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Posted: 10 Feb 2015 05:35 PM PST
 The White House has officially announced plans to establish a new agency, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, in order to streamline how the government handles the increasing number of attacks waged against the nation’s computer systems. Lisa Monaco, the homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to US President Barack Obama, went public with the administration’s plans to create the agency on Tuesday, saying it would give the government greater ability to share information about potential cyberattacks among the federal offices already tasked with countering the ever-growing number of network assaults. “The cyberthreat is one of the greatest threats we face, and policymakers and operators will benefit from having a rapid source of intelligence,” Monaco explained to the Washington Post. “It will help ensure that we have the same integrated, all-tools approach to the cyberthreat that we have developed to combat terrorism.” Government offices including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency already manage cyber-operations centers, the Post acknowledged in its report, but their ability to thwart attacks is up for debate after an onslaught of recent assaults: the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s software innovation division told CBS’ 60 Minutes program over the weekend that “the number of attacks is dramatically increasing” with regards to the US military’s networks, and hacks suffered by private businesses during the last several months – such as the ones that targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment and healthcare provider Anthem – have rekindled the public’s interest in cyber protections as well. “Now, currently, no single government entity is responsible for producing coordinated cyber threat assessments, ensuring that information is shared rapidly among existing cyber centers and other elements within our government and supporting the work of operators and policy makers with timely intelligence about the latest cyber threats and threat actors,” Monaco admitted to attendees at a Tuesday event at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where the administration’s plans were announced. “We are at a transformational moment in the evolution of the cyber threat,” the Fierce Government IT website quoted Monaco as saying at Tuesday’s event. “The actions we take today and those we fail to take will determine whether cyberspace remains a great national asset or increasingly becomes a strategic liability, an economic and national security strength or a source of vulnerability.” “The threat is becoming more diverse, more sophisticated and more dangerous, and I worry that malicious attacks…will increasingly become the norm unless we adapt quickly and take a comprehensive approach,” she added, according to The Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, the new center will be managed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, placing it under the umbrella held by DNI James Clapper, which already encompasses the NSA, CIA and others. Last month, President Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that would increase cyberthreat data sharing between the federal government and the private sector, but efforts to encode any such law have been stalled by lawmakers routinely during the last several years. Source The post White House creates new cyber agency in effort to combat computer attacks appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.       |
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Posted: 09 Feb 2015 04:04 PM PST
 Norwegian scientists say global warming will lead to more wildfires in the forests surrounding the site of the 1986 nuclear accident, leaving Europeans exposed to radioactive elements still present in the exclusion zone around the plant. “A large amount of Caesium-137 still remains in the Chernobyl forests, which could be remobilized along with a large number of other dangerous, long-lived, refractory radionuclides. We predict that an expanding flammable area associated with climate change will lead to a high risk of radioactive contamination with characteristic fire peaks in the future,” said the abstract of a study published in Ecological Monographs magazine by the respected Norwegian Institute for Air Research. The US Environmental Protection Agency describes Caesium-137 as a “highly radioactive” material that “increases the risk of cancer” and can cause death through severe exposure. Of the 85 petabecquerels (a measure of radioactivity) released following the accident at the plant, between two and eight still remain in the soil. The Norwegian team studied satellite images of the patterns of large-scale fires that originated in the 4800 sq. km exclusion zone – located on either side of Ukraine’s border with Belarus – in 2002, 2008, and 2010. The impacts of those fires, which spewed nearly a tenth as much radiation as the original fallout, were detected as far away as Scandinavia, Turkey, and Italy. The scientists then used projections from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – which says the area will become even drier and more prone to fires – to make future predictions of even more severe radiation clouds spreading across the continent. Furthermore, the scientists found that organic debris in the forest – key fuel for any potential fire – has been building up at twice the rate since 1986, as dead leaves in the area appear to decay at half the pace, due to radiation inhibiting natural biological processes. The situation is made worse by the surprisingly slow decay of Caesium-137 itself. In lab conditions, its half-life is 30 years, meaning that by next year, it should be half as potent as at the time of the contamination. But in the dense vegetation that has sprung up in the exclusion zone, the element is cycled continuously between the soil and the leaves of the trees above. The study, which notes that “current fire-fighting infrastructure in the region is inadequate due to understaffing and lack of funding,” predicts that the most potent combination of Caesium concentrations and wildfires will strike between 2023 and 2036, and realistic dangers will remain until 2060. Read More Here The post Wildfires to create second wave of radiation poisoning from Chernobyl appeared first on USAHM Conspiracy News.   |
