President Elect Obama Warned to "Brace Himself" For An Attack

President Elect Obama has been warned by leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to "brace himself for an early assault by terrorists."

General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, this week acknowledged that there were dangers during a presidential transition when new officials were coming in and getting accustomed to the challenges. But he added that no “real or artificial spike” in intercepted transmissions from terror suspects had been detected.

Britain and the US are sharing all intelligence on suspected terrorist activity because of the high risk of a plot involving transatlantic flights. Al-Qaeda is understood still to be obsessed with mounting an attack using passenger airliners. There have also been warnings of al-Qaeda interest in developing a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) device. The US has anti-CBRN units on constant patrol in main cities.

Al-Qaeda is known to be experimenting with biological agents, particularly anthrax, which they acquire from dead animals and then create cultures. The key man involved in these experiments is Abou Kabbah al-Masri, who was engaged in the biological trials including tests on rabbits that were uncovered in Afghanistan when the Taleban were overrun after the US invasion in 2001.

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United States Computer Systems Under Attack, IT Security Lacking

White House emails and networks infiltrated, President elect Obama, and Senator McCain's computers attacked and infiltrated during the summer at least once.

The Chinese have been accused and caught spying on the United States since the early Clinton administration, though nothing has really been done about it.

Little action has been taken to secure the systems, guard information from them, and they are still vulnerable.

The scary part, is apparently the ease with which they were allegedly able to penetrate the systems and this should be a warning to any future candidates running for the office of the President of the United States, and any other people in the Government.

It was recently announced that the World Bank was hacked apparently numerous times as well.

Too many Companies, and Government systems holding sensitive data are unnecessarily vulnerable to outside attack. Placing this data on vulnerable and accessible networks is like leaving the door to the candy store wide open.

Recently, Michael Horowitz had a post on his Defensive Computing blog titled "Some Computers Are Too Important To Be Networked". I highly suggest you read it, and apply its lessons to your computer security plans. It is a short post and well worth reading.

An earlier post I had on this can be found here: Obama and McCain Computers Hacked Over The Summer.

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Obama and McCain Computers Hacked Over The Summer

Both Presidential candidates had their computer systems hacked over the summer by what authorities are saying is an "unknown foreign entity."

Reports of the attack were published yesterday, and authorities who investigated the incident believe whoever it was, was looking for foreign policy information and how the candidates my react in future negotiations.

Originally tech's from the Obama camp believed they had a virus and the next day they were informed that the problem was far more serious according to the report.

"You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team."You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system."

Federal agents told Obama's aides that the McCain campaign had suffered a similar attack, which a top McCain official later confirmed.

The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

More about the specifics of the attack can be found on Xssed.

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Russians To Deploy Missiles On Border With Poland

The Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, within hours after the election of Barack Obama as the new US President announced the deployment of Iskander missiles in its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad next to the border with Poland.

Believed to be a response both to the missile shield deployment in Poland and as a way to test the new administration, thought it does not take over the office until January 20th 2009.

This leaves current President Bush, with the choice of leaving this for the next President to deal with or taking a stance now. It is yet to be known what he will do.

This is also just one of many things the Russian's have done lately to bolster its status and power in the world of late. I have written about some of these things earlier such as New Cold War Heats Up, Is Russia Renewing the Cold War With Words and Actions?, and Russia To Deploy New Nuclear Missile.

Evidence seems to support that the Russians with their new found oil funded wealth will be making a power play for years to come...

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