NSA Allies with Internet Carriers to Thwart Cyber Attacks Against Defense Firms
June 17th, 2011Oh sure.
Via: Washington Post:
The National Security Agency is working with Internet providers to deploy a new generation of tools to scan e-mail and other digital traffic with the goal of thwarting cyberattacks against defense firms by foreign adversaries, senior defense and industry officials say.
The novel program, which began last month on a voluntary, trial basis, relies on sophisticated NSA data sets to identify malicious programs slipped into the vast stream of Internet data flowing to the nation’s largest defense firms. Such attacks, including one last month against Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin, are nearly constant as rival nations and terrorist groups seek access to U.S. military secrets.
Related: NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite
Sorry for being late to the party, but I have been watching this whole cyber attack thing from the shadows and not following too closely.
I understand that the Internet was developed by government workers probably on the taxpayer dime, but it seems that since then the Internet has morphed into a vast social arena that is more about accessing obscure information and buying crap. That’s the benefit to me and billions of other people. Irrespective of who developed it, it seems that “we” now lay claim to it.
That being said, if you are a government and you choose to tie your military plans, defense secrets, and correspondence relating to foreign diplomatic business to the same mechanism that my kids use to research their school projects and that I use to buy my useless crap and airline tickets, you deserve to be cyber-attacked.