Recently CNN reported that government servers were hacked by Russians. In January, US Military twitter accounts were hacked by Islamic State supporters and the information of US personnel was released to the public. How could this happen? This sounds like an issue that other countries and even some amateur hackers managed to circumvent whatever security measures we had in place.
In reality, though, it's not. The twitter accounts were just that, twitter accounts. Completely unimportant, no information was compromised, and it turned out to be just a minor annoyance. All the information on personnel was already public. The Russian attack is a non-issue as well. According to CNN, the only information stolen was some details about the President's schedule. The hacking attempt was apparently initiated with a phishing email. Phishing. This is the oh-so-terrible threat of Russian hackers. The system that was compromised wasn't even classified. Officials are told not to put anything sensitive on that system anyway.
If anything, this story points to positive things. If hackers are resorting to phishing, it means their program is mediocre. Very little skill is required for this sort of attack, and it's easily prevented. Some may say the US must be behind others in cyber warfare. This could not be further from the truth. The lack of stories about US hacking means we're successful. There is no chance we aren't spying on others. The only incidents that I've heard about were the Stuxnet virus that infected an Iranian nuclear facility, destroying many of their centrifuges, and an unconfirmed report that computers in countries like Russia, China, and Iran have been infected with a sophisticated malware that can seize control of network and can't be removed. Experts suggested it had to be made by a state, likely the US. The NSA apparently knows how to install backdoors in hard drives made by Toshiba, Western Digital, and other major manufacturers. This allows them to monitor the majority of computers around the world, enabling spying on government and military institutions, telecommunications, energy companies, banks, nuclear researchers, media, and persons of interest. US security is not in question. The only reasonable concern is privacy from these spying operations.
Russian hackers: http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/07/politics/how-russians-hacked-the-wh/
Grant, remember to make your article a hyperlink
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