The cybersecurity broken window

At Chicago Boyz Trent Telenko writes about Hillary and FBI Director Comey's cybersecurity "broken window."

When FBI Director Comey publicly took a dive and sold out the rule of law in refusing to prosecute Hillary Clinton’s Cyber-security crimes. He began a new chapter in providing evidence of the validity of “Broken Window Policing” in the field of cyber-security. For which, see the following definition:

The broken windows model of policing…focuses on the importance of disorder (e.g., broken windows) in generating and sustaining more serious crime. Disorder is not directly linked to serious crime; instead, disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which then allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control.

Hillary and the FBI Director Comey have advertised both outrageous cyber-security weakness and more importantly the breakdown of social mores of “the rule of law” in Federal Government cyber-security. If you advertise you are weak, stupid and capricious in enforcing cyber-security, it is blood in the water for cyber-criminals of all sorts.

That is the real cyber-security “broken window” Hillary and FBI Director Comey have opened. And this is the cyber-security nightmare that will be with America for decades, barring a massive and systematic purge of everyone high and low associated with such behavior by a new President or after another — likely nuclear — Pearl Harbor.

Read more here.

Another deal, another mirage

The Wall Street Journal has this to say about Obama's cybersecurity deal with China:

The cyber accord looks like another case of Mr. Obama claiming an imaginary moral high ground that sounds tough but is likely to be unenforceable. Expect more digital theft until Beijing pays a price for it, presumably in a future U.S. Administration.

Read more here.

"D" weapons

Spiegel Online writes:

According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

During the 20th century, scientists developed so-called ABC weapons -- atomic, biological and chemical. It took decades before their deployment could be regulated and, at least partly, outlawed. New digital weapons have now been developed for the war on the Internet. But there are almost no international conventions or supervisory authorities for these D weapons, and the only law that applies is the survival of the fittest.

The US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force have already established their own cyber forces, but it is the NSA, also officially a military agency, that is taking the lead. It's no coincidence that the director of the NSA also serves as the head of the US Cyber Command. The country's leading data spy, Admiral Michael Rogers, is also its chief cyber warrior and his close to 40,000 employees are responsible for both digital spying and destructive network attacks.

Read more here.

How secure are we?

Did you know that just as President Obama was giving a big speech on cybersecurity, the jihadists of the Islamic State managed to take over the Twitter and You Tube accounts of the Pentagon's Central Command? The solution being recommended by Obama and the elites of the European Union is to crack down on free speech on the internet. Read more here.

A busy man

Jim Kouri reports:

One of the key players in the creation and implementation of cybersecurity protocols for President Barack Obama's "signature legislation," the Affordable Care Act of 2010, will be spending the next two-and-a-half decades in a federal prison cell after a conviction for trafficking in Internet child pornography. Timothy DeFoggi, who served as the acting director of cybersecurity at Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the disgraced Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, was told by a judge on Monday that he'll serve the next 25 years in federal prison for kiddie pornography dissemination. DeFoggi was convicted by a federal jury on Aug. 26, 2014, after only a four-day trial in Omaha, Nebraska.

According to Justice Department officials, the 56-year-old computer security expert communicated online with other offenders in an underground Internet forum. At trial, it was shown that he articulated his strong desire to rape and murder children. Being a cyberscience expert, DeFoggi knew how to use the Tor browser, an online service that is capable of eluding law enforcement from tracking his Internet activities while he worked at HHS as its head of cybersecurity in 2013. What surprise many was the fact, he remained listed on the HHS staff roster with top security clearance even after he was arrested.

Read more here.

Thanks to Christopher Buckley

Target's breach of security

Did Target have warnings before hackers stole 40 million debit and credit cards from its servers? Three WSJ reporters write that

At least one analyst at the Minneapolis-based retailer wanted to do a more thorough security review of its payment system, a request that at least initially was brushed off.

(Photo by Getty images)

The sheer volume of warnings that retailers receive makes it hard to know which to take seriously. Target has an extensive cybersecurity intelligence team, which sees numerous threats each week and could prioritize only so many issues at its monthly steering committee meetings, the former employee said.

The hackers, still unnamed, originally gained access to Target's network by stealing the access credentials of a refrigeration contractor in Pennsylvania. The contractor, Fazio Mechanical Services, has confirmed it was breached and is cooperating with the Secret Service investigation.

The attackers stole not only the card data, but personal information like phone numbers and email addresses for up to 70 million people.