The title to this article IMHO, aims to make the reader CHOOSE SIDES as to what is more important, Privacy or National Security. I propose to you that the expectation of Privacy, which is clearly defined in the 4th Amendment, and the DEFENSE of that Right, is what makes the United States unique as a…
Category: Information Warfare
Killing Anwar: Targeting Jihadi Propagandist is Only Part of the Solution
Like dozens of others, the husband and wife team who shot up a San Bernardino community center were inspired by U.S. born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in Yemen by a drone strike in September 2011. The San Bernardino shooting should serve as a reminder that killing propagandists can be an important tactical…
An Easy Way for Hackers to Burn Industrial Motors
HACKS THAT CAUSE physical destruction are so rare they can be counted on one hand. The infamous Stuxnet worm was the first, causing physical destruction of nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2009. In 2014, Germany reported the second known case of physical destruction involving a furnace at a steel mill. Both of these attacks required…
Cold War Files: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet ‘Death Star’
The ambitions of the United States and the Soviet Union, late in the Cold War, to launch massive weapons into outer space sounds like a fever dream today. Few however know just how serious it got, with the USSR making impressive progress on plans for a so-called “Red Death Star” to be launched into orbit….
Calculating your “Threat Score”
As technology advances in our society, those sci-fi movies that everybody thought were outlandish and far-fetched will start being seen as harbingers. After reading this article, watch a few minutes of the movie “Minority Report”. “Psychic Technology” is nothing more now than an advanced algorithm. -SF FRESNO, Calif. — While officers raced to a recent…
The Russians Just Did a Cyber-Attack Practice Run on Ukraine’s Nationwide Power Grid…America is Next
The Russians are masters of 4th Generation Warfare. They know the United States must be attacked on several fronts to weaken it internally before a Conventional strike happens. Look for continued attacks on the Financial sector as well. A Nationwide Cyber-Attack on a Power Grid is now a stark reality folks. IMO it is not…
U.S. Voter Database Mysteriously Appears Online in the Open
A misconfigured database has provided users of the World Wide Web access to 191 million voter records. White hat hacker Chris Vickery happened upon the leaky system and sent CSO’s Steve Ragan his personal voter record to prove it. “It was current based on the elections listed. My personal information was accurate too,” Ragan writes….
Cold War Files: A ‘Texas Tower’ Veteran Reflects on Cold War History
KINGSLEY, Mich. — Each time Victor Rioux sits in a church pew he takes a minute to say a special prayer. He honors the 28 men who died during the Cold War when Texas Tower No. 4 collapsed amid a fierce winter storm. “I never forget those guys,” Rioux said from his Kingsley farm house….
10 Conflicts to Watch in 2016
Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive…
Cyber-Espionage: The Biggest Dangers are the Ones You Will Never Know About
For years, I slept fitfully after a “friend” told me that it wasn’t the noisy mosquitos buzzing in my ears at night that were a problem. Instead, it was the female mosquitos that made no noise at all but laid eggs in your ears at night. That image wrecked my sleep until the Internet helped…