Fox News Site Post "Obama Is Dead" Rumors! Warning, Conspiracy Or Hacked?

Hackers Commandeer a Fox News Twitter Account

A series of alarming Twitter posts about President Obama appeared on Fox News’ Twitter account for political news early Monday morning, and the Web site for the cable television network said it was a victim of hacking.

The Twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, one of many operated by Fox News, claimed that the president died while campaigning in Iowa, but gave no source for the news. On Monday morning, FoxNews.com first posted a brief statement saying that the reports were incorrect, and that it regretted “any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

The six messages were removed online around noon on Monday, about 10 hours after they were first posted, but not before attracting a flurry of attention overnight and in the morning.

Because of the seriousness of the content, containing graphic, though fictional, descriptions of the president’s death, senior Secret Service officials had gathered Monday morning to discuss them, said a law enforcement official who declined to be identified because of an investigation into the matter.

A spokesman for the Secret Service, George Ogilvie, said, “We are investigating the matter and will be conducting appropriate follow-up.” The White House declined to comment.

In a statement Monday afternoon, Twitter indicated that its own servers were not broken into; instead, the e-mail account associated with the specific Twitter feed was compromised, and from there the hacker or hackers were able to gain access.



Twitter referred other questions about the incident to Fox News; a spokeswoman there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FoxNews.com political news Twitter account, which has some 36,000 followers, had been dormant since Friday, but at about 2 a.m. Monday, a message was posted there that eerily presaged the posts that would follow about the president: “just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th.” The next post said that the president “has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July indeed.”

The next one said he had been “shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck; shooter unknown,” and offered the disturbing detail that he “bled out.” The next post said that the president was shot at Ross’s restaurant in Iowa.

The last Tweet stated: “We wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there’s light at the end of tunnel.”

President Obama had been spending the weekend with his family at Camp David, and returned to the White House on Sunday, according to the official schedule.

FoxNews.com posted a short statement early on Monday morning explaining what had happened: “Hackers sent out several malicious and false Tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

Twitter accounts are hacked from time to time, but Monday’s incident attracted national attention because a presidential assassination was referenced and because a major news organization was affected. Increasingly, news organizations like Fox News have embraced Twitter as a venue for promotion and interaction with readers.

The false Twitter posts about Mr. Obama seemed even more provocative because Fox News is widely perceived to be a voice of opposition to the Obama administration. On Monday, thousands of people on Twitter poked fun at the incident and at Fox News by pretending to guess Fox’s Twitter passwords.

A spokeswoman for Twitter, Carolyn Penner, would not address why the posts to the Fox News political Twitter account stayed up so long, nor would she address reports about who was responsible. “We don’t comment on specific accounts, for privacy reasons,” she said.

A group calling itself the Script Kiddies claimed responsibility for hacking the Fox News Twitter account, according to Adam Peck, the former editor of Think, an online student magazine operated at Stony Brook University, who said he had conversed via instant messaging early Monday morning with a member of the group.

The Script Kiddies, Mr. Peck said, had posted to its own Twitter account that it had hacked Fox News’ political Twitter account and wanted to speak to The Huffington Post, supplying an address at the instant-messaging service AIM. Mr. Peck, 23, said he figured he would try the address as well.

The first conversation took place around 12:38 a.m., Mr. Peck said, before the inflammatory posts to Twitter appeared. “We did ask them what their purpose was,” Mr. Peck said. “They said that they did align themselves with Anonymous and the antisec movement,” he added, meaning “anti-security movement,” or hacking efforts designed to uncover information corporations or governments are trying to hide.

In the instant message, the person claiming to be a representative of the Script Kiddies said to Mr. Peck that there “will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the governments in balance with its people.” The person claimed to be a former member of the better-known hacker group Anonymous.

According to the instant-message record, which Mr. Peck provided to The New York Times, the person with whom he communicated at Script Kiddies said that Fox News “was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting.”

Mr. Peck said he reached back to the Script Kiddies when the first Tweets about the president were published, asking if the group had hacked the Twitter feed.

Mr. Peck said he received a mercurial message in response: “I cannot confirm that at this time. Stay tuned.”

Adding to the confusion, the Twitter account for the Script Kiddies at some point seemed to disappear, Mr. Peck said. He started “frantically searching elsewhere to find corroboration of this story.” But after 10 minutes of not finding it anywhere online, he said he figured it was the work of this group.

Several news reports referenced Think’s interview, but for a time on Monday, the link to the interview was disabled. Mr. Peck, who will be graduating in December with a degree in journalism, said he suspected the shutdown was due to overuse. “We’re not used to having all that much traffic,” he said.

