America Looking for a Cyber Reason to Invade Iran

Desperate to find a reason to get involved, the military establishment of the United States decided to use its latest bugbear of cyber warfare as its latest pretext. The country is now claiming that Iran is going to fire cyber weapons of mass distraction.

A week ago, the American military issued the warning, saying that they might have to take an action to stop a cyber war. In the meantime, the Defense Secretary also claimed that the country faced a risk of a so-called “cyber-Pearl Harbor”. These claims were made after the last year mutterings that cyber war might be countered with conventional weaponry.

UK Hacker Extradition Blocked

UK’s Home Secretary has finally announced that Gary McKinnon won’t be extradited to the United States to face charges for hacking into their military system. Speaking at the House of Commons, Theresa May announced that the hacker should stay in the United Kingdom to face charges for hacking the US computers more than a decade ago.

Janis Sharp, Gary’s mother, has been trying to argue for the last 10 years that her son, Asperger’s sufferer, would be at a very high risk of him ending his life in case of extradition. Theresa May has heard her words and said that after careful consideration she had come to a conclusion that extradition could have really caused such a high risk of suicide that extradition would be incompatible with his human rights. As a result, Home Secretary has withdrawn the extradition order against Gary McKinnon.

UK Watchdog Fined Police for Data Breach

The UK watchdog Information Commissioners Office has recently slapped the police authorities with a $200,000 penalty after they were found guilty of a serious data breach. This is how it happened.

Greater Manchester Police was called to account after an investigation carried out by the Information Commissioners Office. The investigation was prompted by the theft of a memory stick which contained sensitive personal information from an officer’s home. It turned out that the memory stick had no password protection and was carrying the information about over a thousand people, as well as the links to serious crime investigations.

US Military to Launch Cyber Strikes

The military of the United States is allowed to act preemptively in the event of detection of an imminent threat of hacker attack. Meanwhile, a presidential executive order is “while we wait for Congress to act”.

US Defense Secretary has issued a warning that some unnamed actors were trying to target computer control systems responsible for chemical, electricity and water plants in the country, as well as those operating transportation. It is not clear why China is training actors to hack American infrastructure – maybe the country wants to use the Academy Awards to cover for the attack.

Chinese Hacked American Power Grid

The organization whose software is responsible for remote administration and monitoring of large sections of the American energy industry recently warned its clients about hacker attacks.

According to Telvent Canada, digital fingerprints left by the hackers point to China and one of its hacking groups known for numerous cyber-espionage campaigns against the US companies. The intruders somehow managed to bypass the corporate firewall and security systems and break into the system.