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February 8th, 2012, 12:01 GMT · By Eduard Kovacs

FBI Fears Cyber Threats While Investigating Leaked Call

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Robert Muller, Director of the FBI
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The latest stunt pulled by Anonymous hacktivists raised a lot of concerns among the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and they admit that cyberattacks may soon become a bigger threat than even terrorist attacks.

According to Mobiledia, FBI’s director Robert Muller admitted in front of the US Senate that terrorism may be the number one priority at the moment, but he believes that cyber-threats may pose an even greater threat to the country in the future.

This comes after the FBI admitted that the call leaked a few days ago by Anonymous is genuine, the matter being currently investigated, especially after hacktivists bragged about possessing access to the agency’s internal communication channels for some time now.

Threats that originate from cyberspace are not new, but incidents like this one, when Anonymous managed to obtain a 16-minute call between the FBI and Scotland Yard, make authorities treat these matters even more seriously.

The hacked conference call not only stained the reputation of law enforcement representatives, but it also allowed Anonymous to learn the status of the investigations targeting them, LulzSec and AntiSec hackers.

Due to the emerging privacy concerns and the fact that the hacking technologies tend to evolve somewhat faster than the security solutions, the laws countries try to enforce to prevent unfortunate situations have a hard time being adopted.

Recently, Anonymous stood out not only because of the mass protests campaigns they launched all over the world against ruling regimes, but also because of the incident with Symantec, situation in which the FBI was clearly involved.

On one side, the security solutions provider stated that the hackers tried to blackmail them with the pcAnywhere source code, while on the other side Anonymous said that Symantec was the one that tried to bribe them.

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: Eric on 08 Feb 2012, 20:28 UTC reply to this comment

Hahaha

Right...cyber threats are more dangerous than terrorism...doesn't shock me that the FBI would think so, but more dangerous to whom? The FBI's pride, or Americans? Capitalistic corporations, or average people?

Anon isn't a threat to me and my neighbors, it's a threat to people with lots of money and power. And it threatens their money, not their lives.

Seeing this shadowy organization twist and squirm makes me smile. Tax payers should really be wondering why the FBI feels people that are for the most part hacktivists are so dangerous. That's not to say anon isn't dangerous or powerful, but to assert they may be or become more dangerous that acts that cost lives is simply shocking.

I'd be happy without an FBI at all; abolish the whole thing and start over with something more transparent...

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