Sources: CNN, NY Times, Russia Today, Youtube

Assange's Supporters Wage Cyberwar For Web 2.0 Freedom Of Speech: Wikileaks "Hacktivists"

Hackers Wage Global Cyberwar In Defense Of WikiLeaks


They're calling it a global "cyberwar." Among the victims: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, and now the Swedish government. Among the attackers: Hackers from Chile to Norway to New Zealand.

"The fact that it’s so global is just a sign of the times. This type of operation has no borders," says Gregg Housh, an unofficial spokesman for the loosely knit "hactivist" group Anonymous, which is organizing the cyberattacks.

Hackers worldwide have launched what they call “Operation Payback” targeting companies that have cut off support for WikiLeaks or its beleaguered founder Julian Assange. On the Twitter feed for "Operation Payback," the hackers today announced their next target: Amazon.com.

“The war is on,” said one person on the Anonymous chat forum WhyWeProtest.net, which Mr. Housh helped create in 2008. In return, Anonops.net, a site that Anonymous has used to announce its attack plans, has come under cyberattacks from those apparently opposed to WikiLeaks.



Their efforts so far have disrupted the websites of the targeted companies for brief periods of time, though it isn't clear how much money – if any – it's costing the companies.

While the Anonymous hackers have called this a "cyberwar" over Internet freedom and support for WikiLeaks, Internet security specialist Bruce Schneier says this is not a "war" in any sense of the word. "It’s kids playing politics."

Indeed, while Mr. Housh is in his 30s, many of the Anonymous participants are said to be teenagers.

The Swedish government’s official website, regeringen.se, was the latest to come under distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which is when a mass of individual computers simultaneously attempt to access the same website, overloading and collapsing the website. A DDoS barrage overnight on Dec. 8 disabled the government website for several hours.

It came under attack because the government last month issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Assange on allegations of sexual assault, which he denies. He was arrested Dec. 7 in London and now faces possible extradition to Sweden. Assange's lawyer has called the arrest a "political stunt."

"In a lot of respects this has become a war. Assange is definitely thought of as a political prisoner," says Housh in a telephone interview from Boston, where he works by day for a computer repair company. While intimately aware of Anonymous activities, Housh himself says he is only an observer at this time.

As pressure has come from the US government for WikiLeaks to cease operations, US companies have also dropped support for the site, which on Nov. 28 began publishing more than 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.

On Dec. 1, Amazon.com refused to allow its web servers to host WikiLeaks any longer. (Ironically, Amazon's UK website is now selling the WikiLeaks cables for the Kindle.) A day later, New Hampshire-based company EveryDNS.net refused to continue supporting the domain name WikiLeaks.org. On Dec. 3, the online payment service provider PayPal stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks. On Dec. 6, the Swiss bank PostFinance said it had frozen Assange’s account.

Some of those companies, in turn, have faced the wrath of hactivists who also call themselves "Anons" – short for Anonymous. PostFinance was disabled by DDoS attacks on Dec. 6. PayPal has reported slower services because of DDoS attacks. The websites for MasterCard and Visa were down for several hours Dec. 8.

“Anons have been organizing attacks on various sites,” confirms Mr. Housh.

But who is Anonymous? Housh says the loose-knit group is composed of anyone who joins an Anonymous online message board, shows up for an Anonymous event, or joins in Anonymous projects. The Guardian, attempting to describe the group, writes that "the membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together."

A spokesman for Anonymous in London who goes by the name "Coldblood" – and whom Housh knows – told the BBC today that "more and more people are joining and helping in" Operation Payback.

"I see this as becoming a war but not your conventional war. This is a war of data, we are trying to keep the Internet open and free for everyone, just the way the Internet has been and always was," he said.

And in a now widely circulated open letter to the world, Anonymous has spoken:

“We are not a terrorist organization as governments, demagogues, and the media would have you believe. At this time Anonymous is a consciousness focused on campaigning peacefully for Freedom of Speech. We ask the world to support us, not for our sake, but for your own.

“… Pay attention citizens, governments, and the world. Anonymous' peaceful campaign will focus on any organization, corporation, government, or entity until the Internet is truly free.”

Suspicions are in the air over what site might be the next to come under attack.

"If the big companies weren't locking down their information before, they're definitely doing it now,” Carole Theriault, a senior security consultant at a computer security firm Sophos told the Telegraph: "This is really unprecedented and Amazon could be next."

