Cyberwars Between Nations Increase & It Professionals Need To Be More Prepared With Higher Knowledge

Plausible cyberwars are now occurring between nations and governments must now be well prepared as it might just be the beginning.IT staffs of public and government organizations should actively participate in industry-leading Information Security platforms such as EC-Councils hacker conference in order to have the highest knowledge and skills to defend their organizations information security.

Recently, South Korea government made a press statement that their GPS signals were jammed in some parts of South Korea and believes North Korea was behind the cyber-attack. Some fear the attacks could even be the first stage of an all-out cyber war as experts speculated possible future provocations by the North against South Korean power, traffic, communication, military and other state infrastructure.

South Korea's international security ambassador Nam Joo-hong said Pyongyang "is trying to prove its superiority in real space with nuclear weapons while boosting electronic warfare in cyber space." The North Korea has been training up a hacker squad since 1986.

The French National IT Systems Security Agency has also made announcement regarding the recent attack on French government computers, saying they were targeted by cyber spies.

Frances security agency's director-general, Patrick Pailloux said at a news conference , around 150 IT staff spent the weekend on a massive clean-up operation to undo the effects of the attack on computers at the French Ministry of Economy, Finances, and Industry. The attack compromised around 150 of the ministry's 170,000 PCs.

The attack started with a chain of email messages with malware-laden attachments that exploited then-unknown or unprotected flaws in the software running on the ministry's PCs. The messages were addressed to ministry staff of all levels, and alleged to come from colleagues or regular correspondents elsewhere, while the attachments appeared to relate to their work, Pailloux said.

Trojan horse software was installed on the PCs once the attachments were opened. Under the control of the unidentified attackers, that software was then used to compromise other PCs, to send data out of the ministry hidden in other Internet traffic, and finally to cover up its activities.

Pailloux said the attackers had access to mailboxes and servers over the course of several weeks. It took the agency until last week to figure out what the Trojan horse was doing, and just how far it had spread.

Pailloux declined to comment on who might be behind the attack, although he did acknowledge that it resembled an attack on Canadian government IT systems last month. That attack was initially blamed on the Chinese, an accusation the Chinese swiftly denied.

It is believed that Cybercriminals who were operating in China hacked the computers of several Canadian government departments recently and may have accessed critical financial and weapons information.

A civilian agency of Canada's military, The Treasury Board, Finance Department and Defence Research and Development Canada were breached in early January by "spear-phishing" attacks, a type of online scams that use specially crafted, seemingly personal e-mails to target specific victims. The hack forced the Finance Department and Treasury Board off the Internet,

Charles Burton, a professor of Chinese politics at Brock University in Ontario, told CBC News, Canada has access to secrets that are shared with other Western industrial countries, such as the United States, with regard to sophisticated weaponry. And the Chinese government would have strong interest in getting hold of technologies,

Its possible, Burton added, that the hackers were also going after sensitive data about Canadas oil and gas resources. Chinese officials have denied any involvement in the attacks.

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