FINGERPRINT BREACH / BLOG 4

            This story may be a popular one this week. I signed onto Facebook to see that a popular story currently is a data breach of the Office of Personnel Management where over 5.5 million fingerprints were accessed and stolen. The story originally was that "only" 1.1 million were compromised but that number jumped massively as the investigation continued. While the hackers did not get much from all of these fingerprints, as technology advances, fingerprints may be more useful for the hackers. As for right now, fingerprints do not allow enough access into the personal lives.

            This made me wonder what the future could hold for hackers and their victims in the future. As of right now, the only common sense thing that I could think of that my fingerprints link me to is my identity. They don't give you my social security number nor do they allow access to my banking account and routing numbers. But then I had to second-guess myself. I had remembered about my iPhone 6 sitting next to me. With one of the most recent operating system updates on my iPhone came fingerprinting "Touch ID" where I can unlock my phone, access Apple Pay and both Apple's App and iTunes Stores with the touch of my thumb or forefinger. Or any other finger that I decide to make my phone memorize for easy access. 

            I had just been talking with my roommates a few days earlier about how the Touch ID feature was one of the best additions to the new operating system and how I never knew that I needed it until I had it. With this personal realization comes the understanding that fingerprint scanners are going to begin to infiltrate the everyday person’s life in more ways over the years most likely. Once we as a society begin to become more reliant on them, that’s when hackers who have accessed this information that has affected over 21.5 million people will have more damage to cause.

            While not directly related to this week’s topic in the text, I felt that this story was meant to be on my Facebook. Fingerprints seem like a thing of the past when they are most likely going to be a part of our future. My prediction for the future is that we will become more reliant on our prints in places like the airport or bank in addition to other sensitive information like our social security number. Fingerprints are an obviously unique aspect of each of our bodies that it seems crazy that we’ve never really relied on them outside of a criminal investigation or something of the sort. Thankfully this breach occurred while we are less reliant on prints and over the years if we begin stretching towards the use of them, technology and security can learn with us so that a breach of this magnitude does not occur again. Maybe I could be entirely wrong in my prediction and maybe fingerprints will stop at Apple and iPhones.

Article link: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/opm-5-6-million-fingerprints-not-1-1-million-were-n432281?cid=sm_tw&hootPostID=2b259895c48c0d9742f7bfbe0f5adfa4

ESPIONAGE / BLOG 3

            After reading through Chapters 3 and 4 in the text, I decided that I wanted to write this blog post on espionage. Espionage is a topic that I'm familiar with but not very well-versed on and even after reading through the chapter, I wanted to find how it can apply in the real world. Also, if you have been reading my blog then you are probably aware with the fact that I love CNN.com. I like how they organize and report their stories on their website and I find their personal opinions respectful. For this post, I read the article "Chinese cyber espionage group caught hacking defense, industrial base" written by Tal Kopan for CNN.com last month. I specifically chose this article because the title stood out to me for including both my topic of this week (espionage) and hacking, my loose topic of the last two weeks.


            The story being reported on involves a very sophisticated group of Chinese hackers that has been nicknamed "Emissary Panda". These hackers have been getting into highly secure systems and obtaining sensitive information from important organizations around the World. This is not the first time that these hackers have been getting into computer systems. In 2013, they hacked into the Russian embassy's website and spread their damaging software to all of the visitors of the site. Thus far, there have been over 100 attacks on 50 targets identified in the United States and United Kingdom.


            The group seems sophisticated because of how they are going about taking the information. While making themselves known early on, the hackers are managing to find credentials to obtain access to the sites and giving themselves enough time to make lists of all of the sensitive information on the site. Only then are they leaving the task to return and take only a small amount of said information. Experts have observed this activity to conclude that the group seems to be taunting the organizations being hacked on; how they are making it so obvious that they are hacking but will never be able to be caught. They've been found out and kicked off of sites only to later come back and find their way back in again.


            Two videos accompanying this article does clear the air with how this hacker group has affected national security within US borders. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that there are no signs of "malicious activity" within their constrains. The United States as a whole, however, is blaming China for this entire ordeal. If they are truly the country or government program to be the source of this, that can only foreshadow larger issues in the future as we know how powerful China can be.

Article source link: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/05/politics/cyber-espionage-campaign-chinese/index.html

CYBERTERRORISM / BLOG 2

            Terrorism is by far my favorite topic within Criminal Justice. Although it could technically be labeled under Homeland Security, there are many bleed-overs into CRJS. I'm writing on this topic today after finishing up Chapter Three in "Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism" by Robert M. Taylor, Eric J. Fritsch and John Leiderbach. The one thing that always trips me up on the topic of terrorism is that it is always for a political goal. Simple "evil" happenings cannot always be labeled terrorism although they terrorize society. In Chapter Three I learned about cyberterrorism and how it is a new tactic to achieve the same end goal as what our minds think of when we think of 'terrorism'.

            This subject brought to my mind the scandal of WikiLeaks and made me interested to look into it fully since I never truly understood the situation 100% and see if it was at all any kind of terrorism. The United States had sensitive information leaked through WikiLeaks, which is an organization whose goal is to bring important information to the public through “innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists”, per www.wikileaks.org. The biggest player in the 2010 WikiLeaks information leak was Julian Assange, the founder of the organization. He has been in the news constantly about this debacle. WikiLeaks posted a sensitive video involving the United States military but although this shook the US government, there didn’t seem to be a political agenda for Assange so this could not be considered terrorism. He is currently being held at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for sexual assault charges that were brought upon him three years ago and Swedish prosecutors have said that they may be trying him for his alleged sex crimes in 2020, according to CNN’s Ben Brumfield. Five years from now.

            Although the purpose of the WikiLeaks site is definitely not something that is popular with world governments, it cannot be considered any kind of cyberterrorism. I know that the chances were slim but it seemed plausible enough prior to my research into the organization for it to be so. I can see cyberterrorism becoming a primary security issue for the United States as technology gets more and more advanced and hackers learn more and more about said technology. ISIS specifically has proven themselves to be a very technology-savvy group and I hope that we never get into a cyber war with them or any other terror organization for that matter.

Article link: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/europe/wikileaks-assange-sweden-allegations/index.html