Whether the hackers succeed in downing Amazon, says security expert Mr. Schneier, depends on the volume of traffic that Amazon.com is able to handle and the volume of DDoS attacks that Anonymous delivers.

"If the attacker has a bigger pipe than the defender, then the attacker wins," he says. "It all depends on the size of the pipe."


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Sources: Christian Science Monitor, Mastercard, Paypal, RT, Youtube, Google Maps

Cyber Monday Sales Top $1Billion! Sign Of Economic Recovery

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Manic Cyber Monday Top $1B In Sales



Cyber Monday started as a gimmick to get people to shop at their desks on the first workday after Thanksgiving. But if you promote something enough, it can take on a life of its own.

This year, stores swamped customers with online ads and e-mail deals, and sales could top $1 billion, making it bigger than any single shopping day last year.

Online sales were already running 15 percent ahead of last year's by 3 p.m. Monday, with the biggest shopping hours of the day still to come, according to IBM's Coremetrics tracking service.

"The numbers are really strong," said the service's chief strategy officer, John Squire, who added that he expects Cyber Monday to be the biggest online shopping day of the season.

The Monday after Thanksgiving was dubbed Cyber Monday by the National Retail Federation trade group in 2005 to describe the unofficial kickoff to the online shopping season. The idea was that people returning to work after the long weekend would shop at their desks.

It never really was the busiest online shopping day of the year.

But like any good marketing angle, it spawned imitation. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. retailers offered some kind of Cyber Monday promotion this year, targeting shoppers who didn't want to venture out at 4 a.m. for those in-store deals. In 2007, 72 percent offered a Cyber Monday promotion.

"Retailers are doing everything they can to build up and extend the event aspect of it — tweeting deals every hour, running Cyber Monday ads — like it's such a big thing you can't miss out on," said Stacy Landreth Grau, associate professor of marketing at Texas Christian University's Neeley School of Business.

Rachel Bergman, general manager of e-mail marketing service Experian CheetahMail, said this year the company sent out several hundred million Cyber Monday promotional e-mails, 40 percent more than last year — on behalf of clients like Borders, J. Jill and Bass Pro Shops.

It has rarely been the biggest online shopping day of the holiday season, however — last year it was No. 2 — and this year, online deals have been stretched by retailers throughout the weekend.

Historically the biggest online shopping day of the year comes sometime in mid-December, when shoppers face deadlines for ordering to ensure delivery by Christmas Eve. Last year, it was Dec. 15, according to online research firm ComScore.

But this year, shoppers seem to be in the mood to spend more. On Thanksgiving Day, usually quiet for online shopping, Americans spent $407 million online, 28 percent more than last year. They spent nearly $650 million online the following day, up 9 percent.

Last year, Cyber Monday sales totaled $887 million. This year, $1 billion wouldn't be a surprise, analysts say.

New Yorker Joseph Gallo waited until Cyber Monday to buy the Blu-ray "Back to the Future" trilogy, on sale for $34.99, and separately a pair of headphones slashed to $45.69 from $130 from Amazon.com.

"I get the feeling of deals being better having watched Amazon all last week and today," Gallo said.

Many shoppers don't actually buy at work. They compare prices from their desks, then buy when they get home, said Graham Jones, vice president of merchant accounts for deal aggregator Pricegrabber.com. Peak activity on that site is usually 7 or 8 p.m.

Retailers like Best Buy, Target and others have extended their online deals through much of the weekend and through the week, but they were offering specific deals on Monday.

Target offered a Kodak Waterproof mini video camera, regularly $99.99, for $49.99, and it will offer more deals Tuesday and throughout the week. Walmart.com, which is pushing the event as "Cyber Week," promoted bikes for $39 and a 6.5-quart Dutch oven for $33.

Some shoppers who bypassed discounts over the weekend were rewarded on Monday. At Landsend.com, a girl's jacket was on sale for $39.99 on Sunday, a third off the retail price of $59.50. By Monday morning, the price was $35, and an extra savings came by way of free shipping.

Christy McClung, a student and quality control worker in central Oregon, said she bought a TV at BestBuy.com after she was out of town and missed Black Friday sales.

While she didn't find exactly the TV she wanted, she bought one because it was a good value, she said. "With the free shipping, it was a great deal."

Cyber Monday's share of online holiday spending has grown slightly over the past five years, from 2.5 percent in 2005 to 3 percent last year. That's partly because of shifts in the calendar that make the holiday shopping season longer or shorter, but also because "as consumers become more attuned to deals and discounts, Cyber Monday has become a more important event," said Andrew Lipsman, an analyst for ComScore.

