{"id":32534,"date":"2013-05-10T17:08:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/the-us-government-might-be-the-biggest-hacker-in-the-world\/32534\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T17:08:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T16:08:00","slug":"the-us-government-might-be-the-biggest-hacker-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/the-us-government-might-be-the-biggest-hacker-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The US government might be the biggest hacker in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

The United States government is investing tens of millions of dollars each year on offensive hacking operations in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the computers of its adversaries, Reuters reports.<\/p>\n

According to an in-depth article published Friday by journalist
\nJoseph Menn, the US and its Department of Defense contractors are
\nincreasingly pursuing efforts to hack the computers of foreign
\ncompetitors, in turn exposing a rarely discussed aspect of the
\nnation\u2019s clandestine cyber operations.<\/p>\n

In a time when the government continues to prosecute alleged
\ndomestic computer criminals \u2013 so much so that demands for
\ntechnology law reform<\/a> have been rampant as of late \u2013 Menn says the US
\nis guilty of spending millions on discovering, identifying and
\nexploiting previously unknown security flaws, often gaining
\nunfettered access to the systems and networks of international
\ntargets.<\/p>\n

As a result, the US has become one of the world\u2019s top players in
\nregards to wreaking havoc over the Internet \u2013 even as calls to
\ninvestigate foreign hackers increase in Congress.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, a bipartisan supported proposal was introduced in
\nCongress specifically to protect US commercial data from being
\ncompromised by foreign hackers. According to Menn, however, the
\nAmerican government is just as guilty of cybercrimes as the
\ncountries it warns against in introducing the \u201cDeter Cyber Theft
\nAct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as the US government confronts rival powers over
\nwidespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a
\nburgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools
\nfor breaking into computers<\/i>,\u201d Menn wrote.<\/p>\n

In his report, Menn explained that a large chunk of the
\ncountry\u2019s current cyber endeavors does not rely on defensive
\nstrategy as one might imagine, but instead involves offensive
\noperations launched with the intent of causing harm on the
\ncomputers of adversaries.<\/p>\n

Menn wrote defense contractors \u201cspend at least tens of
\nmillions of dollars a year<\/i>\u201d on simply researching exploits
\nthat, if pursued, could put the eyes and ears of the American
\nintelligence company essentially anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n

And although the US has not officially gone on the record to
\nacknowledge these shadowy operations, Menn wrote that the nation\u2019s
\nmost well-known cyber endeavor \u2013 the Stuxnet<\/a> worm that targeted Iranian nuclear plants \u2013 is
\njust one example of the budding attempts to attack foreign
\nentities.<\/p>\n

\u201cComputer researchers in the public and private sectors say
\nthe US government, acting mainly through defense contractors, has
\nbecome the dominant player in fostering the shadowy but large-scale
\ncommercial market for tools known as exploits, which burrow into
\nhidden computer vulnerabilities<\/i>,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn their most common use, exploits are critical but
\ninterchangeable components inside bigger programs. Those programs
\ncan steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on : RT<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States government is investing tens of millions of dollars each year on offensive hacking operations in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the computers of its adversaries, Reuters reports. According to an in-depth article published Friday by journalist Joseph Menn, the US and its Department of Defense contractors are increasingly pursuing efforts to hack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}