Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the National Intelligence Committee that the United States is at risk of a “crippling” cyber-attack , and without the proper tools to defend against such an attack. Blair counseled the US to “deal with that reality,” saying that catastrophic consequences would result if it did not deal with said reality. Specific problem areas he cited include the fact that more and more, foreign companies supply both the hardware and software for private businesses. Blair also noted the fact that the net has served as a breeding ground for “homegrown radicalism.” You don’t say? Hit the source link a fuller detail of yesterday’s proceedings

Defense Tech has some interesting analysis of what happened with the North Korea’s attacks on United States and South Korean government sites . Given Kim Jong Il’s pathetic telecommunication infrastructure, their summary is both scary and kind of saddening. To start with, the U.S. Government ignored the attack warnings and has admitted that they didn’t handle the successful Distributed Denial of Service attacks properly. They assumed our defenses were going to work perfectly against a bunch of North Korean bozos. They were wrong: The current U.S.

It looks like a nefarious cyber-attack which affected several federal websites in the United States was a little more far-reaching than initially thought. The attack — which started on the 4th of July — targeted websites in both South Korea and the United States, including the Treasury Department, Federal Trade Commission and Secret Service. Various problems were still being reported days later, and while there’s no official word on who the attackers were, those “people familiar with the matter” we know and love seem to be pointing their fingers at North Korea. So far as we know, no irreparable damage has been done, but we’re not sure anyone would tell us if it had. Filed under: Internet Mysterious cyber-attacker hits at federal websites, crisis averted? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:28:00 EST

Since North Korea ’s unreliable “Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles” are still far from hitting the US , Kim Jong Il’s hacker hordes are now attacking US government web sites. At least, according to the South Korea Information Security Agency. If the information is true, South Korean hackers launched an offensive using denial of service attacks against the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission, and Transportation Department’s web sites, which were down at some points during July 4 and this week. These attacks have been confirmed by US officials, although the origin hasn’t been clarified by the US government yet. The hackers simultaneously attacked South Korea’s government sites too, including the Blue House—the equivalent to the White House—and the Defense Ministry. The South Koreans are claiming that the DoD attacks used 12,000 zombie PCs in Korea, and 8,000 in other parts of the world