North Korea says: No, We Didn’t Hack Sony.

Recently a new cyber crime story gets reported every week. This week’s news on cybercrime is about an attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, among other problems making movies publicly available, and creating substantial damage.

Cute dog and girl, most likely from movie.
Picture from linked web page., most likely from movie

An important aspect of most cyber crime is the fact that hacks usually cannot be attributed to the real source. Just because a computer was attacked by another computer, maybe in North Korea or maybe somewhere else doesn’t confirm the real source. That computer may itself be an innocent victim and may have been used by another computer in some other part of the world. There can be a chain of tens and more computers. Even aunt Emma’s computer may be part of such a chain. Therefore it is a very bad idea for most people to start counterattacking cyber criminals by themselves.

This attack is different from old fashioned cyber-crime in what it tries to do. It is not simply stealing some money were the loss of the victim matches the gains of the criminal; it is not simply leaking credit card numbers. The loss to Sony is “strategic”: The loss for Sony isn’t what is gone and has been stolen. The loss in this case is directly hurting Sony in its ability to do further business. As of today, such crimes are common place in newspaper talk about state-actors, cyber-“terrorism” and in hype like cyber-“war”. What is new and unusual here is that such losses are inflicted on normal, commercial business enterprises.

Adding several layers of protection could significantly minimize the risk of such attacks. Obfuscation of your code as provided by White Hawk Software can be one of these protective layers.

For more about this incident see:

Hacker-Proof vs Tamper-Proof Software

DarkHand300Recently some people have asked us why we don’t call our software “hacker-proof tools” rather than tamper-proofing software tools. Both terminologies are correct of course, but we think the word “hacker” often has a connotation of “amateur” or at least not full time professional.

 

Yes, we want to protect your software from hackers, but we also want to protect it from professional code-breakers, competitors and virus developers.  Hence the stronger term tamper-proof.

(C) Copyright 2013 White Hawk Software

Ensure Your Space Programs are Tamper-Proof too!

IntSpaceStation
Picture of International Space Station that itself was infected with a virus. Photo thanks to Wiki Commons

Renowned Russian virus and security expert Eugene Kaspersky revealed recently that a virus had even been discovered on board the  International Space Station – despite them being a million miles from the nearest internet node. Turns out some space astronaut accidentally took along the virus on a USB “thumb” drive for use on one of the many laptops deployed in the space station. See full story from the International Business Times.

The big motto of this story is that you don’t have to be attached to the internet to be infected. So don’t wait to run virus checkers and hope for the best. Mission critical software should all be tamper-proof so that no malware can hook in and cause any damage whatsoever.

(C) Copyright 2013 White Hawk Software

FBI Chief: Our New Enemies May Be Online

FBI_logo_SmallIn Washington on Thursday Nov 7th, FBI Director James Comey said that cyber attacks are increasingly representing the most serious threats to the homeland security and in the next decade will likely eclipse the risk posed by traditional terrorist threats.
He told a Senate committee that this cyber risk is a multi-layered threat posed by thieves, hackers and others who are able to travel the world via the internet at the “speed of light.’ His stern warning continued with “there are no safe neighborhoods.”

(C) Copyright 2013 White Hawk Software