Defense Tech: Cyber Assassination


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

Cyber Assassination

“Cyber assassination” is when an individual is unaware that he or she is the subject of a cyber attack designed to discredit them and to call into question his or her credibility or loyalty.

Here's a possible scenario: A senior person in the CIA is working on a case and is disrupting the enemy’s activities or getting closer to uncover covert enemy operatives. A smart enemy might attack the leader or others involved in the investigation in an effort to slow down or derail the efforts to expose them. They may choose to hack the individual’s laptop and place damaging emails that allude to a pay-off on their hard drive. Then all that is required is a subtle leak that gets back to the CIA and you can imagine the rest.

A second example could be a politician who is pushing for sanctions against a country and they hack their computer and put pornography on the hard drive. A covert leak of this information results in an investigation and public disclosure of the porn on the hard drive. This individual’s ability to gain or maintain support for their interest in sanctions would be undoubtedly damaged.

You can prove a computer has been compromised (hacked). However, it is virtually impossible to say definitively that a computer has not been hacked. Our ability to defend against this type of assault on individuals in the political, academic, business or industrial spotlight is very limited. For whatever reason people believe the bad and explaining how the compromising materials unknowingly got on their computer hard drive would be almost impossible. Who knows, many of these individuals may have already been set-up and their computers hacked and the damaging evidence planted. Now the enemy patiently waits for the time they need to leak this information to further their cause. Who will be their target now?

-- Kevin Coleman

Comments

It is interesting that a photo of the unjust assassination of the Northern Aggressors' leader (Abraham Lincoln) is the cover photo. If you want a photo of an assassination of a true innocent and thereby truly support the story in a visual manner, use the photo of an innocent's assassination.

Posted by: WR at May 27, 2008 04:22 PM

Lets see,start screaming like Chicken Little about how the internet is so evil because your information can be hacked into,sabotaged,website clearing houses for "al-Qaeda(where? I can't find any),Bill O'Reilly shrilling for more internet control,meanwhile internet cables in the Middle East are mysteriously being cut.Are we witnessing the demise of internet freedom & the free flow of information?

Posted by: Roy Smith at February 2, 2008 12:27 PM

Kevin, you are without a doubt our country's top cyber warfare expert. I bet there are stories you can not tell us that are even better than the ones on this blog and the Spy-Ops site you contribute too. Keep it up - I find myself looking forward to your next posting.

Posted by: Tim at February 2, 2008 12:23 PM

& we wonder why now whod run for office.
Select cyberattacks at will by foes.
Scary.
Data is untracable & unless U clean your History etc, dont Run for White House.

Posted by: stephen russell at February 2, 2008 10:28 AM

Geez Guys! After 15 thrillers, I find it harder and fucking harder to stay ahead of real life. I've written scenarios that have come true too many times.

Now, with this one, I have to start over ... again.

Posted by: Lewis Perdue at February 2, 2008 12:01 AM

The answer is to properly protect every device that connects to the internet. When these devices are compromised they can be used to distribute malicious messages and more.

Did you realize:

Image is everything. Attack the image of an individual and you attack them personally.

Smear campaigns have been around for centuries and are all to common a tactic in the political arena.

Discrediting is the term given to actions designed to construct an image of someone that is intended to be viewed with negative regard by audiences in order to "attack" or the targeted individual.

The STORM exploitation is estimated at infesting up to 80 million computers. The computers owners are unaware that they are infected.

An estimated 150-200 million of the 800 million online computers are compromised and unwilling participants in a botnet networks of PCs under control of hackers. We have a Botnet Pandemic

Posted by: Kevin at February 1, 2008 06:46 PM

It seems like the internet itself & the ability to transfer information is whats under attack.We always hear about this "Islamic Terrorist Clearinghouse" out there that needs to be shut down,but no web address is ever given for independent confirmation of these sites,& since I personally don't speak or read Arabic,I have no clue what is being said on a site that I have no clue as to where it is.Bill O'Reilly is always attacking the internet because of blogs putting out alernative information than what the main stream media puts out.I listen to Fox News for noise,I go on the internet for news.Whats the solution for the "dilemma" this artcle presents on "Cyber assassination? Shut down the internet & replace it with something "heavily censored & repressed" like what they have in Red China.Do we need a big brother censor standing over our shoulders? This is just another way of attacking the freedom of information that the internet today provides.The author NEVER offered solutions for a "supposed" threat.

Posted by: Roy Smith at February 1, 2008 04:21 PM

Cyber Assassination

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