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News let= ter - on making the difference.

1. U.S. is not pr= epared to fight cyber attacks “Cyber combatants could cause massive blackouts lasting fo= r months. They could destroy the electronic processes on which our banking,= commerce and financial systems have been built, stealing - or simply wipin= g out - vast amounts of wealth. They could put our air transportation syste= m in jeopardy. They might even be able to cripple our defense and national = security infrastructure. It is possible to defend against such threats. But= we are not doing it adequately” - Mike McConnell, who served as director o= f the National Security Agency under President Bill Clinton, and as directo= r of national intelligence under President George Bush.

3. “CNN Presents: We Were Warned, Cyber Shockwave= What you are about to see is not real but the threat is very real indeed= . You're about to get an unprecedented look how the U.S. government would d= eal with a massive cyber shockwave.

5. <= span lang=3Den-US style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;line-height:125%;font-family:"Treb= uchet MS"; text-decoration:underline;font-weight:bold;language:en-US'>The Cyber war = Plan In May 2007, Pr= esident Bush authorized the National Security Agency, based at Fort Meade, = Md., to launch a the operation helped turn the tide of the war.sophisticate= d attack on an enemy thousands of miles away without firing a bullet or dro= pping a bomb...the operation helped turn the tide of the war”….

6.= = War from Cyber= space= On October 1, jus= t beyond the Beltway inside Fort Meade, a four star general became the firs= t head of America's new Cyber Command. Subordinate to General Keith Alexand= er are the Tenth Fleet and the Twenty-Fourth Air Force. The fleet has no sh= ips, and the air force unit has neither aircraft nor missiles. Their weapon= s are ones and zeroes. Their battlefield is cyberspace.

8. Nebraska's electric utilities take steps to prevent = cyber attacks: “Security is a topic electric utilities, especially= those with nuclear power plants, do not want to discuss in these times of = domestic and international terrorism.

Talking about cyber security -- how utilities protect computer sof= tware systems that control the generation and distribution of electricity -= - is even more taboo”

10. Spam isn’t jus= t a random junk mail anymore Bulent Teksoz, S= ymantec's Middle East security analyst, told Gulf News that 2008 was the ye= ar the cyber-crime industry matured. Black expects the rise in cyber-crimin= als to continue, although he says the majority of them, about 90 per cent, = are believed to be involved in organised crime.

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2. Rise of the Po= int-and-Click Botnet

“In 2005, a Russian hacker group known as UpLevel developed Zeus, = a point-and-click program …..The security firm NetWitness, based in Herndon= , VA, released a report highlighting the kind of havoc the software can wre= ak. It documents a Zeus botnet that controlled nearly 75,000 computers in m= ore than 2,400 organizations, including the drug producer Merck, the networ= k equipment maker Juniper Networks, and the Hollywood studio Paramount Pict= ures. Over four weeks, the software was used to steal more than 68,000 log-= in credentials, including thousands of Facebook log-ins and Yahoo e-mail lo= g-ins.

4. THREATENING MOVES—"Over the pa= st 12 months, we've begun to experience some significant activity from some= very talented adversaries," says Col. James Lord, who's in charge of = defense for the Guard network...The intruders are so adept at what they do = that Lord is convinced they're state-sponsored hackers. "The nature of= the attacks they're launching against a military network - they're not nor= mal, they're not simple, they're very sophisticated," he adds.<= /p>

7. Google Reveals Chinese Espionage Efforts = After an attack that required staggeri= ng skill and resources, the company threatens to quit China...The hackers p= robably used "social engineering" techniques to breach Google's d= efenses...In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted = attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted= in the theft of intellectual property from Google”

9. Today's Threat: Computer Network Terrorism = “in November 2009, Brazil's electricity was blacked out fo= r more than an hour. "It is still not clear what happened, but one ass= umption is that it was a cyber -terror attack," he suggests, adding th= at in 2007 Estonia's computer infrastructures were attacked, most likely by= Russian hackers, bringing the country to a near standstill for about 48 ho= urs “.

Cyber war— “we were warn= ed” (CNN special)