflict involving nuclear and conventional weapons.”