Online spending is still a relatively small piece of the holiday pie, between 8 and 10 percent of total holiday sales.


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Sources: CNBC, MSNBC, The Shoe Dish, Google Maps

Yes, Government Control (Limited) Should Be Allowed In Cyberspace...Preventing Viruses, Terrorist Attacks, etc.,

How much Government control in Cyber Crisis?

There's no kill switch for the Internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer.

Yet when a Senate committee was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a provision to give the president the power to shut down Internet traffic to compromised Web sites in an emergency set off alarms.

Corporate leaders and privacy advocates quickly objected, saying the government must not seize control of the Internet.

Lawmakers dropped it, but the debate rages on. How much control should federal authorities have over the Web in a crisis? How much should be left to the private sector? It does own and operate at least 80 percent of the Internet and argues it can do a better job.

"We need to prepare for that digital disaster," said Melissa Hathaway, the former White House cybersecurity adviser. "We need a system to identify, isolate and respond to cyberattacks at the speed of light."

So far at least 18 bills have been introduced as Congress works carefully to give federal authorities the power to protect the country in the event of a massive cyberattack. Lawmakers do not want to violate personal and corporate privacy or squelching innovation. All involved acknowledge it isn't going to be easy.

For most people, the Internet is a public haven for free thought and enterprise. Over time it has become the electronic control panel for much of the world's critical infrastructure. Computer networks today hold government secrets, military weapons specifications, sensitive corporate data, and vast amounts of personal information.

Millions of times a day, hackers, cybercriminals and mercenaries working for governments and private entities are scanning those networks, looking to defraud, disrupt or even destroy.

Just eight years ago, the government ordered planes from the sky in the hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Could or should the president have the same power over the Internet in a digital disaster?

If hackers take over a nuclear plant's control system, should the president order the computer networks shut down? If there's a terrorist attack, should the government knock users off other computer networks to ensure that critical systems stay online? And should the government be able to dictate who companies can hire and what they must do to secure the networks that affect Americans' daily life.

Government officials say the U.S. must improve efforts to share information about cyberthreats with private industry. They also want companies to ensure they are using secure software and hiring qualified workers to run critical systems.

Much like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, cybersecurity has attracted the interest of a number of House and Senate committees, all hoping to get a piece of the oversight power:

* Bills in the House Homeland Security Committee bills would protect the electric grid and require the department to secure its networks.

* The Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee is writing legislation aimed largely at federal agencies.

* The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is working on a bill that promotes public awareness and technical education, raises the planned White House cyberadviser to a Cabinet-level position and calls for professional cyberstandards. An early draft would have given the president the power to shut down compromised federal or critical networks in an emergency.

Bloggers howled that the government was taking over the Internet. Business leaders protested, and Senate aides reworked the bill. Early versions of the second draft are more vague, giving the president only the authority to "direct the national response" to a cyberthreat.

Committee spokeswoman Jena Longo said the bill "will not empower a government shutdown or takeover of the Internet and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false."

She said the president has the constitutional authority to protect the American people and direct the response to a crisis — including "securing our national cyberinfrastructure from attack."

Privacy advocates say the government has not proven it can do a better job securing networks than the private sector.

"The government needs to get its own cybersecurity house in order first before it tries to tell the private sector what to do," said Gregory T. Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Nojeim said the Senate Commerce Committee bill appears to leave "tough questions to the president, and that isn't comforting because some presidents will answer those questions in troubling ways."

U.S. officials acknowledge that their networks are scanned or attacked millions of times a day. Spies have breached the electrical grid. In July, hackers simultaneously brought down several U.S. government Web sites and sites in South Korea.

Home computers are targets, too. A study by security software provider McAfee Inc. says as many as 4 million computers are newly infected each month and turned into "botnets" — armies of computers used by someone without their owners' knowledge. As many as 10 percent of the world's computers might be unknowingly infected.

Shutting down a compromised system may sound like a good idea, but "it's not like the Internet has an on-off switch somewhere you can press," said Franck Journoud, manager of information security policy for the Business Software Alliance.

Most industries are federally regulated, so the government should work within those systems to plan for disasters, said Journoud, whose group has met with lawmakers and the White House on cyberpolicies.

Rather than setting minimum standards, business groups say the U.S. should endorse existing voluntary industry ones.

Cyberexperts also argue that when hackers infiltrate a critical network, the solution is not to shut down the system, but to isolate and filter out the offending computer codes.

