FBI Says They're Now Working 24/7 To Investigate Hackers and Network Attacks 74
An anonymous reader writes "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is finally stepping up its game when it comes to hackers. Maybe it was Anonymous that did it or maybe it was statements from the US Secretary of Defense two weeks ago, but either way, the FBI is now hunting hackers 24/7." I'm happy that the FBI no longer has an investigation schedule when it comes to online crime, but I have to think that I'm not the only one who assumed they were doing this before.
Pet peeve... (Score:1)
can we get a 24/7 task-force after rachel from card services?
Better yet, seal team six.
Re:Pet peeve... (Score:5, Funny)
can we get a 24/7 task-force after rachel from card services?
Better yet, seal team six.
My understanding is this is the real reason that we sent a Seal team to Pakistan. Here is part of the transcript I intercepted.
Team Six: It appears intelligence was not accurate.
H Clinton: Oh no. You can't mean....
Team Six: No, it isn't Rachel, it is just Osama.
H Clinton: Damn
Team Six: Aborting mission....
Obama: Maybe we can get some good press out of this anyhow
H Clinton: Maybe.
Team Six: You want us to off him?
Obama: Yeah, what the heck. It won't be the same, but I am sure it will get me some points in the approval ratings. God knows I'm not doing well right now.
Team Six: You got it.
and that my friends is the rest of the story.
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The busiest corpse in the terrorist industry!
And if you believe the governmental narrative, the proverbial bridge is still for sale!
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how can she possibly have time to call you when she's constantly on the phone with me?
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I've been noticing a downshift lately of spambot activity on my websites. Maybe this is why?
I think it's unlikely any actual good has come from increased law enforcement. It's more likely that your downshift is just coincidence.
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I'm not the GP, but I'd guess the FBI wouldn't spend all of its time and resource tracking down, catching, and incarcerating thousands of random (and relatively harmless) spammers in Shantytown, Nigeria. At least not so much that you'd notice a big change by way of random sample.
More likely they're trying to deal with larger criminal operations developing malware and such to steal credit cards, and getting foreign law enforcement the appropriate info to deal with them. I could be wrong though... I don't wor
Rly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since this is /., I am not quite sure how to react - perhaps someone will enlighten me?
Do we *like* the idea that a federal agency is taking online crime seriously and increasing its investigative efforts? Or do we decry even larger invasion of privacy by the lead-fisted government into private citizens lives? Assuming, of course, that any investigation of online crimes would have to at a very least get access to various online resources, logs and data, most likely not voluntarily shared by many parties who go to great lengths to be difficult to identify. You know what *that* means.
Re:Rly? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't worry. Excepting Hawaii, the US working hours are only about 10 hours long (9AM on the East coast to 5PM on the West coast), the rest have been outsourced to India and China.
More seriously, if the FBI is using proper legal procedures, including valid (not secret) warrants, then fighting crime is perfectly valid. Well, assuming they're fighting what we'd call crime, I suppose. If they're going after small-time pirates for downloading the latest American Idol, it seems like a waste. If they're going after the guys actually trying to lure kids for child porn, or those trying to hack in to the federal government or one of the corporations that owns the federal government, then the question is why they weren't doing it before.
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I'd imagine it would be to defend the government most likely, last I heard the private sector was still private. Now on a 24/7 timeline working 9-5... government hours, I think we come out to let's see... 1 hour of dedicated work a day.
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Quite simply 24/7 represents working a global internet environment. Attacks originate from all over the globe and the absolute best way to run a honey pot is to do it live, to be at the machine when the attack is occurring to more closely monitor it and to run 'hmm' counter investigations, on the attacking IP and adjoining IP address space. In the normal working day cycle you really are on tracking local attacks which of course is still important by keeping track of the opposite side of the world is more i
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Unfortunately it could also mean they will now be using even more of those scarse resourses to investigate something silly lowering my chances even further next time.
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It depends on who you want to troll.
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Since this is /., I am not quite sure how to react - perhaps someone will enlighten me?
Do we *like* the idea that a federal agency is taking online crime seriously and increasing its investigative efforts? Or do we decry even larger invasion of privacy by the lead-fisted government into private citizens lives? Assuming, of course, that any investigation of online crimes would have to at a very least get access to various online resources, logs and data, most likely not voluntarily shared by many parties who go to great lengths to be difficult to identify. You know what *that* means.
Yes
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How often is the data they collect actually used to attack and stop the source, rather than the distributors? Cutting a leg off won't do very much.
I'm not sure that's good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless the FBI's rate of doing good vs. harm in cybersecurity significantly improves, I think I would've preferred the old schedule. Not sure we need a 24/7 task force dedicated to extraditing filesharers from other countries.
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hmm... all this time I thought the NSA was the secret police in this nation.
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There is a lot that is thought to be unknown about the NSA. The running joke for the longest of time was that NSA stood for No Such Agency. It wasn't until relatively recently (1990s) the government commonly acknowledged it existed as a real agency. It was created by a memo to the director of the CIA, so for a while, it might not have legitimately existed as a government agency.
