geekosystem

At what point do we start classifying something as a "cyberattack" rather than "malicious spam" when it comes to email? Apparently, that line is drawn when it involves the White House. After some reports were made that a brazen attack occurred that compromised the security of the United States' nuclear commands, the White House has confirmed that they were, in fact, the target of a "cyberattack" insofar as an email was sent to them that contained malware. Most everything else about the hyperbolic first reports, however, they claim to be false.

We've been hearing about Iran wanting to disconnect from the lawless pit of sins that is the Internet for a while, but it never seemed like it was going to happen. Empty threats, we thought. They wouldn't want to lose Lolcats, we said. Well, now we have reports saying Iran is planning on moving its key ministries from the Internet come September, and house them in its very own intranet.

In the movies, when the good guys are getting hacked there's always some kind of crazy 3D display showing the assault in realtime. Obviously, that's all made up for the audience's benefit -- it sure looks a lot more compelling than lists of packet transfers -- but a Japanese company has gone and decided to make it a reality.

So, some guys got together and figured out a way to take down the entire Internet as we know it. One guy was like, "Dude -- remember that time we were talking about conquering the Internet? ... Wanna try it?" And his buddy was all, "Pssssssht, come on, man! ... You think we could?" So the first guy, totally seriously says, "Totally." And they did! Okay, maybe this isn't exactly how it went down, but Ph.D. candidate Max Schuchard of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues did have the idea to design the ultimate cyberweapon, an attack that would render the Internet dead, useless, and blacked out, for at least a few days before it could even start to be repaired. And then save it for a rainy day. They don't see anyone trying to wage this kind of attack any time soon, so in the meantime, they are going to work on how to defend against it. But here is what they came up with:

Sometime in December 2009, Google fended off a "sophisticated and targeted attack" in China, the goal of which seemed to be to access the accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  This attack, and other attempts at the surveillance of human rights activists in China that were revealed during Google's investigation into the attack, lead Google to announce a change of policy.

From a January Google Blog post:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Well, as things so often do with large governments, a few weeks has become a few months, and yesterday, the Chinese minister for industry and information technology confirmed that if Google violated Chinese law it would be considered "unfriendly," "irresponsible," and "would have to bear the consequences."

According to the Financial Times, whose source is "familiar with the company’s thinking," Google is now preparing to close Google.cn: