Snowden must be an amazing guy, if you believe his latest claims, [View all]

[pnwmom]

smarter than all the professors who no longer bring laptops into China (even though they have access to encryption) and smarter than all the hackers in Russia and China. Wow. We know the secrets in the four laptops are all safe because he says so. What other assurance could we possibly need?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/education/barrage-of-cyberattacks-challenges-campus-culture.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Some universities no longer allow their professors to take laptops to certain countries, and that should be a standard practice, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington. “There are some countries, including China, where the minute you connect to a network, everything will be copied, or something will be planted on your computer in hopes that you’ll take that computer back home and connect to your home network, and then they’re in there,” he said. “Academics aren’t used to thinking that way.”

Bill Mellon of the University of Wisconsin said that when he set out to overhaul computer security recently, he was stunned by the sheer volume of hacking attempts.

“We get 90,000 to 100,000 attempts per day, from China alone, to penetrate our system,” said Mr. Mellon, the associate dean for research policy. “There are also a lot from Russia, and recently a lot from Vietnam, but it’s primarily China.”

Other universities report a similar number of attacks and say the figure is doubling every few years. What worries them most is the growing sophistication of the assault.

SNIP