As the health-care industry rushed onto the Internet in search of efficiencies and improved care in recent years, it has exposed a wide array of vulnerable hospital computers and medical devices to hacking, according to documents and interviews.
CyberCity has all the makings of a regular town. There’s a bank, a hospital and a power plant. A train station operates near a water tower. The coffee shop offers free WiFi.
The Pentagon is building a virtual city that will enable government hackers to practice attacking and defending the computers and networks that increasingly run the world’s water, power and other critical systems. To reinforce the effect of those attacks, the cyber-range, known as “CyberCity,” will include a scale model of buildings and other facilities that will light up when attacks have been successful.
Ryan Linn’s hacks into corporate networks have become almost a matter of routine. On one recent morning, he woke up at his home near the Research Triangle in eastern North Carolina and walked down to an extra bedroom that he uses as an office. ¶ He sat at a workbench laden with computers, signed on to one of them and loaded a program called Metasploit. Sipping a Diet Coke, Linn typed out a few commands and casually launched an attack on a network thousands of miles away. A few seconds later, a report came back: The network had been penetrated. How would he like to proceed? ¶ Chalk up another one for Metasploit, an automated tool kit that makes breaking into networks almost as easy for experienced hackers as ordering food off an online menu.
The e-mails arrived like poison darts from cyberspace.
A Richmond technology firm has closed security holes in a popular system that enables corporations, government agencies and others to control millions of devices over the World Wide Web, the Department of Homeland Security said in an advisory Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security on Friday warned that a popular system used by organizations around the world to manage millions of machines and devices over the Internet is vulnerable to attack from hackers.
John Sublett and his colleagues had an audacious, digital-age plan. They wanted to use the Internet to enable businesses to manage any kind of electronic device, anywhere on the planet, through the computer equivalent of a universal remote control. In 1996, nothing like it had been seen before.
Niagara software has dramatically eased remote control of millions of devices, but the technology also created new vulnerabilities.
It began as a hobby for a teenage computer programmer named John Matherly, who wondered how much he could learn about devices linked to the Internet.
In 2010, details began to emerge about a cyberattack on Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuges, which drew worldwide attention to industrial control systems. The United States and Isreal created the worm, according to a recent New York Times report, with the aim of disrupting the Islamic republic.s nuclear program. Hackers inspired by the Stuxnet attack quickly discovered just how accessible many of the world’s control systems were.
Government and business leaders in the United States and around the world are rushing to build better defenses - and prepare for the coming battles in the digital universe. To succeed, they must understand one of the most complex, man-made environments on Earth: cyberspace.
Charlie Miller prepared his cyberattack in a bedroom office at his Midwestern suburban home.
Explore some of the technological advances that led to cyberspace, along with notable hacks.
Consideration of software flaws and hackers is often a secondary priority for software developers, who often value sales and novel applications over security, some critics say.
Americans are divided about what role, if any, Washington should play in setting and enforcing cybersecurity standards for companies that provide critical services such as electricity and banking, according to a new Washington Post poll.
Two decades after the first warnings about “hackers,” the threat has only grown with individuals, companies and even nations at risk. Post reporter Robert O’Harrow Jr. answers six questions about personal and national vulnerability.
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