08/29/16

FBI: Foreign hackers penetrated election databases in Illinois, Arizona

By: Renee Nal | New Zeal

US-presidential-elections vote

“Two state election boards have been popped, and data has been taken. This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter.” – Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity firm

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned that “foreign hackers penetrated two state [later identified as Illinois and Arizona] election databases in recent weeks,” as first reported by Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News. The FBI alert “comes amid heightened concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about the possibility of cyberintrusions, potentially by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections.”

The report noted:

“…one of the IP addresses listed in the FBI alert has surfaced before in Russian criminal underground hacker forums.”

Continue reading

10/13/15

The Cyberweapons Club: Easy, Cheap & Available… Spurs New Arms Race

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

Cyberwar

The Wall Street Journal has a great article out on cyber warfare and the weapons it entails. In recent years, countries across the globe have spent billions on facilities that house the means to wage war electronically. You can be a major player on the geopolitical scene even without nuclear weapons. Joining the cyberweapons club is easy, cheap and open to anyone with a computer and money.

Digital warfare was brought to life when numerous countries carried out successful computer raids… the US was one of those countries. Now, a digital arms race is in full swing with countries all over the globe amassing huge troves of malicious code and nasty methods of breaching networks. You’ve got everything from the simplest of programs that use emails that have a single word misspelled, that ask for a password or for you to open an attachment, to more advanced code that utilizes Twitter handles.

In what I consider to be a faux agreement that means about as much as the Iranian deal, the US and China just signed a limited agreement to not conduct various forms of cyber attacks against each other. These have to do with corporate raids and domestic companies. But government espionage is still on the table and fair game. What a joke.

We’ve already seen a great deal of movement in this arena. Take Pakistan and India for example. They are nuclear rivals and hack each other all the time. Estonia and Belarus fear Russia and are working feverishly to build some kind of defense against the Russians. Good luck with that. Denmark, the Netherlands, Argentina and France are all developing offensive computer weapons. Everyone is getting ready for a new frontier on the battlefield.

There are now over 29 nations who have units dedicated to hacking other countries. 50 countries or so have actually purchased canned hacking software that they use for domestic or international surveillance. The US is said to have one of the most advanced operations out there. I’m not so sure of that. I believe that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea all have us beat hands down. As do the Israelis.

Invasive digital attacks are used to mine data and steal information. Computers can be erased at will. Whole networks can be disabled. In one instance, nuclear centrifuges were destroyed. These techniques are used for good and bad reasons. But it’s like Pandora’s box… now that it is out there and growing, nations must not only be defensive, they have to be offensive on this front.

More worrisome attacks are coming our way. Cyberweapons that take down electrical grids, disable domestic airline networks, jam Internet connectivity, erase money from bank accounts and confuse radar systems are being developed. Instances of probing in these areas have already occurred in the US and it is only a matter of time before a major attack comes in these areas. Many of our enemies already have their software on systems throughout the US, quietly lurking until they are triggered for whatever reason. It’s a ticking time bomb.

Our military strategies and tactics will have to change with these new developments if we are to survive. Attacks like these are almost impossible to entirely stop or to trace. To face off against these new threats, we will have to have highly trained units that fight this battle 24 hours a day. Many are already in place and working the issue. I’m just not convinced they will be fast or good enough.

Dozens of countries are now armed to the teeth with cyberweapons. Some Defense Department officials compare the current moment to the lull between the World Wars when militaries realized the potential of armed planes. I believe we are already in World War III and just don’t seem to grasp it yet.

Speaking of war, Syrian hackers have been at it already in that country, looking into the doings of the rebel militias, stealing tactical information and then using that intelligence to attack them. It’s been effective and efficient. With the aid and advice of the Russians, the Syrian government is using high tech as well as on the ground military maneuvers to annihilate their enemies.

As for the US, we know what some countries are up to, but as for many of them, we have no clue. I would say we are in the dark as to a great deal that our enemies have accomplished in the cyber arena. That’s a deadly mistake. In fact, I don’t think anyone, other than the new Axis of Evil (Iran, Russia and China) know exactly how skilled our enemies are in cyber espionage and warfare. You would think that the NSA, CIA and FBI would have a better grasp on all of this, but they don’t.

The new battlefields out there will be comprised of hard military assets, intelligence services and cyber armies. You already see this in the big boys out there: the US, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Israel.

The Chinese are masters at hacking. They are infamous for low-tech phishing schemes that trick people into granting them access to their networks. That’s probably how they hacked the Office of Personnel Management. A contractor fell for an innocuous looking email and presto! The Chinese cracked the network and gained access to more than 21 million people’s information. China of course lied. That’s one thing about all these spying nation states… they all lie.

The Chinese army has whole divisions that are devoted to cyber warfare. They believe in unconventional warfare and have been very busy at pushing boundaries abroad. They are very good and very covert. In fact, they even fix what they break on the way in. You never even know they are among you.

China opposes the militarization of cyberspace or a cyber arms race, said Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, adding China “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks in accordance with law.” Yeah, well… it depends on what “law” means. And once again, they lie.

On to the Russians… they are very good as well and have just as many units dedicated to cyber warfare as the Chinese. The Russians love to go after diplomatic and political data. They are very good at tailored emails that ensnare their victims. They have dug into the networks at the Pentagon, State Department and White House, also using emails laced with malware, according to security researchers and US officials. The Russian’s have stolen Obama’s daily schedule and his diplomatic correspondence. The Russians say nyet, but of course, they lie.

“Russia has never waged cyber warfare against anyone,” Andrey Akulchev, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said in a written statement Friday. “Russia believes that the cybersphere should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.” They always deny – lying is second nature to the Russkies.

US spies and security researchers say Russia is particularly adept at developing hacking tools. Some malicious software linked to Russia by security researchers has a feature meant to help it target computers on classified government networks usually not connected to the Internet. They have a virus that literally jumps onto USB thumb drives, just waiting for a user to plug it in on a classified network. It’s ingenious and evil.

Cyberwar1

The Russians are subtle. They will hide stolen data in a whole host of ways. They’ll mix it into normal network traffic. They know just how to fool most cyber security defenses. For instance, they have a piece of malware that hides its communications in consumer web services. The code downloads its instructions from a set of Twitter accounts. It then exports the data to a commercial storage service. Since corporate cyber security systems don’t block traffic to and from these sites, this can be very effective.

But the Iranians go even further. They aren’t content with just stealing information… they use cyberweapons to destroy computers. They’ve done it at least twice. Government investigators believe Iranian hackers implanted the Shamoon virus on computers at Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest energy firm, in 2012. The Aramco attack erased 75% of the company’s computers and replaced screen images with burning American flags. The attack didn’t affect oil production, but it rattled the company as it gave away the extent of Iran’s cyber capabilities. Ostensibly, the move was in retaliation for the alleged US-Israeli attack on Iran’s centrifuges utilizing the Stuxnet computer worm.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has said that the Iranians used malware to destroy computers last year at the Las Vegas Sands Corp. The owner, Sheldon Adelson, is a major critic of the Iranian government.

Cyberwar2

The US also contends that Iranian hackers have taken down websites of numerous US banks in DOS attacks. This was in response to a YouTube video on the Prophet Mohammed supposedly. More likely, it had to do with economic sanctions and the Stuxnet attack.

In 2012, Iran announced the creation of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace charged to oversee the defense of Iran’s computer networks and develop “new ways of infiltrating or attacking the computer networks of its enemies.” Since Obama has inked the suicidal nuclear deal with Iran, cyber attacks have slowed somewhat, but that won’t last long. There are no illusions that Iran is in any way an ally to the US. They have aligned with Russia and China to eventually war with us. Tehran appears “fully committed” to using cyber attacks as part of its national strategy.

Let’s peek at the NoKos, shall we? Of course, their latest claim to fame is the Sony hack. It was in retaliation for the movie, “The Interview,” which portrayed their trollish leader in a less-than-favorable light. In it, Kim Jong Un gets offed. No big loss. The retaliatory hack was arguably one of the most successful nation-state breaches ever. Many suspect an inside job since the malware was implanted directly on Sony computers. This allowed the NoKos to steal and destroy data at will. South Korea has also said that the North Koreans have attempted to hack one of their nuclear reactors, as well as a television network and a major bank. The NoKos haven’t denied anything. They don’t care who knows or accuses them.

Looking for work? Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. has advertised for a “cyber operations planner” to “facilitate” offensive computer attacks with the South Korean and US governments, according to a job posting listed online. The scope is undisclosed and probably above all of our pay grades.

I keep hearing the US has the most advanced operations. But as I said before, I highly doubt that. The NSA is touting itself as the “crown creator of cyberespionage.”

In a spectacularly treasonous move, former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. leaked documents that showed the NSA had implanted malware on tens of thousands of foreign computers. That allowed the US government secret access to data and potentially the industrial control systems behind power plants and pipelines. Color me skeptical, but who knows?

US Cyber Command now has nine “National Mission Teams” with plans to build four more. Each are comprised of 60 military personnel that will “conduct full-spectrum cyberspace operations to provide cyber options to senior policy makers in response to attacks against our nation,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. The Navy, Army, and Air Force will each build four teams, with the Marines building a single unit. Each will have a “separate mission with a specific focus area,” though these have so far remained secret.

In 2014, the Netherlands announced it would begin training its own Internet troops through a domestic cyber security company, called Fox-IT. The head of the Dutch armed forces, Major Gen. Tom Middendorp, said in a symposium the group should be prepared to carry out attacks, not just block them, according to a Dutch media report. The Netherlands’ military strategy, laid out in various documents, refers to hacking as a “force multiplier.”

In 2013, Denmark’s Defense Ministry began allocating about $10 million a year for “computer network operations,” which include “defensive and offensive military operations,” according to government budget documents. That amount is just 0.24% of the Danish defense budget.

There are a lot of software engineers out there producing canned systems for private parties. It’s a seller’s market out there and countries are paying top dollar for cyber warfare software. A document leak on the Italian firm Hacking Team revealed the company had sold its surveillance tools to dozens of countries, including Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Azerbaijan. Money is king and everyone has a price. Our own FBI is evidently a customer of the Hacking Team who promotes their product as “the hacking suite for governmental interception.” It’s the perfect tool for exploiting holes in software to gain access to computers and mobile devices.

States aren’t the only players. About 30 Arabic-fluent hackers in the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Turkey are building their own tools to hit targets in Egypt, Israel and the US, according to researchers.

In August, the US used a drone to kill Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain in Raqqa, Syria, showing the extent to which digital warfare has upset the balance of power on the modern battlefield. The British citizen had used inexpensive tools to hack more than 1,000 US military personnel and published personal and financial details online for others to exploit. He helped sharpen the terror group’s defenses against Western surveillance and built hacking tools to penetrate computer systems as well.

All this cyber warfare and espionage is making national security and cyberweapons experts very nervous. A really big and debilitating attack could come at any time and we would pretty much be powerless to stop it. We just have no idea what the bad guys are capable of. “What we can do, we can expect done back to us,” said Howard Schmidt, who was the White House’s cyber security coordinator until 2012. The US is thinking, “Yeah, I don’t want to pull that trigger because it’s going to be more than a single shot that goes off.”

The jokes on us… that trigger has already been pulled. Let’s just hope the US isn’t home to the walking dead because of it. Because the cyberweapons club is so easy, cheap and available… we are watching a new arms race take off. The US is not in the forefront of this race and we had better hustle to catch up and overtake our enemies. Cyberspace is the new battlefront.

09/1/15

China and Russia are Waging War on America

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In a typically cynical article, “GOP presidential candidates have a new country to bash: the People’s Republic of China,” Politico complains about “China-bashing” by various Republican candidates. The story by Nahal Toosi carries the headline, “The Republicans’ Red Scare,” but only mentions one time that China is a “communist-led state.”

Politico uses the term “red scare” to suggest that the problem is being greatly exaggerated.

If there is any doubt about the “red” in Red China, consider the Chinese Constitution, which declares, “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The socialist system is the basic system of the People’s Republic of China. Sabotage of the socialist system by any organization or individual is prohibited.”

Mao Zedong, considered by many the greatest mass murderer in history, ispictured on the Chinese currency.

After Politico went to press with its defense of Beijing, the Los Angeles Timesreported that “Foreign spy services, especially in China and Russia, are aggressively aggregating and cross-indexing hacked U.S. computer databases—including security clearance applications, airline records and medical insurance forms—to identify U.S. intelligence officers and agents, U.S. officials said.” The Times added, “At least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives and agents overseas has been compromised as a result, according to two U.S. officials.”

Politico reported that criticism of China “might lead Chinese leaders to cozy up to another world power instead, like Russia (another favorite GOP boogeyman), the former ambassador said.”

This former ambassador is Jon Huntsman, the “moderate” Republican who served as Obama’s Ambassador to China. He ran for president in 2012, dropped out, and threw his “support” behind Mitt Romney, who lost a race he should have won.

