Provide (3) 150 words substantive response with a minimum of 1 APA references for RESPONSES 1 AND 2. Additionally, answer the question on DISCUSSION 1 below. Response provided should further discuss the subject or provide more insight. To further understand the response, below is the discussion post that’s discusses the responses. 100% original work and not plagiarized. Must meet deadline.
RESPONSE 1:
It has been gone over in the school’s given curriculum, but one instance of a cyber attack that I feel is very important to mention is the success of Stuxnet. While Iran was building what the United States intelligence determined was a nuclear arsenal, the United States and Israel were working in a conjoined effort in building an extremely sophisticated worm – with the purpose of setting back the Iranian nuclear arsenal financially and at least a couple of years. At the time, this was considered groundbreaking levels of technology for a worm, and it was very successful. Stuxnet was unleashed, and centrifuge tubes needed for nuclear construction began spinning erratically, with some becoming damaged while others self destructed entirely. It’s estimated that over two thousand centrifuges were destroyed, and that it set Iran back around two years of progress, and more importantly, valuable economic power to re-purchase the centrifuges. Crucially, if more centrifuges were purchased, it could help confirm the presence of the heavily suspected nuclear facility, enabling potential further action or sanctions onto Iran.
– DANIEL
RESPONSE 2:
Reported by the Department of Justice (2018), the series of intrusions involving the Fancy Bear Hack Team which include what has been referred to as the DNC hack resulted in an investigation conducted by the FBI. The objective of the agency was to determine the identities of assailants, mechanisms of intrusion and associated actors which in this case comes down to the Russian state through military actors.
In the same DoJ report, the officers of Russia’s Military Unit 26165 researched victims later targeted in a spear-phishing campaign using proxy servers and maintaining command and control infrastructure for the deployment of malware as a mechanism of penetration. From here, the investigative cyber response transitioned to a legal format where officers identified in this unit were charged in a court of law.
Importantly and what is hopefully now common knowledge is that these operations aren’t standalone, and have been emphatically stated to be part of a larger series of Russian cyberespionage and subversion operations which continues now.
Bibliography
Department of Justice. 2018. U.S. Charges Russian GRU Officers with International Hacking and Related Influence and Disinformation Operations. Retrieved from: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-russian-gru-officers-international-hacking-and-related-influence-and.
-JOSHUA
DISCUSSION 1:
Evil Corp, which is known to be a cybercrime organization, is led by Russians Maksim Yakubets and Igor Turashev, who were yet to face charges until 2019 in the US. The level of sophistication of the group is yet to be figured out correctly as the cybercrime organization is thought to have very close ties with the Russian intelligence agency (FSB) (McCullagh et al., 2006). I can add that, in the United States, precisely in New York, the FBI secretly installed software on two key members of the Genovese crime family’s cell phones, converting them into “roving bugs” that could be remotely activated to eavesdrop in on discussions in a room, even if their owners had switched them off.
However, despite the indictment of its top members in the United States, Evil Corp is still operating in the hacking business, but it may have transitioned into corporate spying services. This organization has stolen masses of dollars from unwary banks. One is the South Korean banks (Allyn, 2019). In the year 2011, hackers used a compromised laptop of an IT support contractor to obtain access to systems belonging to Nonghyup, a South Korean bank. The malware erased vital data on over 100 servers within the network, preventing millions of clients from accessing their accounts and ATMs for three days. Backup files for disaster recovery were also corrupted. I also agree that in another attack by Evil Corp, the software used was known as ‘botnet.’ It would freeze a computer’s operating system leading to a malware spread where the hackers would transfer money from victims to their overseas accounts.
QUESTION: So you bring up a great point about Russia. Why are we not doing more? Why is the United States Government not holding Russia accountable? Is holding 12 Russian’s responsible enough?