Private companies are willing and able to protect their systems without government mandates, said Tom Reilly, president of ArcSight, a cybersecurity software company. He said the government should concentrate on protecting critical infrastructure and data privacy, and promote education on cybersecurity.

"People want to know if they are one of the 10 percent of the computers that are infected," he said. "They just don't know what to do. Most people just hope they're one of the other nine."



Justice: No privacy problems in Cyber program

The US Justice Department has concluded that a beefed-up surveillance program that monitors federal employees' Internet traffic does not violate their rights or those of private citizens who communicate with them.

But the review of the Einstein 2 program was limited and leaves important questions unanswered, said the vice president of an Internet freedom watchdog group.

Einstein 2 is a second-generation automated program designed to detect cyber attacks on government computer networks.

The review, completed last month and released Friday, said the system addresses potential privacy concerns by warning employees when they log in that their communications may be monitored.

Such warnings "eliminate federal employees' legitimate expectations of privacy" on government computers, acting Assistant Attorney General David J. Barron wrote.

The review reaches the same conclusion as a study undertaken by the Justice Department during the Bush administration.

Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said his group agrees with the report's conclusion, as far as it goes.

"If you send an e-mail to the government, you can't complain that they read it," Dempsey said, after reviewing the two reports.

But the memos do not address how Einstein works in practice, including whether it also monitors communications between private parties and if so, what it does with any information it collects, Dempsey said.

"Those questions haven't been fully answered and they deserve to be," he said.

The memos also do not deal with the next-generation program, Einstein 3, which is intended to both detect and stop cyber attacks against government computers.



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Sources: MSNBC, Wikipedia, AP, Google Maps

Facebook Provides Iranians With Link To American Relatives & Friends

MSNBC----

I’ve been using Facebook for years to connect with co-workers, friends and family. However, I never anticipated its wingspan until I received “friend requests” from my Iranian relatives in Tehran, whom I have seen only a handful of times throughout my life.

I’m a full-blown Hoosier, but my dad migrated to the U.S. from Iran after medical school. We took occasional family trips to Iran: My dad wants his kids to stay connected to Persian culture. There, I got to meet my Iranian extended family. After visits, my relationships with them tended to stagnate ... that is, until we found each other online as young adults.

I always assumed that I'd have little in common with my Iranian relatives, but on Facebook, I saw them as people interested in the same TV shows and the same political news. Their photos and videos on the social networking site gave me insight into their lives. It was almost like meeting completely new people.

With the recent election in Iran, the site became a source of information on the protests and the safety of my family in Iran.

Personal touch to news:

I learned that for their own protection, many Iranian students and Facebook users have changed their account names. Rather than taking their profiles down altogether, they say students still feel the need to spread information and stay connected. Family and friends in the U.S. have also helped spread information from Iran through their active Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I decided to message Mojdeh (not her real name), a teenage relative I recently “friended” who is now a student at a university in Tehran. Instead of receiving a Facebook reply, I got an e-mail from her. Mojdeh said she can't really access Facebook, instant message services, mobile phones or Twitter — although e-mail seems to be working.

She told me everyone was safe but frustrated with the election results. Although I could log on to almost any Web site to see the crowds, guards and violence, it felt different coming from someone I was slowly getting to know all over again.

Mojdeh said it’s hard to know exactly what's happening with regard to protests or reports of violence because “they (the Iranian government) don’t tell the truth … but many shots have been fired." She said most people in Tehran don’t accept the election results and believe that the government “cheated.”

So far, she claimed, the Iranian police, known as the Sepah, hit one of her friends who was protesting, and a bullet grazed another friend in the arm. She’s growing concerned about the possibility of spreading violence.

Don’t know what’s going to happen:

Mojdeh’s sister, Asal (not her real name), who is following the events in Iran from her home in the U.S., said it seems the family is OK at the moment.

"But this is just for now,” Asal said via Facebook. “We don’t know what’s going to happen if no one supports this protest from outside Iran.”


Asal said people are discussing a rumor that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked the army to attack protesters in the street. Mojdeh claimed that the buzz circulating among her friends is that the Sepah has raided homes and universities. The reports are that satellite dishes have been damaged to limit news activity, and young protesters have been beaten in the streets, including women and children. She said she wakes in the middle of the night to hear people screaming, “Allah o Akbar” — “God is great” — from rooftops in protest against the government.

Asal expressed her concerns about the outcome of the protests and what might happen if people ignore what’s going on. She said some Iranians hesitate to call an ambulance even when they're hurt, because people are saying that injured protesters are being arrested rather than treated.

