WikiLeaks published personal information of CIA Director John Brennan on wednesday after a bold hack attack of the top spy's personal email account. Though all of the documents are from before Brennan's time in the Obama administration and contain no classified data, information such as Social Security numbers, passport numbers and addresses of his family and associates is causing great concern within the government. The hackers claim to have illegally accessed Brennan's personal server last weekend and are threatening to release more documents. WikiLeaks tweeted late Wednesday afternoon that it planned to release more emails from Brennan. "Tomorrow we continue our @CIA chief John Brennan email series, including on US strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. #AfPak #CIA," the group said. This leak of information is obviously very concerning to not only the entire intelligence community, but to the government. The threat of hackers has been growing exponentially in recent years and many experts warn a cyber terror attack is eminent.
What could be the motivation of these hackers?
Does hacking pose a legitimate threat to our national security?
Is the United States prepared for a cyber terror attack?Sources:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wikileaks-releases-second-batch-cia-boss-john-brennans-email-n449366
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34597060
6 comments:
It is evident that the hackers that work for Wikileaks are strictly focused on stirring up as much trouble as they can. For the past couple of years, Wikileaks has been releasing top secret information even going as far as giving Russia and China top secret information about the U.S. military. I truly believe that these hackers pose a legiitimate to our national security, mainly because we've known about these hackers for a while now and yet they can't be stopped. It's a threat to national security because anyone who can attain top secret information so easily means that they can do a lot more damage if they feel the need to. If Wikileaks decided to take the initiative to launch a cyber attack on the U.S., I don't know how much the NSA could do to prevent the attack. I mean thus far there hasn't been a solution for their hacking, and who knows when their will be.
Wikileaks has published highly confidential files from the head of the CIA's email account. One of documents included Brennan's application for national security clearance, with his: address, phone number, passport details, and the names and addresses of associates including former CIA boss George Tenet. Still, none of this information has been taken down, causing issues for Brennan. Among the published articles is one regarding the use of toucher when interrogating suspects. I believe that this will cause major issue for the CIA due to the ethics behind using such methods. Another issue creating article is one discussing the conflict with Iran, where he says that he wants to engage with them on counter terrorism matters and is annoyed with the Bush administration for not doing so. Wikileaks has promised that there will be more emails to come. This will cause major issues for the Director of the CIA. This is a matter of national security, and the government needs to learn how to protect its secret documents and emails of high officials, because there is a lot of information on them that I'm sure they do not want getting out. They could cause serious issue within the US and between the US and other countries.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/21/wikileaks_posts_cia_directors_emails/
I suspect that these Wikileaks hackers may take issue to the way the CIA has been spying on foreign allies and enemies alike. That doesn't make these hackers' threat to national security justified, but it does provide some context. Of course, through selling information to Russia and China as they had in the past, there is some monetary gain as well. As Gilberto said, the NSA probably couldn't do much about another attack on secure records. Although, to be quite honest, if Wikileaks were attacking the NSA in particular for collecting phone records and invading the privacy of U.S. citizens, I'd have no real problems about their hacking.
I believe the WikiLeak hackers are leaking information for two reason: (1) the hacker(s) believe by leaking private information they are able to gain an advantage in the cyber war or (2)leaking information will help their country gain an advantage in the global scale. In addition, a country hacking another country may be the result of retaliation. However, this does not mean that America should not be taking this situation lightly because this incident may be considered small in the grand scheme of things, but this could lead to bigger and more harmful hacks in the future. I don't believe that America is prepared for a cyberattack because there have been too many incidents where hackers were able to penetrate U.S. government files when the America government says that they have the best cyber security system in the world. This goes to show that if America really wants to prove to the world that it does have the best cyber security system then the government should put their money where their mouths are and start to fix the system.
WikiLeaks hackers have been releasing private information on public figures for quite sometime now, always to arise a reaction from the public and in many cases to make a profit, too. The information released in recent WikiLeaks news has been that of CIA Director John Brennan. The hackers released copies amounts of information, that has yet to be taken down from the site, including social security numbers, passport numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and contact information of Brennan's family and friends. Information regarding the protocols of the CIA were included in these files, which is an extremely pressing issue. I do fully believe that these hackers are putting our nations security in danger. With threats of releasing even more of Brennan's documents in the coming weeks, there is no telling what these supposed documents could hold and what detriment their release could cause. In the past, WikiLeaks has sold information to China and Russia at the expense of the United States, so there is no telling what harm could be done. In full honesty, i do not believe that our nation is prepared for a cyber attack. If hackers are so easily able to access files as important as CIA protocols then there are obvious flaws in our system.
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