The Impact of a Cyber War

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1. Markus Wolf says:

   January 16, 2008 at 3:06 pm

   And what is the “social impact” of spy­ing on US cit­i­zens. I thought this crap was sup­posed to end with the fall of Communism. The East Germans were pretty good at spy­ing on an entire coun­try, maybe there are some still around to lend their exper­tise to the “problem”.

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2. Dennis says:

   January 16, 2008 at 4:33 pm

   From a finan­cial point of view:
   I am a small busi­ness owner. I use my com­puter to:
   Buy stamps, buy pack­ag­ing mate­r­ial, bal­ance the books, take pay­ments, give pay­ments, check bank infor­ma­tion, do bank trans­ac­tions, research prod­ucts, adver­tise prod­ucts (web­site), find customers…and on and on.
   The inter­net and all of the soft­ware that has evolved allows me to be com­pet­i­tive with the big guys and build my com­pany.
   It allows me to work 15 hours a day to make it hap­pen.…
   If the inter­net was unavail­able I could still work and use the old “inter­net” (the phone) to con­duct busi­ness.
   But it would slow me down, and my busi­ness is not inter­net depen­dant. Many busi­nesses are.…
   So the threat is real. But as far as giv­ing my pri­vacy away to the NSA or DNI, no thanks.
   Power like that must be out in the open for over­sight by our elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives.
   Our elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives do not have the time to babysit the NSA to make sure they are not abus­ing this “over­sight” power.
   I would rather have some­one dis­rupt our sys­tem, and then have us fix it and fig­ure out who it was, than give a Federal Agency all that power.
   Even if we did give them the power, it still will prob­a­bly hap­pen.….
   Let

   Reply
3. C says:

   January 16, 2008 at 5:21 pm

   utterly ridicu­lous. more fear­mon­ger­ing. more than likely they are doing it any­way, they sim­ply want license to do it.

   Reply
4. Pharsalus says:

   January 16, 2008 at 5:52 pm

   @ C,
   From you ear­lier posts I do believe you have some knowl­edge of com­puter net­works… My good­ness, man! (Or: woman!) Honestly, (at least) 60% of all wire­less routers is unsuf­fi­ciently pro­tected, a lot of peo­ple wouldn’t know a fire­wall if it popped up and bit them in the nether regions.
   OK, so, let’s say, Russia decides to show off and prove it’s still a super­power (Thank you mr. Putin). It attacks US net­works, and because there is no phys­i­cal dan­ger, the threat of acual war is small.
   These peo­ple know their stuff. AV soft­ware always needs a lit­tle while to get updated to find new virusses, and in that time (about ten to forty days) a zom­bie virus could bring a lot of nui­sance. Not explo­sions, but a lot of angry peo­ple rat­tling cages. And in my book, that’s a weapon too.
   good night,
   Pharsalus

   Reply
5. steve says:

   January 16, 2008 at 7:29 pm

   I truly fear for our coun­try if we con­tinue to get peo­ple like this in any posi­tion of power. It seems like an excuse to treat every cit­i­zen as a crim­i­nal. or secu­rity threat. Who pro­tects us from these guys?

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6. C says:

   January 16, 2008 at 11:41 pm

   i’m sorry Mr. Coleman, but i think you’re play­ing into the fear. i know a num­ber of secu­rity man­agers and they are all a bit para­noid (for good rea­son, it makes them good at their jobs)
   i’m not tak­ing issue at the fact that the net­work is inher­ently inse­cure. i’m tak­ing issue at the fact that yet again theres a direc­tor cit­ing some gloomy threat to push their agenda for national elec­tronic sur­veil­lance of the cit­i­zen­ship.
   of course there’s noth­ing cur­rently able to han­dle that vol­ume of work. how­ever there is the pos­si­bil­ity of there being a clear and legal man­ner in which an intel­li­gence agency can spy on it’s con­stituency. the real answer to this prob­lem is to pro­mote increased secu­rity on the net­work, cit­ing lazy man­agers and admins that over­see inse­cure net­works, and fund research into new and bet­ter next-​​gen archi­tec­ture that can help pre­vent an attack even by 30,000 “cyber” war­riors.
   i hate to say it but much of the blame lays on those in your cadre of exec­u­tives who laid the foun­da­tion of the net­work. yes hind­sight is 20/​20 but there’s quite a steep learn­ing curve that needs to hap­pen when you’re devel­op­ing pro­to­cols and trans­mis­sion tech­nol­ogy that would inevitably drive an indus­tri­al­ized econ­omy. this HAD to have been foreseen!