A few relatives have been keeping close contact with me, sending messages and links to reports about the crisis. But my limited connection with them via the Internet has taught me that people, while fearful of Iranian police reaction, have been empowered by the peaceful protests. They are now, more than ever, determined to stay connected to the rest of the world — at least electronically.


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Sources: MSNBC, Facebook, Flickr, Google Maps

Iranian Revolution Created Cyberwars...Government Imposed Media Blackout Didn't Work!

MSNBC----


There are currently two revolutions taking place in Iran right now. The uprising on the ground and in Cyberspace.

In many ways we're seeing the first real, kind of Cyber War of the 21st century.

Its not Silicon Valley or Langley, instead these are individuals somewhere in a basement or some parent's garage, using the internet in the way they see fit.

Its changing the way that government can react to these kinds of protests.

Its had a huge effect in the way that Iran can respond to these demonstrations.

Imagine if in 1989 we had Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

I don't think there would have been a Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Author Reza Aslan.....June 19, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Sources: MSNBC, Cincinnati Mercantile, Now Public, Boing Boing, Google Maps

President Obama Announces U.S. Government's Strategic Plan To Secure Cyber Space (Full Text)

President Obama: "Hello, everybody. Please be seated. We meet today at a transformational moment, a moment in history when our interconnected world presents us at once with great promise but also great peril. Now, over the past four months, my administration has taken decisive steps to seize the promise and confront these perils. We're working to recover from a global recession while laying a new foundation for lasting prosperity."

"We're strengthening our armed forces as they fight two wars. At the same time, we're renewing American leadership to confront unconventional challenges from nuclear proliferation to terrorism, from climate change to pandemic disease. And we're bringing to government and to this White House unprecedented transparency and accountability and new ways for Americans to participate in their democracy."

"But none of this progress would be possible, and none of these 21st century challenges can be fully met without America's digital infrastructure, the backbone that underpins a prosperous economy and a strong military and an open and efficient government. Without that foundation, we can't get the job done. It's long been said that the revolutions in communications and information technology have given birth to a virtual world."

"But make no mistake, this world, Cyberspace is a world that we depend on every single day. It's our hardware and our software, our desktops and laptops and cell phones and Blackberries that have become woven into every aspect of our lives. It's the broadband networks beneath us and the wireless signals around us, the local networks in our schools and hospitals and businesses and the massive grids that power our nation."

"It's the classified military and intelligence networks that keep us safe and the Worldwide Web that has made us more interconnected than at any time in human history. So cyberspace is real, and so are the risks that come with it. It's the great irony of our information age, the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy. And this paradox, seen and unseen, is something that we experience every day. It's about the privacy and economic security of American families. We rely on the Internet to pay our bills, to bank, to shop, to file our taxes."

"But we've had to learn a whole new vocabulary just to stay ahead of the cyber criminals who would do us harm. Spyware and malware, spoofing and phishing and bot-nets, millions of Americans have been victimized, their privacy violated, their identities stolen, their lives upended, and their wallets emptied. According to one survey, in the past two years alone, cyber crime has cost Americans more than $8 billion. I know how it feels to have privacy violated because it has happened to me and the people around me. It's no secret that my presidential campaign harnessed the Internet and technology to transform our politics."

"What isn't widely known is that during the general election, hackers managed to penetrate our computer systems. To all of who donated to our campaign, I want you to all rest assured our fundraising Web site was untouched. (LAUGHTER) So your confidential, personal, and financial information was protected. But between August and October, hackers gained access to e-mails in a range of campaign files from policy position papers to travel plans. And we worked closely with the FBI and the Secret Service and hired security consultants to restore the security of our systems. It was a powerful reminder."

"In this information age, one of your greatest strengths, in our case, our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the Internet, could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities. This is a matter as well of America's economic competitiveness. The small businesswoman in St. Louis, the bond trader in the New York Stock Exchange, the workers at a global shipping company in Memphis, the young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, they all need the networks to make the next payroll, the next trade, the next delivery, the next great breakthrough."

"E-commerce someone last year accounted for some $132 billion in retail sales. But every say, we see waves of cyber thieves trolling for sensitive information; the disgruntled employee on the inside, the lone hacker a thousand miles away, organized crime, the industrial spy, and increasingly, foreign intelligence services. In one brazen act last year, thieves used stolen credit card information to steal millions of dollars from 130 ATM machines in 49 cities around the world. And they did it in just 30 minutes. A single employee of an American company was convicted of stealing intellectual property reportedly worth $400 million."

