Cyber Terrorist After Your Money

Is Iran messing with your bank account?

From Siobhan Gorman and Danny Yadron of The Wall Street Journal:

Financial firms have spent millions of dollars responding to the attacks, according to bank officials, who add that they can’t be expected to fend off attacks from a foreign government.

Defense officials have said Iran’s government is behind the assault. Officials from several affected banks, including PNC Financial Services Group Inc., SunTrust Banks Inc. and BB&T Corp. are urging the U.S. government to stop or mitigate the attacks, according to investigators.

The outcry is particularly significant from an industry that usually seeks to keep the government at arm’s length. Financial-services groups opposed a legislative effort last year to establish cybersecurity standards for key private-sector businesses, saying it could undermine protections already in place.

“The financial sector has historically been so sophisticated and organized in its security approach,” said Kiersten Todt Coon, a former staff member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and now president of Liberty Group Ventures LLC, a risk-management firm. “When they choose to go to the government, that shows how strong the severity of this threat is.”

newspaper with cyber attackMy account over at BB&T has been nonoperational for over a week now. It seems the high tech advancement of online banking has come to a grind at BB&T. I may have one check book laying around collecting dust in a drawer down in the basement. I have to pay some bills so it is luckily I have a quill and ink set some place too.

When BB&T was called they were nice but not helpful. The person said use Firefox, but to no avail my account was not accessed. He did tell me about the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack but he could not explain what that was about. So off to Google I go.

I find out that BB&T had a DDOS attack back in October of last year where the hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters raged a cyber-attack. So this is nothing new to BB&T and other financial institutions. This is round two of what might be a prolonged event making me wonder what might happen in the long run.

“We have repeatedly stated that removal of the offensive video, Innocence of Muslims, from YouTube is the simplest solution to stop the cyber-attacks,” the hacktivists state. “You want to continue playing the game, yes?”

In a Jan. 8 post, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters suggested its attacks would be waged for 56 additional weeks, based on a series of numerical sequences developed from tallied likes and dislikes affiliated with the YouTube video, which it claims is offensive to Muslims. But in its most recent post, the group says the attacks could continue even longer, based on updated totals affiliated with those likes and dislikes.

Bank Info Security 1-22-2013

Mean time back at the ranch bill payments are going out later than they should. I may get dinged for a late fee and of course the cost of postage. What’s President Obama doing on this? Squat. He is too busy trying to destroy the Republican Party so the House will swing back to Democrats and Obama’s last two years can change this country dramatically from where it is today.

“Disparate-Impact” May Exterminate Elderly White Women

If you are a white female living in the northeast or northwest start looking over your shoulder for the diversity police. Seems white women living in those areas have a huge leg up on making past 100 years of age. The US Census Bureau report released Monday tells more than 80% of those who make it to the age of 100 plus are women and mainly white. Obama’s ambiguous legal theory of disparate-impact could have these women eradicated.

It seems Obama aims to rid our nation of the persistent-gaps between whites and minorities, in everything.

Obama’s administration is taking a wide swing at the persistent-gap using the civil rights law. Anyone, any organization, any company can have a team descend on them to exam their policies to see if it influences outcome disproportionately against minorities.

Disparate impact” is when a process affects one racial group more than another, despite having no racist motive, such as when whites have higher average scores than minorities on a standardized test.)” Examiner October 14, 2012

Education is an example. If a school, school district, or even state has a policy where minorities are impacted more than the white student it will have to change. The Education Department has pressured the Oakland school district to impose “targeted reductions” in the number of black students suspended. It seems Oakland has a higher number of suspended black students for violent behavior than white students.

“The Obama administration is pressuring school districts not to suspend violent or disruptive black students if they have already disciplined ‘too many’ black students,” said Competitive Enterprise Institute counsel Hans Bader.” IBD November 9, 2012

It seems the gap has to be closed. You now have to have tit for tat even though federal courts have already said otherwise.

“One federal appeals court (in a different region of the country) has said that schools cannot use racial targets or quotas for school discipline, since that violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. See People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997). That court ruling also said that a school cannot use race in student discipline to offset racial disparities not rooted in school officials’ racism (so-called “disparate impact”).”  Hans Bader October 12, 2012

Now that we know white women who live mainly in the northeast and northwest out live minorities what will the Obamacare do on the death panels?

Voted

It took 16 minutes to park, vote and leave in McDonough, GA today at lunch time. I dare say November 6, 2012 will take much longer. Recall the early voting period has been shorten so more voters will go on election day. From the AJC:

voted early sticker rwb“The state is not on track to beat that record. As of Thursday, the state’s typical top five counties for ballots returned early — Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb and Henry — were on average tracking about 72 percent below their final early-voting turnout from four years ago.

Fulton and DeKalb, traditionally Democratic strongholds, were both down about 65 percent. Gwinnett, dominated by the GOP, was down about 77 percent. Cobb, also largely Republican, was down about 84 percent. Henry was down about 68 percent.

One likely explanation is the shorter period for early voting — legislators in 2011 shortened the period from 45 days to 21 days. It is also true that those gaps narrow every day and will narrow more through next week, although no one knows by how much. The state stopped short this year of publicly setting an overall early-voting goal. In a poll conducted recently for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, nearly 40 percent of likely Georgia voters said they plan to cast a ballot during early voting.”

Early voting has become extremely efficient and time saving. Janet Shellnutt has done an excellent job in making the process easy. Jim Henry Jr., Arch Brown, Andy Callaway and the rest are providing the citizens with one of the best run processes in the state. It is why Henry County, GA has one of the highest turnouts for early voting on a regular basis. Theses people who serve on this board should be congratulated and told a big thank you. It is a very crucial element and many times overlooked unless something goes really wrong.

Take time to go vote early this week. There are several locations available to you. Check here and here to find a place near you. And remember, it took 16 minutes today for me which is less time than it takes to go in a Chick-fil-a drive through when patrons celebrated marriage  of man and woman.

Sample Ballot

Secretary of State Brian Kemp continues doing a great job providing information to voters. If you need a sample ballot before heading out to the polls stop in on the website of the sos.ga.gov and get your own sample ballot. It very easy. Just fill in a little information, click and scroll. You’ll see a link to your very own sample ballot.

Mean time here is mine:

If you need additional help there are folks who can assist you.  Here is where you can early vote.

Very Odd

Reading a few blog posts this morning I came across this one that was very odd. Over at United Liberty  they had a post on voting for Obama:

“This would be weird video if this was an ad produced by a random YouTube user. But this ad was produced and is offfically hosted by President Obama’s campaign, which gives me the creeps:”

Now I ask you after viewing this ad on why a young girl should vote for Obama, is this weird and odd?