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7. Galrahn says:

   January 16, 2008 at 11:43 pm

   Kevin,
   Your esti­mate of 80,000 is very close, but remem­ber, those are attempts. Every IP address in the world gets probed daily, my hon­ey­pot more than most. The DoD has many IP addresses, includ­ing entire reserved net­work ranges.
   Further, there were only 1300 intru­sions out of that 80,000 attempted intru­sions. The Pentagon uses more than 5 mil­lion com­put­ers on 100,000+ net­works in 65 coun­tries, and believe it or not some do not have the most sophis­ti­cated secu­rity on the pub­lic side, although with lower secu­rity becomes lower capa­bil­ity for inter­nal net­work access.
   Do the math.
   1,300 suc­cess­ful intru­sions /​ 5,000,000 total sys­tems = .02% of DoD sys­tems That is two one hun­dredths of one per­cent of all DoD sys­tems were suc­cess­fully pen­e­trated. Some of the best hacker net­works in the world spend every­day all day try­ing, and yet some of the suc­cess­ful intru­sions were multi-​​million dol­lar phys­i­cal access spy intru­sions con­ducted by con­trac­tors or even mil­i­tary per­sonal with inside access. DoD sys­tems have encryp­tion and built in secu­rity beyond what you buy from Dell, so keep in mind intru­sion doesn’t even guar­an­tee theft of data.
   Every large cor­po­ra­tion and gov­ern­ment on the planet wishes they had such a suc­cess­ful record.
   Be care­ful not to buy the hype. There are bet­ter strate­gies, exam­ple IPv6 address­ing will offer an oppor­tu­nity to bet­ter secure the national perime­ter at the exchange or ISP net­work level. I can think of 10 other upcom­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that the inter­net evo­lu­tion will pro­vide over the next decade, and none of them require the NSA or DoD to spy on you or me.

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8. Galrahn says:

   January 17, 2008 at 12:37 am

   Kevin one final thought.
   I absolutely agree the inter­net is an excel­lent medium for con­flict, for many it already is a medium for con­flict.
   #5 ignores the US pri­vate sec­tor that does the same thing for the US based on exist­ing sup­port con­tracts.
   #6 is not accu­rate, routed through US net­works isn’t the same as source and des­ti­na­tion, data on a US net­work intended for des­ti­na­tions out­side the US is eas­ily fil­tered. Data from Asia to Spain sim­ply on our trans­port isn’t the same as sourced or des­tined for a US net­work, and is open game for inspec­tion by the US under cur­rent law.
   I’m not down­play­ing the poten­tial, sim­ply dis­agree­ing with Michael McConnell regard­ing the best approach.

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9. awsan says:

   January 17, 2008 at 5:44 am

   utterly ridicu­lous. more fear­mon­ger­ing. more than likely they are doing it any­way, they sim­ply want license to do it.

   Reply
10. awsan says:

    January 17, 2008 at 6:12 am

    utterly ridicu­lous. more fear­mon­ger­ing. more than likely they are doing it any­way, they sim­ply want license to do it.

    Reply
11. lady liberty says:

    January 17, 2008 at 8:54 am

    OK Guys, take a deep breath. The FBI just had its phones dicon­nected. Enough said on domes­tic serveillance.

    Reply
12. Kevin says:

    January 17, 2008 at 10:40 am

    RESPONSE TO
    6 is not accu­rate, routed through US net­works isn’t the same as source and des­ti­na­tion, data on a US net­work intended for des­ti­na­tions out­side the US is eas­ily fil­tered. Data from Asia to Spain sim­ply on our trans­port isn’t the same as sourced or des­tined for a US net­work, and is open game for inspec­tion by the US under cur­rent law.
    If the trans­ac­tion flows across the U.S. Backbone and is sourced and the des­ti­na­tion is out­side the US, our law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence ser­vices MUST get a FISA court to approve the sur­veil­lance on the US Backbone. (The FISA court just ruled on a sim­i­lar case a few weeks ago) I already checked this with the legal eagles down in DC I worked with on the PRIVACY side for my tes­ti­mony before Congress.
    This is a clear indi­ca­tor how our laws failed to keep up with the evo­lu­tion of Technology.
    PS
    Spy-​​Ops, a com­pany I work with has a great dia­gram of such a trans­ac­tion and all the laws that pro­tect the snoop and peek on this data. I am try­ing to get a copy of it and If I do I will get it posted on here.

    Reply
13. steve says:

    January 17, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    Oh God, I just love some of you morons. You spent all that money on going to col­lege and didn’t learn a damn thing. See, I didn’t go to col­lege, but, at least I can see the BS from our gov­ernemt and media. How come when East Germany fell and they went into the secret police records and every­one was appalled by the amount they spied on their citizen’s perso nal lives. But in this coun­try you just bab­ble about China, ter­ror­ists, or the boogey­man and every­one is all for it.
    Oh and I’ve been sav­ing this lit­tle tid­bit for a while now. We already had a war with China. Guess what folks, we lost. Remember, these are the same peo­ple who wrote the book on war. They said the best war is one won with­out fight­ing. Now that we don’t actu­ally man­u­fac­ture any­thing any­more, we’ve lost what’s called an eco­nomic war. Come on say it with me, eco­nomic. All the F22’s in the world can’t stop it, but, I’m glad all of you enjoy sav­ing so much shop­ping at Wal-​​Mart. But, don’t worry we have a plan, we’ll just assume any US cit­i­zen is auto­mat­i­cally a crim­i­nal until proven inno­cent, that will show them. Oh you needn’t worry about regime change here, we’ve got elec­tronic, non-​​papertrail vot­ing, so every­thing will go accord­ing to plan.

