In an age of “code is law,” Americans have come to expect the government to protect them from cybercriminals.
But as cybersecurity threats continue to mount, the government is finding itself forced to rethink the value of protecting America’s own coders.
A new cybersecurity threat could wipe out the entire coders-for-hire industry, and it could force the government, coders and other IT specialists to become more responsible.
And it could also hurt the country’s economy.
The cyberthreat that could wipe coders out is codename Operation Blackwater, and in its wake, the U.S. has become the first major country in the world to abandon the practice of hiring coders from overseas.
The codename has been used by criminal gangs in Syria, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere, and was widely circulated by hackers in 2014.
But it has also been used in the United States by cybercriminians working for Russian-backed military forces and by Russian intelligence operatives, who were working to undermine the U,S.
elections in 2016.
This past week, the codename was used by a group of Russian hackers who targeted Democratic National Committee computers and other networks to gather internal information about the DNC.
The Russian hackers used the codenames to launch an extensive cyberattack against the DNC and the email accounts of top officials within the U.,S.
government.
While the Russian hackers may have been trying to get to the DNC, the DNC has not been affected by the breach and the White House has not publicly blamed the Russian government.
This week, President Donald Trump accused the Russians of “doing something horrible.”
But it is unclear how the codewords have been used.
“The use of codeword [for cybercrime] was just picked up in the news last week, and this is just an indication that there is some degree of concern about this,” said Scott S. Bostrom, a cybersecurity expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
“It’s a very interesting phenomenon.”
Bostram noted that the codelike attacks were “very common” in the past, but that they are becoming more common in 2017 and 2018.
“I would say it’s been quite common in the last couple of years,” Bostrams analysis noted.
“There is certainly a perception that this is a way to do it more cheaply.”
But the codemarks have also become a rallying cry for cybercrimins who have come into the spotlight in recent years.
In July, for example, a group calling itself the Russian Cyber Army published a new malware called TEMPORA, which has been dubbed a “code for the nation state” by the cyberactivists.
“This is a threat that has a huge effect on the country and a lot of things that are going to change,” said Michael Hayden, a former NSA analyst who worked on national security issues and who now teaches at George Washington University.
Hayden said the codefest attack in the codepoints is a new way to attack.
“You can now use these codewalks to make your malware more invasive, and they will also allow you to get a lot more data,” he said.
“What we’re seeing now is, in this case, a way for these Russian hackers to get access to a lot less of what’s in the public domain, and that means they’re able to get information that is more easily accessible than ever before.”
In May, the FBI issued a warning to IT professionals that codename Blackwater “is no longer tolerated.”
That warning followed a cybersecurity breach of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA), which was based in Fort Meade, Maryland.
In the OIA breach, a Russian cyber operative stole information on hundreds of thousands of people from its servers.
The hacker used a variety of hacking tools, including spear phishing, a type of email trick that uses fake emails to steal information.
The FBI issued another warning last month about the codeware, warning that “the use of the codex will not be tolerated.”
A codewalk in July is an example of what the FBI calls “fishing” in cyberspace.
“If you’re doing it right, you can catch the fish, but if you’re fishing, it’s a lot harder,” said Matthew Green, a professor of information technology at the University of Virginia and a former cybercrime analyst at the FBI.
Green said that the FBI and other agencies are taking a “very cautious” approach to codewalking and that the agency has been working closely with the industry to create guidelines.
“We want to make sure that there’s some kind of guidance for the industry that says this is acceptable, that it’s not going to be tolerated, and we’re going to enforce it,” Green said.
But Bostro’s analysis suggests that the government has little appetite for codewars.
“At the end of the day, they’re going after the cod