Question

. What role does communications technology play in homeland security, and what problems were identified by the 9/11 Commission as issues?

How many cyber attacks have there been that have physically damaged infrastructure in the United States? Does it represent a significant threat?.

What are the problems with defining cyber-terrorism? How might that affect homeland security operations?

Answer 1

• What role does communications technology play in homeland security, and what problems were identified by the 9/11 Commission as issues?

Ans: Communication technology played a crucial role in homeland security but there are positives and negatives for everything.9/11 commission identified few flaws in communication technology of homeland security like 1) security frame work should be more powerful,2) All the security-oriented government departments should be in one communication server3) visa security program should be enabled with more security features etc  

• How many cyber attacks have there been that have physically damaged infrastructure in the United States? Does it represent a significant threat?.

Ans)There are many cyber attacks done on united states that damaged infrastructure and there are different types of cyber attacks.

Types of cyber attack

But to achieve those goals, a number of different technical methods are deployed by cybercriminals. There are always new methods proliferating, and some of these categories overlap, but these are the terms that you're most likely to hear discussed.

Malware — short for malicious software, malware can refer to any kind of software, no matter how it's structured or operated, that "is a designed to cause damage to a single computer, server, or computer network," as Microsoft puts it. Worms, viruses, and trojans are all varieties of malware, distinguished from one another by the means by which they reproduce and spread. These attacks may render the computer or network inoperable, or grant the attacker root access so they can control the system remotely.

Phishing — a technique by which cybercriminals craft emails to fool a target into taking some harmful action. The recipient might be tricked into downloading malware that's disguised as an important document, for instance, or urged to click on a link that takes them to a fake website where they'll be asked for sensitive information like bank usernames and passwords. Many phishing emails are relatively crude and emailed to thousands of potential victims, but some are specifically crafted for valuable target individuals to try to get them to part with useful information.

Denial of Service attacks — a brute force method to try stop some online service from working properly. For instance, attackers might send so much traffic to a website or so many requests to a database that it overwhelms those systems ability to function, making them unavailable to anybody. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses an army of computers, usually compromised by malware and under the control of cybercriminals, to funnel the traffic towards the targets.

Man in the middle attacks — a method by which attackers manage to interpose themselves secretly between the user and a web service they're trying to access. For instance, an attacker might set up a Wi-Fi network with a login screen designed to mimic a hotel network; once a user logs in, the attacker can harvest any information that user sends, including banking passwords.

Cryptojacking — a specialized attack that involves getting someone else's computer to do the work of generating cryptocurrency for you (a process called mining in crypto lingo). The attackers will either install malware on the victim's computer to perform the necessary calculations, or sometimes run the code in JavaScript that executes in the victim's browser.

SQL injection — a means by which an attacker can exploit a vulnerability to take control of a victim's database. Many databases are designed to obey commands written in the Structured Query Language (SQL), and many websites that take information from users send that data to SQL databases. In a SQL injection attack, a hacker will, for instance, write some SQL commands into a web form that's asking for name and address information; if the web site and database aren't programmed correctly, the database might try to execute those commands.

Recent cyber attacks:

Deciding which cyber attacks were the worst is, arguably, somewhat subjective. Those that made our list did so because they got the most notice for various reasons — because they were widespread, perhaps, or because they were signals of a larger, scary trend.

Without further ado, here are the biggest cyber attacks in recent history:

WannaCry

WannaCry was a ransomware attack that spread rapidly in May of 2017. Like all ransomware, it took over infected computers and encrypted the contents of their hard drives, then demanded a payment in Bitcoin in order to decrypt them. The malware took particular root in computers at facilities run by the United Kingdom's NHS.

Malware isn't anything new, though. What made WannaCry significant and scary was the means it used to propagate: it exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows using code that had been secretly developed by the United States National Security Agency. Called EternalBlue, the exploit had been stolen and leaked by a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers. Microsoft had already patched the vulnerability a few weeks before, but many systems hadn't upgraded. Microsoft was furious that the U.S. government had built a weapon to exploit the vulnerability rather than share information about the hole with the infosec community.

NotPetya

Petya was just another piece of ransomware when it started circulating via phishing spam in 2016; its main claim to fame was that it encrypted the master boot record of infected machines, making it devilishly difficult for users to get access to their files.

Then, abruptly in June of 2017, a much more virulent version of the malware started spreading. It was different enough from the original that it was dubbed NotPetya; it originally propagated via compromised Ukrainian accounting software and spread via the same EternalBlue exploit that WannaCry used. NotPetya is widely believed to be a cyber attack from Russia against Ukraine, though Russia denies it, opening up a possible era of states using weaponized malware.

Ethereum

While this one might not have been as high-profile as some of the others on this list, it deserves a spot here due to the sheer amount of money involved. Ether is a Bitcoin-style cryptocurrency, and $7.4 million in Ether was stolen from the Ethereum app platform in a manner of minutes in July. Then, just weeks later came a $32 million heist. The whole incident raised questions about the security of blockchain-based currencies.

Equifax

The massive credit rating agency announced in July of 2017 that "criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files," getting personal information for nearly 150 million people. The subsequent fallout enraged people further, especially when the site Equifax set up where people could see if their information had been compromised seemed primarily designed to sell Equifax services.

Ed Szofer, CEO of SenecaGlobal, says the Equifax breach is particularly bad "because they had already been told about the fix — it needed to be implemented in a tool called Apache Struts that they use — well before the breach even happened. And yet they failed to do so fully in a timely manner. To prevent such breaches from happening requires a shift in culture and resources; this was not a technical issue, as the technical fix was already known. Equifax certainly had the resources, but it clearly did not have the right culture to ensure the right processes were in place and followed."

Yahoo (revised)

This massive hack of Yahoo's email system gets an honorable mention because it actually happened way back in 2013 — but the severity of it, with all 3 billion Yahoo email addresses affected, only became clear in October 2017. Stolen information included passwords and backup email addresses, encrypted using outdated, easy-to-crack techniques, which is the sort of information attackers can use to breach other accounts. In addition to the effect on the account owners, the breach could spawn a revisiting of the deal by which Verizon bought Yahoo, even though that deal had already closed.

The truly scary thing about this breach is that the culture of secrecy that kept it under wraps means that there's more like it out there. "No one is excited to share a breach, for obvious PR reasons," says Mitch Lieberman, director of research at G2 Crowd. "But the truth eventually comes out.

• What are the problems with defining cyber-terrorism? How might that affect homeland security operations?

Ans) Homeland security establishes the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA builds the national capacity to defend against cyber attacks and works with the federal government to provide cybersecurity tools, incident response services and assessment capabilities to safeguard the ‘.gov’ networks that support the essential operations of partner departments and agencies.

This CSIA will help homeland security operations to be stable and make united states safer than before.