Later in the article, Politico refers to China’s “alleged” cyberattacks.

“U.S. officials have not publicly blamed Beijing for the theft of the OPM and the Anthem files, but privately say both hacks were traced to the Chinese government,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “The officials say China’s state security officials tapped criminal hackers to steal the files, and then gave them to private Chinese software companies to help analyze and link the information together. That kept the government’s direct fingerprints off the heist and the data aggregation that followed. In a similar fashion, officials say, Russia’s powerful Federal Security Service, or FSB, has close connections to programmers and criminal hacking rings in Russia and has used them in a relentless series of cyberattacks.”

Why is there such a determination by a well-read publication like Politico to play down threats from China and Russia? This article is a case study in Republican-bashing. Politico is trying to warn Republicans running for president not to follow Donald Trump’s lead in focusing on how foreign countries are taking advantage of the United States.

The article by Nahal Toosi says that “…while scapegoating Beijing and its questionable economic policies may seem like an appealing campaign tactic, China specialists—including many in the GOP—warn that Republicans run the risk of looking ignorant about U.S.-Chinese ties.”

The ignorance comes from those in politics and the media who play down the nature of the communist regime.

The author goes on to warn against “bullying” or “isolating” the world’s “most populous country.”

“To be fair,” she writes, “China gives White House hopefuls lots of material for a tough-guy routine. Beijing’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea, its suspected role in cyberattacks on the U.S. and its dismal human rights record are just a few areas already seized upon by Republicans (and some Democrats) for criticism. China’s currency policies have long frustrated the United States in particular, and its increased military spending has led to wariness around the world.”

Notice how “alleged” cyberattacks have become “suspected.”

But in order to “be fair” to Republicans, she grudgingly admits some “questionable” Chinese policies that give the GOP candidates enough material to appear “tough.”

This is a despicable whitewash of a communist regime that is clearly waging war on the U.S.

“Potential enemies of the United States have claimed that they have the ability to crash our markets and our former head of NSA acknowledged that they do have that capability,” notes Kevin Freeman, author of Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It can Happen Again.He notes that the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed by more than 1,000 points at the open on August 24 “after China accused us of crashing their market.” He says that China has published a book, Unrestricted Warfare, calling a stock market crash a “new-era weapon.”

Instead of holding the Obama Administration accountable for safeguarding our national security information, Politico attacks Republicans for being too critical of China.

Later in the article, Politico quotes some comments about why we have to take the time to understand that the rulers in Beijing will realize this is just campaign rhetoric. “Top U.S.-watchers in Beijing are pretty savvy,” says Melanie Hart, identified as “director for China policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.” It turns out she “worked on Qualcomm’s China business development team, where she provided technology market and regulatory analysis to guide Qualcomm operations in Greater China. She has worked as a China advisor for The Scowcroft Group, Albright Stonebridge Group, and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.”

In other words, part of her career has been devoted to facilitating U.S. investment in China. She went to China in June to work on U.S.-China cooperation on “climate change” matters. She has a vested interest in making the communists look non-threatening.

Meanwhile, last January, a Russian spy ring was uncovered in New York City whose purpose in part was to “collect economic intelligence” and recruit New York City residents as intelligence sources. One of the targets of the economic intelligence gathering, a Justice Department press release said, was the New York Stock Exchange. The actual complaint filed against the Russians went into more detail, as they are shown discussing how to obtain information about the “destabilization” of U.S. financial markets.

So despite the wisdom conveyed by Jon Huntsman about forcing China into the arms of Russia, it looks like Russia and China are already working very well together.

Nevertheless, the first state visit by President Xi Jinping of China to the United States will take place in September.

Look for another Politico article about GOP “obstructionists” getting in the way of our blossoming relationship with the butchers of Beijing.

06/20/15

NoisyRoom was gone for a bit…

Earlier this afternoon some dirt bag hacked NoisyRoom.net and deleted the site. We pay a great deal for security and I am glad we do. Our team had the site back up within two hours with no lost data.

To whoever hacked the site this time… this will most likely be reported to the FBI shortly. My team is ascertaining who and where the attack came from. I have some of the best guys out there on my side looking into this. You will not stop my work, my voice or what I do. So, you can pound sand.