"It's been estimated that last year alone, cyber criminals stole intellectual property from businesses worldwide worth up to $1 trillion. In short, America's economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cyber security. And this is also a matter of public safety and national security. We count on computer networks to deliver our oil and gas, our power and our water. We rely on them for public transportation and air traffic control."

"Yet we know that cyber intruders have probed our electrical grid and that, in other countries, cyber attacks have plunged entire cities into darkness. Our technological advantage is a key to America's military dominance, but our defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country, attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against."

"Indeed, in today's world, act of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few key strokes on the computer, a weapon of mass disruption. In one of the most serious cyber incidents to date against our military networks, several thousand computers were infected last year by malicious software and malware. And while no sensitive information was compromised, our troops and defense personnel had to give up those external memory devices, thumb drives, changing the way they used their computers every day. And last year, we had a glimpse of the future face of war."

"As Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, cyber attacks crippled Georgian government Web sites. The terrorists that sowed so much death and destruction in Mumbai released not only to guns and grenades but also on GPS and phones using voice over the Internet. For all these reasons, it's now clear this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

"It's also clear that we're not as prepared as we should be as a government or as a country. In recent years, some protect has been made at the federal level, but just as we failed in the past to invest in our physical infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, and rails, we failed to invest in the security of our digital infrastructure. No single official oversees security policy across the federal government."

"No single agency has the responsibility or authority to match the scope and scale of the challenge. Indeed, when it comes to cyber security, federal agencies have overlapping missions and don't coordinate and communicate nearly as well as they should with each other or with the private sector. We saw this in that disorganized response to Conficker, the Internet work that, in recent months, has infected millions of computers around the world."

"This status quo is no longer acceptable, not when there's so much at stake. We can and we must do better. And that's why, shortly after taking office, I directed my National Security Council and Homeland Security Council to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the federal government's efforts to defend our information and communications infrastructure and to recommend the best way to ensure that these networks are able to secure our networks as well as our prosperity. Our view -- our review was open and transparent."

"I want is to acknowledge Melissa Hathaway, who's here, who is the acting senior director for cyber space on our National Security Council who led the review team as well as the Center for Strategic and International Studies bipartisan commission on cyber security and all who were part of our 60-day review team. They listened to a wide variety of groups, many of which are represented here today and I want to thank for their input."

"Industry and academia, civil liberties and privacy advocates, we listened to every level and branch of government from local to state to federal, civilian, military, homeland as well as intelligence, Congress, and international partners as well. I consulted with my National Security teams, my Homeland Security teams, and my economic advisers. Today, I'm releasing a report on our review and can announce that my administration will pursue a new, comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure. This new approach starts at the top with this commitment from me."

"From now on, our digital infrastructure, the networks and computers we depend on every day will be treated as they should be; as a strategic national asset. Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority. We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy, and resilient. We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

"To give these efforts the high level focus and the attention they deserve, and as part of the new single national security staff announced this week, I'm creating a new office here at the White House that will be led by the cyber security coordinator. Because of the critical importance of this work, I will personally select this official. I'll depend on this official in all matters relating to cyber security. And this official will have my full support and regular access to me as we confront these challenges."

"Today, I want to focus on the important responsibilities this office will fulfill, orchestrating and integrating all cyber security policies for the government, working closing with the Office of Management and Budget to ensure agency budgets reflect those priorities, and in the event of major cyber incident or attack, coordinating our response. To ensure the that federal cyber policy enhance our security and our prosperity, my cyber security coordinator will be a member of the National Security Staff as well as the staff of my National Economic Council."

"To ensure that policies keep faith with our fundamental values, this office will also include an official with a portfolio specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There's much work to be done, and the report we're releasing today outlines a range of actions that we will pursue in five key areas. First, working in partnership with the communities represented here today, we will develop a new, comprehensive strategy to secure America's information and communications networks."

"To ensure a coordinated approach across the government, my cyber security coordinator will work closely with chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, and my chief information officer, Vivek Kundra. To ensure accountability in federal agencies, cyber security will be designated as one of my key management priorities. Clear milestones and performance metrics will measure progress. And as we develop our strategy, we will be open and transparent, which is why you'll find today's report and a wealth of related information on Web site, www.whitehouse.gov."

"Second, we will work with all the key players, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents. Given the enormous damage that can be caused by even a single cyber attack, ad hoc responses will not do. Nor is it sufficient to simply strengthen our defenses after incidents or attacks occur. Just as we do for natural disasters, we have to have plans and resources in place beforehand, sharing information, issues warnings, and ensuring a coordinated response."

