Tag Archive for: effort

Analysis | Shielding CISA from politics is a bipartisan effort – The Washington Post

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Analysis | Shielding CISA from politics is a bipartisan effort  The Washington Post

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FirstEnergy hack is cyber-thieves’ latest effort to swipe personal info

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CLEVELAND, Ohio – Recycling paper, bottles and cans is good. Recycling computer passwords is not.



a car parked in front of a building: First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

© Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer
First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

The fact that so many people use identical usernames and passwords for multiple websites has led to an explosion of hacking incidents over the past decade, in which criminals take username and password combinations collected from one website and test them other websites to see if they unlock anything the hackers can use for financial gain.

Akron-based FirstEnergy is the latest company to report suspicious activity involving “numerous attempts to log into customer accounts” using credentials obtained from a source outside of the company. The company announced Sunday that it disabled six million customers’ online accounts and told them to reset their passwords. Other big companies that have reported mass hackings in recent years include Capital One bank, Target, LinkedIn, and Myspace.



a car parked in front of a building: First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio on April 3, 2018. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

© Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer
First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio on April 3, 2018. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

Brian E. Ray, who heads the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland Marshall College of Law says large hacks of customer data from the internet have escalated in the past four or five years, with ransomware as the latest wrinkle in the evolving cat-and-mouse game of fighting cybercrime.

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“The good guys are constantly trying to keep up with the methods and the bad guys are constantly innovating and shifting their techniques,” says Ray. “The more connected we are, the more we put online, the bigger the surface area becomes and the harder it is to protect it all.”

FirstEnergy says the vast majority of the attempts to log into customer accounts were unsuccessful. Company spokesperson Jennifer Young says that easily abused customer information like complete bank account or credit card numbers aren’t available through the company’s online account access.

“There was and is no threat or impact to electric service…

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EDITORIAL: Election security effort is robust | Opinion

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Other actions have been less overt. Behind the scenes, in a coordinated and largely unprecedented effort, U.S. national security agencies have frozen the assets of foreign hackers, imposed sanctions, revoked visas, knocked spies offline, prevented suspected adversaries from entering the U.S. and worked with social media companies to take down suspect accounts, all in a preemptive effort to prevent further meddling.

As for defensive measures, the FBI has convened a foreign influence task force and coordinated security efforts with tech companies. Intelligence agencies have issued regular updates about what foreign adversaries are planning and why. The Department of Homeland Security has helped fortify state and local defenses against foreign intrusion and done a commendable job of educating the public, even launching a sober-minded “rumor control page” and publishing a disinformation toolkit for election officials.

The private sector has also done its part. Microsoft Corp. has warned about hacking attempts against U.S. political actors and helped to take down a major Russian criminal operation. Both Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. revealed in September that they had removed phony accounts linked to Russian intelligence, while cybersecurity companies have been sharing information with the authorities about other hackers targeting the election.

Of course, all this is in marked contrast to the president himself, who has said next to nothing about election interference publicly. Asked about the topic at the last presidential debate, he instead brought up NATO, submarines and the mayor of Moscow’s wife. His staffers have amended intelligence assessments to downplay the threat and ceased in-person briefings to Congress about it. Even broaching the topic in the White House has reportedly been discouraged. Far from condemning election interference, Trump has in fact solicited it — possibly in violation of federal law — from at least three countries.

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