Part of their tasks besides cypher makers/breakers, is signals intelligence including covert operations in order to secure points o
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They will continue to "catch" the same old dumbasses who like to take really cool sounding "hacker" names and let the people around them know how cool and powerful they are!
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A spy organization monitoring the situation would note the increase in "chatter" and activity in the US government, suggesting something is up.
I wonder.
Callcentric (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope (vainly) that they are concentrating on real problems, like the DDoS attack on Callcentric. (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/CallCentric-Victim-of-Devastating-TwoWeek-DDoS-Attack-121667?r=0.832118027416197)
But their priorities are pobably set by the MAFIAA.
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Callcentric should have been better prepared for the situation they were in. I'm not saying they could have prevented it. I get that it was not a normal DDoS attack. However they are using the government to solve an Internet problem. The Internet IS the unregulated wild west no matter how much cooperation there is between governments. Stop treating it like you can rely on the government to solve the problem. You can't, you shouldn't, and take into account the unexpected. There were things that callcentric c
Define hacking (Score:2)
I really hope the FBI is focusing more on improving their own cyber warfare capability against countries such as China that may have insidious intentions for our vulnerabilities.
I mean, if Playstation Network gets hacked I guess its a sad day, but I really hope they're working above that level of hacking at this point.
Better watch out, FBI... (Score:2)
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Anonymous might put their Guy Fawkes masks on and you'd have a full-blown 8-person protest outside the Hoover building.
They tried that today and got blown away...
Hacking is a crime? (Score:1)
I guess I should turn myself in. I changed the ascii characters in my copy of DOS "mission imp" back in 1981. I only did it so my game would look cool and different. Leniency please!
Nothing new (Score:4, Informative)
Unless something ridiculous has changed, they've had agents dedicated to computer crime 24/7 for the last 20 years.
From personal experience.
The only thing in the article that's noteworthy is their shifting focus to rapid attribution. That's an incredibly difficult goal, especially given the laws regarding search and seizure. If anything raises a red flag for me, it's this. Historically law enforcement in general has always been behind due to the very nature of crime. With Internet related crime this issue is only amplified. I would love to know how they're getting around the red tape that has always slowed down investigations of this type.
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I would love to know how they're getting around the red tape that has always slowed down investigations of this type.
By throwing due process and jurisdiction concerns into the shitter, wiping with the bill of rights, and flushing any semblance of justice down the toilet. But other than that, I have no strong feelings on the matter, herr komissar.
So are they monitoring (Score:2)
all the open door system at financial institutions to keep out the hackers instead of having those institutions fix the issue?
Fast & Furious? (Score:2)
FBI Ignores Internal Govt corruption (Score:1)
I think the FBI should be spending it's time on internal government corruption.
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WTF were their hours BEFORE? (Score:4, Funny)
Hello, you've reached the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If this call is cybercrime-related, please call back during business hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Standard time, Monday through Friday. If this call is related to a non-cybercrime investigation, please press "1" now for an agent. If this call is related to bizarre serial killers or UFO phenomena, please press "2" now for our X-files division. Or press "0" for an operator at any time.
No need to leave a callback number, we already know who you are.
Benghazi solved then? (Score:2)
>> the FBI is now hunting hackers 24/7
Is that because we finally figured out what happened in Benghazi?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444620104578008922056244096.html [wsj.com]
How 'bout we figure out who let Sean Smith down first, eh?
FBI going 7/24 on the Red Bull Gang? (Score:2)
I predict.... (Score:4, Insightful)
that this will be almost as effective as the War On Drugs. At least for getting the FBI more funding and more power to ignore/violate/destroy civil liberties.
Shit assignment (Score:5, Funny)
Notice to screw-ups, midnight to 8 am shifts have now opened up in hacker hunting squad. Get your act together or you will be assigned.
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Too bad the FBI culture is anti-geek (Score:2)
Opinion on the role of government (Score:1)
Like the printing press, government is both a benefit and a hazard. Taking down mafia style botnets and guarding against attacks on our interconnected and networked physical infrastructure is a good thing. Using the Patriot Act to snoop on our communications looking for keywords or suspicious activities is a bad thing. How this evolves requires constant monitoring by an informed voting populace.
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"Like the printing press, government is both a benefit and a hazard."
I think the benefit/hazard ratios of those two things are WAY out of balance.
For the printing press, I'd put the benefit/hazard ratio at about 99.999. For government, it's about 7.15e-04.
The printing press might have caused a few lost fingers in its day, but that's completely insignificant compared to the damage caused by government. Tens of millions of people tortured, murdered and imprisoned, trillions of dollars in property and envir
How about some 9-5 on white collar crime? (Score:2)
I wish they'd ignore some of the script kiddies vandalizing web pages and focus some of their resources on the "Epidemic of Fraud"(2003 FBI report) in the mortgage and financial markets. Maybe they could initiate some RICO investigations of the big banks due to the banks' well reported practice of forging and improperly notarizing thousands of lost note affidavits.