"Third, we will strengthen the public-private partnerships that are critical to this endeavor. The vast majority of our critical infrastructure in the United States is owned and operated by the private sector. So let me be very clear. My administration will not dictate security standards for private companies. On the contrary, we will collaborate with industry to find technology solutions that ensure our security and promote prosperity."

"Fourth, we will continue to invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery we need to meet the digital challenges of our time. And that's why my administration is making major investments in our information infrastructure, laying broadband lines to every corner of America, building a smart electric grid to deliver energy more efficiently, pursuing a next-generation of air traffic control systems, and moving to electronic health records with privacy protections to reduce costs and save lives."

"And, finally, we will begin a national campaign to promote cyber security awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and to build a digital work force for the 21st century. And that's why we're making a new commitment to education in math and science and historic investments in science and research and development because it's not enough for our children and students to master today's technologies -- social networking and e-mailing and texting and blogging -- we need them to pioneer the technologies that will allow us to work effectively through these new media and allow us to prosper in the future."

"So these are the things we will do. Let me also be clear about what we will not do. Our pursuit of cyber security will not include -- I repeat will not include monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to net neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be, open and free."

"The task I have described will not be easy. Some 1.5 billion people around the world are already online, and more are logging on every day. Groups and governments are sharpening their cyber capabilities. Protecting our prosperity and security in this globalized world is going to be a long, difficult struggle demanding patience and persistence over many years. But we need to remember we're only at the beginning. The epics of history are long. The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, by comparison, our information age is still in its infancy."

"We're only at Web 2.0. Now, our virtual world is going viral, and we've only just begun to explore the next generation of technologies that will traffic accident our lives in ways we can't even begin to imagine. So a new world awaits, a world of greater security and greater potential prosperity if we reach for it, if we leap. So as long as I'm president of the United States, we will do just that. And the United States, the nation that invented the Internet, that launched an information revolution that transformed the world, will do what we did in the 20th century and lead once more in the 21st. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you."

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Politico, Washington Post, Guardian, Day Life

Why The U.S. Government Must Protect Cyber Space

Securing Our Digital Future

Melissa Hathaway, Cybersecurity Chief at the National Security Council, discusses securing our nation's digital future:

"The globally-interconnected digital information and communications infrastructure known as cyberspace underpins almost every facet of modern society and provides critical support for the U.S. economy, civil infrastructure, public safety and national security. The United States is one of the global leaders on embedding technology into our daily lives and this technology adoption has transformed the global economy and connected people in ways never imagined."

"My boys are 8 and 9 and use the Internet daily to do homework, blog with their friends and teacher, and email their mom; it is second nature to them."

"My mom and dad can read the newspapers about their daughter on-line and can reach me anywhere in the world from their cell phone to mine. And people all over the world can post and watch videos and read our blogs within minutes of completion."

"I can’t imagine my world without this connectivity and I would bet that you cannot either. Now consider that the same networks that provide this connectively also increasingly help control our critical infrastructure. These networks deliver power and water to our households and businesses, they enable us to access our bank accounts from almost any city in the world, and they are transforming the way our doctors provide healthcare. For all of these reasons, we need a safe Internet with a strong network infrastructure and we as a nation need to take prompt action to protect cyberspace for what we use it for today and will need in the future."

"Protecting cyberspace requires strong vision and leadership and will require changes in policy, technology, education, and perhaps law."

"The 60-day cyberspace policy review summarizes our conclusions and outlines the beginning of a way forward in building a reliable, resilient, trustworthy digital infrastructure for the future. There are opportunities for everyone—individuals, academia, industry, and governments—to contribute toward this vision. During the review we engaged in more than 40 meetings and received and read more than 100 papers that informed our recommendations. As you will see in our review there is a lot of work for us to do together and an ambitious action plan to accomplish our goals. It must begin with a national dialogue on cybersecurity and we should start with our family, friends, and colleagues."

"We are late in addressing this critical national need and our response must be focused, aggressive, and well-resourced. We have garnered great momentum in the last few months, and the vision developed in our review is based on the important input we received from industry, academia, the civil liberties and privacy communities, others in the Executive Branch, State governments, Congress, and our international partners. We now have a strong and common view of what is needed to achieve change. Ensuring that cyberspace is sufficiently resilient and trustworthy to support U.S. goals of economic growth, civil liberties and privacy protections, national security, and the continued advancement of democratic institutions requires making cybersecurity a national priority."




Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Youtube