North Korea Fights Back? North Korea has been accused by the Federal Bureau of I

Question

North Korea Fights Back?

North Korea has been accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of being the mastermind behind the devastating attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment in December 2014. However, it is far from certain that this was a state sponsored attack by a foreign government; some evidence points to a group of hactivists behind the attack. If North Korea is being falsely accused, as they have claimed, of being behind the attack they may now be fighting back to even the score.

The web site of the state-run North Korean news agency, which many users may have visited in order to get the Korean's side of the story, contains the file FlashPlayer10.zip served up by JavaScript code. Not all users who visit the news agency web site are prompted to download this file: the JavaScript code looks first at the user's operating system, language preference, web browser version, and location before determining if the user should be prompted to download the file. This file contains two executable files--"Install Flash Player 10 Activex.exe" and "Install Flash Player 10 Plugin.exe"--that pretend to be part of the Adobe Flash player installation process but instead contain malware. These files appear to steal passwords from browsers and perhaps perform other malicious actions. The time stamp on these files is actually prior to the Sony attack, but since time stamps can be easily manipulated it's not clear how long these files have been on the North Korean site.

Users who may have visited this site were urged to scan their computers for malware. In addition, Adobe itself later issued a fix for a critical vulnerability in its Flash software for both Windows and Mac OS editions.

Stay secure!

Homework Think Critically North Korea Fights Back:

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Submit an essay based on real-world scenario. The essay should be no more than 1-2 double spaced pages, size 12 font. It should have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The essay could address any of the following questions:

1) Do you think North Korea was acting in what they thought was their best interest?

2) From a security stand point, what are people supposed to do?

3) How should the US government react to the situation?

4) What would be a good foreign policy when dealing with Cyber incidents like this?

5) How are computers supposed to be secure when hackers are coming up with new ways to attack computers every day?

6) What do you think the affect of actions like this are when it comes to computer security?

7) If there is another area you would like to address, feel free, but it should be relevant to the topic.

Requirements: I understand that students may not be the strongest writers, but you only get better with practice. I am not going to be the grammar police when it comes to this assignment but I would like you to write in complete sentences and synthesize your ideas. I normally grade these assignments on whether or not you complete them as long as it is well written and follows a STRICT no plagiarism policy. You should use APA citation styles and all sources should be cited. If you are not familiar with APA, please google it. You should use at least 2 resources for the paper.

Explanation / Answer

Part 5.

Kevin Mitnick, possibly the world’s most famous hacker, once quoted, “The methods that will most effectively minimize the ability of intruders to compromise information security are comprehensive user training and education. Enacting policies and procedures simply won't suffice. Even with oversight the policies and procedures may not be effective: my access to Motorola, Nokia, ATT, Sun depended upon the willingness of people to bypass policies and procedures that were in place for years before I compromised them successfully. ”

In non-technical terms, cybersecurity is protection of one’s cyber resources from outside access and tampering. In technical terms, cyber security is described as the body of technologies, processes designed for protection of networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized or unwarranted access. In a computing setting, security consist of both cybersecurity and physical security.

                     In a world where data proliferation has its roots so deep that we have separate computer science domain to deal with it (Big Data and Analytics), the management of that data has become a sour experience for many as the distinction between information and data has seemingly become harder to realize with the constantly piling up data. This isolated, unattended data is most likely prone to hackers always skimming and scheming to attain valuable information to manipulate systems into surrendering. When we look at the malware spread by the North Koreans, one thing is apparent, they were trying to gain information from the unattended data of the users prone to attacks. There are tons of hackers out there devising new algorithms to compromise the toughest of systems. In such state of affairs, it is highly recommended that all software development teams have a very capable testing department to point out all the vulnerabilities in the system before putting that application out for public use and also after putting out that software in the market by rolling out new updates which address important loopholes.

P.W Singer and Allan Friedman (2014) point out that cybersecurity is one of those areas that has been left to the most technically inclined to worry about. It is highly prevalent is modern society to call up the IT help desk at the slightest sign of the machine’s unusual behavior. Security from hackers is a far-fetched idea for these people who struggle to secure their confidential data physically present at their workstations even from their colleagues, who if fall under the wrong impression and even have the most fickle proclivity towards technology can gain access to their work and perform harmful actions with malice. It is therefore, very important that the single – purpose computer users who just log in at the start and log out after their work sessions to have some remote knowledge of protecting the data that they are made responsible to handle against any accosted approach of hackers. Also, anti-viruses should be updated with the latest virus definitions for any new methods devised by hackers. The code for financial systems should be written as such that it takes care of synchronization, encryption and protection of user information.

Gregory C. Wilshusen and David A. Powner (2009) describe a study on cybersecurity which GAO (U.S Government Accountability Office) conducted because of the terrorist groups which expressed a desire to use cyber-attacks to target the United States. GAO found that the threat to federal systems and critical infrastructure was growing. Compounding the growing number and kinds of threats, GAO along with agencies and their inspector general – has identified significant weaknesses in the security controls on federal information systems and also made hundreds of recommendations to improve security like ‘Federal Desktop Core Configuration’, ‘The Information Systems Security Lines of Business’, ‘Trusted Internet Connections Initiative’ to name a few.

To conclude, I would like to say that evolving systems propagate evolving threats, the hackers that like to play around with these systems are mostly looking for a challenge and these evolving systems are just that. To put everything into perspective, one thing is for sure, nothing warrants improvement without need. These needs can sometimes be the result of the changing times or some fault existing in the current system. Needless to say, hackers are prominent figures in pointing out the latter. Nothing is safe and sound when even your private life is not private as Mr. Edward Snowden has most generously made us aware of and security from hackers is probably as important as using a seatbelt while driving, and as all cars have seatbelts, it is important to have security measures in place everywhere.

References-

Reference type

Reference Details

Journal article

P.W Singer and Allan Friedman (2014). CyberSecurity and CyberWar,what everyone needs to know 4, 32–37

Journal article

Gregory C. Wilshusen and David A. Powner (2009). Cybersecurity: Continued Efforts Are Needed to Protect Information.

Reference type

Reference Details

Journal article

P.W Singer and Allan Friedman (2014). CyberSecurity and CyberWar,what everyone needs to know 4, 32–37

Journal article

Gregory C. Wilshusen and David A. Powner (2009). Cybersecurity: Continued Efforts Are Needed to Protect Information.

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