News The Rising Tide: Hacking, Security, and the Internet

    It has been pretty noisy these last several years. This particular noise isn't from the cars outside or planes overhead, its actually coming from the internet. This is the sound of an untold number of voices speaking and interacting collectively, and that number is only getting larger. The current statistic for global internet users as of June this year was 7,634,758,428, with the majority centered in Asia, which was recorded to have over 200 million users, but with that said, North America takes the lead with a top Internet Penetration Rate with Western Europe right behind.

    Typically, when there is a large concentration of something important in a single space, IE personal data, its essential to ensure its safety. There has been an arms race happening in the ether of the world wide web, and its between Hacking and Security. Over the years these two sides have tasted the wine of victory and the bitter fruits of defeat. The internet is expanding and becoming evermore intertwined with the world around us. As the latter perseveres, so does the advance in security, hence the hacking strengthens as well... It never stops.

    Enter the advent of state sponsored hacking..which has been around for a while now, but only recently has it been utilized in a larger and more aggressive manner. With top players being China, Russia, and North-Korea with some smaller interference from Iran.

• China has been leading with a strong, dedicated Cyber Army. [TEMP.Periscope to name one] They have been actively targeting information related to radar and sonar technology made in the U.S.
  • North Korea had a less than worrisome hacker unit [Bureau 121 and the sub-group Lazarus Group] but they have refined it in recent years. Defectors from the DRPK have stated that people who seem specially skilled in computers are selected to go to a school that focuses on training them into skilled hackers.
    
• Russia's state sponsored hacking has also seen a rise [Fancy Bear - also named APT28, Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group, Sednit, and STRONTIUM]  which as been sought after for hacking the German parliament, NATO, the DNC and there was the still speculated hack on the 2016 U.S elections.
  

 
    What this boils down to is that what we have built so tall must be protected, so it does not fall too far. You can definitely count on these issues and others being discussed at the 4th Global Security Forunm [HackIT], which will be held in Kiev, Ukraine. This forum is for Cybersecurity specialists, Blockchain gurus, and White Hat hackers. This has been a three year event going strong in Ukraine since 2015. Those interested in going will have a conference, exhibition, and other activities like a CTF competition and ... a visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to see a true illustration of a man-made disaster... no, seriously that is a thing.

   The conference will include over 50 speakers from various countries, as well as big tech bloggers, skilled developers, BC engineers, etc. I heard Steve Wozniak was going to be there as well.  A link to the event's website is right below.

https://hackit.ua/?utm_source=PR&utm_med...ackingNews

   I will be keeping my eye on this event, as there is a memorandum regarding common security standards that is to be signed by participants. So that will be interesting.

   In other news, a Latvian man by the name of Ruslan Bondars was arrested and extradited to the U.S. He was convicted of running a virus-like platform called [Scan4You] This platform was used by hackers to test their malware on before releasing them in malware campaigns. This allowed them to run different security checks to see if their malware was detected, they would then tweak their code making their malware undetectable. This platform was developed in 2009 and has been seen as a popular choice among cyber-criminals. A co-conspirator was also arrested, Jurijs Martisevs, who was also extradited to the U.S.

   That is it for the news today, hope you all have a good week and stay safe out there ---


---Sh7nk-Z0id