While world watches North Korea, China builds in the South China Sea

Airstrips and military facilities on China’s Subi Reef as seen from a Philippine military transport plane on April 21, 2017. China has renewed its militarization efforts in the South China Sea while attention has been focused on North Korea. (Bullit Marquez/AP/File)

 

While the world has turned its focus to North Korea, satellite images show new Chinese high-frequency radar facilities on its controversial man-made outposts in the Spratly and Parcel Islands. China has been pressured to halt its militarization of the contested land.

DECEMBER 15, 2017  WASHINGTON—While attention in Asia has been distracted by the North Korean nuclear crisis in the past year, China has continued to install high-frequency radar and other facilities that can be used for military purposes on its man-made islands in the South China Sea, a US think-tank said on Thursday.

Russia Infiltrates Vital U.S. Computer Networks

Hundreds of thousands of Americans may be at the mercy of Russia.

Hackers successfully breached the unclassified Executive Office of the President (eop) network in October.

“Any such activity is something we take very seriously. In this case, we took immediate measures to evaluate and mitigate the activity,” a White House official said. “Our actions are ongoing, and some have resulted in some temporary outages and loss of connectivity for our users.”

‘Trojan Horse’ Bug Lurking in Vital US Computers Since 2011

If Russia wanted to, they likely could’ve powered America off yesterday. The United States has done almost next to nothing to shield it self from such an attack with the exception of putting out news reports by officials who state they’re working on a plan or ‘taking measures’ to ensure networks and infrastructure remain secure. Conducting a search here under ‘SCADA‘ will reveal just how vulnerable America really is — and that’s just one attack method of many needing to be guarded against.

 

A destructive “Trojan Horse” malware program has penetrated the software that runs much of the nation’s critical infrastructure and is poised to cause an economic catastrophe, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

National Security sources told ABC News there is evidence that the malware was inserted by hackers believed to be sponsored by the Russian government, and is a very serious threat.

‘Dragonfly’ virus strikes U.S. power plants

WASHINGTON – U.S. and European energy companies have become the target of a “Dragonfly” virus out of Eastern Europe that goes after energy grids, major electricity generation firms, petroleum pipelines operators and energy industrial equipment providers.

Unearthed by the cyber security firm Symantec, Dragonfly has been in operation since at least 2011. Its malware software allows its operators to not only monitor in real time, but also disrupt and even sabotage wind turbines, gas pipelines and power plants – all with the click of a computer mouse.

The attacks have disrupted industrial control system equipment providers by installing the malware during downloaded updates for computers running the ICS equipment.