According to the noted National Security expert Bill Gertz in the Washington Free Beacon, White House computers have been compromised by hackers, probably from China, but nothing classified was stolen.
Who says nothing classified was stolen?
Well, an administration official.
Well, that's good then. Government officials always tell the truth.
Exactly what was hacked into? An email system.
Whose email system? It was just the White House Military Office.
Great! Not like they got into the West Wing and were monitoring the Prez's love letters to Michelle or his iPod playlist!
So, what exactly does the White House Military Office do?
They are in charge of the President's Nuclear Football. I know, he is more of a golf and basketball guy.
But this is a very special football. It has the codes that the President could use to launch nuclear missiles and start World War III. And they also arrange the Presidents travel and communication plans!
That may sound serious, but not to worry!
Gertz quotes an administration National Security official says it was just a "Spear Phising Attack". That's where a hacker uses emails disguised as from a trusted source in order to get recipients to reveal classified information or become infected by malware.
Sounds bad, but the Administration official also said such attacks are "not infrequent" and there are unspecified "mitigation measures in place."
I guess they know what they are doing. This is the US Government, after all.
But wait! He said this is "not infrequent"!
That means it happens a lot!
I sure hope they are using the best antivirus and firewall software!
Most malware protection systems are that use a "blacklist" of known threats to screen files. The problem with this approach is that the list has to be constantly updated and they can't protect against threats not yet identified. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said, the thing that you keeps you up at night are the thing that you don't know and you don't know that you don't know them!
With 40,000 new malware unleashed every day it is a lot of work maintaining a blacklist.
I prefer antivirus systems that use a "whitelist" approach. That is where the scanner uses a list of known valid programs to allow only safe programs to run in the system. For any other software they allow it to run in a separate, isolate system called a "sandbox." The scanner monitors the program in the sandbox and can identify if it is safe or not.
If the White House has trouble with computer hackers than everyone is at risk.
If the White House has trouble with computer hackers than everyone is at risk. Never open email if you have any suspicions at to the source. Never download anything from a web site unless you see that they are running the Secured Socket Layer (SSL) with certificate protection. Make sure your computers are protected by the best antivirus and firewall software.
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