To anyone out there that feels so inclined, you can contribute to NoisyRoom here or the PayPal button on the upper right side of this blog and help with our security expenses. The fight goes on no matter what.

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
NoisyRoom.net

06/19/15

Chairman Chaffetz Opening – OPM Data Breach

Want To Know How China Was Able To Hack Us? Because Obama OUTSOURCED To China!

‘Words FAIL here’ – Gov’t OUTSOURCED management to IT workers with TOTAL ACCESS to database… in CHINA

Encryption “would not have helped” at OPM, says DHS official

06/15/15

Obama Administration Incompetence Subjects Millions of Americans to Cyber Hackers

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Millions of American government employees, former employees, contractors and more have had their most personal and private information breached by hackers, because the government failed to take the necessary steps to protect those records. According to Politico, “Administration officials have said privately that signs point to the first hack having originated in China, and security experts have said it appeared to be part of a Chinese effort to build dossiers on federal employees who might be approached later for espionage purposes.”

It is an outrageous and unacceptable breach of trust. The federal government, through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), interviews everyone who requires any sort of security clearance, and asks the most detailed and personal questions about past associations, indiscretions and behavior, to make sure nothing in their past could subject them to blackmail or subversion. The interviews extend to friends and associates of those being vetted, and those people are also in the databases that have been breached. But now it has come to light that OPM failed to hold up the Obama administration’s end of the bargain by not doing everything they could to protect those records.

According to David Cox, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, in a letter to the OPM director, “We believe that hackers have every affected person’s Social Security number(s), military records and veterans’ status information, address, birth date, job and pay history, health insurance, life insurance and pension information; age, gender, race, union status, and more. Worst, we believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous.”

The Obama administration initially downplayed the cyber hack of the OPM, which centrally manages records for current and former federal employees. It did so even though it had missed the hack for at least four months, if not more, until a company, CyTech Services, which was conducting a sales demonstration, found malware in OPM’s system that could have been there for a year or more. The unfolding series of disasters has affected at least four million Americans—and perhaps as many as 14 million—including all current federal employees, retired federal employees, and a million former federal employees.

Reports of a second hack by China has added to the outrage, and compounded the problems. “Hackers linked to China have gained access to the sensitive background information submitted by intelligence and military personnel for security clearances, U.S. officials said Friday, describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged,” reported the Associated Press.

“The forms authorities believed may have been stolen en masse, known as Standard Form 86, require applicants to fill out deeply personal information about mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests and bankruptcies. They also require the listing of contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant’s Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant is required.”

How many millions of Americans serving their country does this place at risk?

Under a Republican president, this newest administration scandal would have been front-page, round-the-clock news, with the most sinister of motives ascribed to them, probably for many days running. But as of Friday morning, The Washington Post had relegated coverage of this story to page A14, and several other news outlets began covering the story by simply reposting an AP article to their own websites. Television news has been dominated by stories of two escaped convicts, a local head of the NAACP who falsely represented herself as African American, and the reset, or re-launch, of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Where are the talking heads, the pundits in the media, calling for President Obama—not agencies, not government bureaucrats, but President Obama—to show more care in protecting American citizens against cyberattacks? Such attacks violate our privacy and leave each of us open to hacking, blackmail, and targeting by China, which has been connected in most reports to the breaches. And it serves as a reminder how likely it is that Hillary Clinton’s private email server that she used during her tenure as Secretary of State was hacked by the Chinese, and possibly the Russians, North Koreans and Iranians. One can only imagine what they have on her.

“What’s more, in initial media stories about the breach, the Department of Homeland Security had touted the government’s EINSTEIN detection program, suggesting it was responsible for uncovering the hack,” reports Wired.com. “Nope, also wrong.”

“The OPM had no IT security staff until 2013, and it showed,” reports Wired.

Ken Dilanian’s AP article, despite its wide distribution, fails to mention the number of warnings that OPM, and the government as a whole, has received about its lack of adequate security. “U.S. Was Warned of System Open to Cyberattacks,” reported The New York Times on June 5, describing OPM’s 2014 security as “a Chinese hacker’s dream.”

The 2014 Inspector General’s report was based on an analysis conducted between April and September of last year. While the administration has said that the attack occurred in December of last year, The Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta and Siobhan Hughes wrote of the first reported attack: “Investigators believe the hackers had been in the network for a year or more” when it was discovered in April.

