Following reports that hackers have disrupted computer operations at the White House, after breaking into its unclassified internal network: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/10/29/white_house_cyberattack_russia_blamed/, Dwayne Melancon, CTO of Tripwire asks whether this is actually just a cover up to hide a more insidious attack?
"From the reports, this sounds like a denial of service attack similar to the ones that have been perpetrated against banks over the past few years. That makes me wonder whether these attacks against the White House are covering for something else. In financial services, we've seen situations in which denial of service attacks are smokescreens to hide a more insidious attack against another part of an organization. It is possible something like that may be going on here.
There is a possibility that this attack is simply a politically motivated "message" to the US. After all, the White House is a high-profile target and if you're able to disrupt it, even for a few hours, you get a lot of attention on the world stage.of course, if that's the intent, it doesn't seem to be going that well-at least I can't tell with the message is, so far.
Contribution of the tax and the underlying motive of the metallic are very difficult things to determine on the Internet. Simply looking at where an attacker appears to come from is typically not sufficient. I assume that the White House has additional information to add context to this attack, otherwise I don't think we'd see them hinting about Russian state-sponsored attackers.”