Patrick Tucker’s article explained Dan Geer’s 10 policy proposals for protecting the Internet from cyber attacks, organizing them by different sections in the reading. According to Dan Geer, a single well-designed cyber weapon could end up taking down the entire Internet, which would leave the cyber world in distraught. In order to protect the Internet and keep our information safe, Tucker proposed a variety of ways to allow that to happen. The one application that stood out to me the most was allowing there to be no Internet voting when it comes to different elections. Obviously when voting for a new president of the United States should not be done via individuals computers, but other elections apart from presidential ones should also be carefully held elsewhere. Websites such as eBallot, a voting software designed to meet the voting requirements of many types of organizations including schools and law firms should probably not exist. I can only imagine how easy it would be for a hacker to tap in and change the voting information. According to the FBI cyber crimes are now one of the top law enforcement activities. Large companies such as Target and Staples are victims of cyber crime. I think Patrick Tucker’s 10 policy proposals will definitely wind up keeping the Internet much safer because all of his ideas are extremely doable.
According to a recent article written by Amir Nasr, with the new upcoming presidential election being just around the corner, American voters want the U.S government to employ tougher cybersecurity measures instead of retaliatory actions, to guard against cyber attacks originating from foreign countries. Senator Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee both have China on their radar for cyber theft. Both senators running for office agree that we should hack China back if we are going to be attacked in cyber by them. The China government has denied any involvement and they have publicly not been blamed yet for the data breach but it is still something that should be heavily monitored, especially since this election is going to be one of the most important ones in history.
Bias: Dan Geer sides with the government more than individual companies who tend to be the ones who are victimized. His proposals are opinionated yet they all comply with the larger companies and the government’s needs in order to be safe from cyber thieves.
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This CNN story talks about the rumors of another cyber attack on the U.S and China being the culprit. The reporter quotes from the Chinese government that the United States needs to stop being so skeptical of them because there is no direct evidence that China did so. The reporter explains that hacking is a multi-step process and you start if you are a hacker, getting all the information you can from a huge amount of people, and then sending “fishing” e-mails to those people to try to get more information from them and further the process. This would only be the first step of a hack not the final step of a hack.
Dulcie Smith 