That IG report stated that OPM’s status was “upgraded to a significant deficiency” due to a planned reorganization, and that it had “material weakness in the internal control structure” of its IT program.

“The agency did not possess an inventory of all the computer servers and devices with access to its networks, and did not require anyone gaining access to information from the outside to use the kind of basic authentication techniques that most Americans use for online banking,” reported the Times. “It did not regularly scan for vulnerabilities in the system, and found that 11 of the 47 computer systems that were supposed to be certified as safe for use last year were not ‘operating with a valid authorization.’”

Neither the AP nor the Times noted that this situation reaches as far back as at least fiscal year 2007, with the 2013 IG report indicating that there was a “lack of IT security policies and procedures.” This worsened in fiscal year 2009, with some corrections in 2012, but as of fiscal year 2013 instituted reforms had “only been partially implemented.”

Clearly, this failure has been growing on President Obama’s watch.

The Times noted that “upgrades were underway” when the first reported attack happened, and cited an unnamed former Obama administration official as saying, “The mystery is what took the Chinese so long.”

When asked about the IG reports, White House press secretary Josh Earnest insisted on setting the cited reports aside, because “there is risk associated” with using any computer network. The U.S. government has been raising that risk by not securing its own networks.

One might question whether American citizens are any safer today, and if the Obama administration has made the necessary reforms following these attacks. Earnest, the White House press secretary, used vague language to describe security upgrades after the first cyber intrusion was reported. He cited “ongoing efforts” to “update our defenses and update our ability to detect intrusions” and blamed Congressional inaction.

“And the fact is, we need the United States Congress to come out of the Dark Ages and actually join us here in the 21st century to make sure that we have the kinds of defenses that are necessary to protect a modern computer system,” he said. “And we have not seen that kind of action in Congress.”

While cooperation with the private sector may help upgrade government information technology systems, it is the responsibility of the administration and the media to hold President Obama accountable for this debacle, which has been brewing over the course of his entire term in office. There should be a complete investigation, whether by Congress or an independent counsel, into the failure of the Obama administration to protect the privacy and personal information of millions of Americans. What did they know, when did they know it, and who or what is to blame? What can be done to ensure this doesn’t happen again? People should be held accountable.

“If OPM is behind on cybersecurity, which it is, it has plenty of company,” reported the Post on June 7. Almost all, 23 of 24, major agencies cited these security issues as a “major management challenge for their agency,” it reported. The GAO indicated last year that the number of breaches involving personally identifiable information has more than doubled between 2009 and 2013, according to the Post.

With the mainstream media intent on championing all the benefits of Obamacare amidst an upcoming Supreme Court decision over subsidies, coverage of the security deficits within the health care exchanges has virtually disappeared. “Independent agencies such as the Government Accountability Office and the HHS inspector general have warned of continued security problems,” wrote Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) for The Wall Street Journal last November. “This is concerning for Americans, as HealthCare.gov houses vast amounts of sensitive personal enrollment information—from full, legal names, to Social Security numbers, dates of birth and even income information.” She notes that Healthcare.gov has been “described by experts as a ‘hacker’s dream.’”

Just like OPM. How soon will we hear that the millions on the Obamacare exchanges have also had their personal information compromised by foreign hackers, and will the mainstream media also then blame that future disaster on a bureaucrat, and not Obama?

Our nation also remains vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse attack, which could involve exploding a nuclear weapon at high altitude in the atmosphere. With Iran seeking nuclear capability, this becomes even more of a threat.

A report by the Department of Homeland Security indicates “that a massive electromagnetic pulse event caused by a solar flare could leave more than 130 million Americans without power for years,” reported WorldNetDaily last December.

“President Obama could sign an executive order mandating [that] DHS add EMP to its emergency planning, but he has not done so, even though he reportedly is aware of the consequences.”

When are the mainstream media going to hold President Obama accountable for the many scandals, and bungling incompetence, plaguing his administration? Our veterans are at risk because of scandals and incompetence at the VA, and our flying public because of scandals and political correctness at the FAA and TSA. Obama’s security policies are jeopardizing the safety and welfare of millions of Americans. If the Chinese government is really behind these attacks, which is still being investigated, do we plan to retaliate in any way? Or is there no price to pay? The mainstream media, once again, appear to be more interested in preserving their access to the halls of power, and in avoiding at all costs attributing any of the blame for this catastrophe to the Obama administration’s ineptitude and incompetence.