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14. Arthur says:

    January 17, 2008 at 11:12 pm

    steve, you do real­ize that there is a lot more to a coun­tries econ­omy out­side of cheap man­u­fac­tured goods right? 78.2% of the US’s GDP is gen­er­ated by the ser­vice sec­tor, while a mere 20.9% from the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try (https://​www​.cia​.gov/​l​i​b​r​a​r​y​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​-​f​a​c​t​b​o​o​k​/​g​e​o​s​/​u​s​.​h​t​m​l​#​E​con). While there’s lit­tle doubt that China is headed to be the world’s largest econ­omy, they aren’t there yet so that war isn’t over.
    However, I think the stated threat of the arti­cle is greatly exag­ger­ated. A cyber attack on any coun­try would come via the Internet, so only ser­vices that are avail­able on the Internet would be effected. This like credit card trans­ac­tions, traf­fic lights, etc either sit on their own pri­vate net­work or through the phone. While e-​​commerce is huge, an attack that would take out Internet ser­vices would effect the whole world but is pretty hard to do.

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15. 111 says:

    January 18, 2008 at 1:56 am

    Send the spy ops data. I have some newer data on the esto­nia tri­als pend­ing on cyberged­don, beyond the McConnell praises on domes­tic ver­sus for­eign spy­ing. I would post an arti­cle on the web­site on this, but anonymity is key here for OPSEC pur­poses. Fwd Noah Schactmann on this arti­cle. to:Wired Danger Room. Horahh CI! Go Robots!
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​1​/​1​7​/​A​R​2​0​0​8​0​1​1​7​0​0​0​4​1​.​h​t​m​l​?​w​p​i​s​r​c​=​n​e​w​s​l​e​t​t​e​r​&​a​m​p​;​w​p​i​s​r​c​=​n​e​w​s​l​e​t​ter

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16. Dr. Belgen says:

    January 18, 2008 at 6:29 am

    Don’t fool your­selves. Something is brew­ing in China. I was only par­tially right in a com­ment I made in May 07 regard­ing China/​US rela­tions. I believe the peo­ple of China want to improve US rela­tions, but the gov­ern­ment does not. As demon­strated Nov 07 when China pre­vented the US Navy Kitty Hawk task force from dock­ing in Hong Kong to cel­e­brate Thanksgiving with their fam­i­lies and then the pur­suit and show­down by the Chinese Navy in the Taiwan Strait of the same Naval Fleet. This action demon­strates China’s gov­ern­ment is not a friend of the US nor do they have any plans to be. With mil­i­tary Generals in civil­ian gov­ern­ment lead­er­ship posi­tions, there is no civil­ian over­sight of the Chinese mil­i­tary or China’s inter­na­tional affairs. This puts them out of touch with the peo­ple of China and their will for peace. This is a very dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion. Is space our next “Pearl Harbor”. A premp­tive strike on US intelligence/​communication/​navigation assets? Based on cur­rent infor­ma­tion, I believe that the Chinese are posi­tion­ing them­selves for just this sit­u­a­tion. The ques­tion is when.

    Reply
17. Galrahn says:

    January 18, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Kevin said, “This is a clear indi­ca­tor how our laws failed to keep up with the evo­lu­tion of Technology.“
    I rec­og­nized that type of data trans­fer would be allowed under FISA but I com­pletely missed what that meant in regards to col­lec­tion. Your com­ment is right on.
    Still doesn’t mean the DoD needs to go as far as Michael McConnell is suggesting.

    Reply
18. Kevin says:

    January 18, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    I just want to applaud every­one who has com­mented on this series of arti­cles. We have seen great points, great thoughts, great exchange of view. While we all do not agree with every­thing every­one has posted, the open exchanges do not­ing more than to make all of us more informed. I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing this series. We have access to a sig­nif­i­cant net­work of con­tacts and allot of data. In any of you have any related top­ics you would like me to explore, please feel free to let me know. Again I want to thank every­one for their participation.

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19. kevin says:

    January 18, 2008 at 5:36 pm

    Given the CIA’s dis­clo­sure look at the action FERC took yes­ter­day.
    The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yes­ter­day approved a final set of secu­rity stan­dards designed to pro­tect the US elec­tric grid against a cyber attack.
    The eight secu­rity stan­dards include:
    * Critical cyber asset iden­ti­fi­ca­tion
    * Security man­age­ment con­trols
    * Personnel and train­ing
    * Electronic secu­rity perime­ters
    * Physical secu­rity of crit­i­cal cyber assets
    * System secu­rity man­age­ment
    * Incident report­ing and response plan­ning
    * Recovery plans for crit­i­cal cyber assets
    I will stop short of say­ing I told you so to all the skep­tics out there!

    Reply
20. Dinesh says:

    January 19, 2008 at 9:25 am

    The capa­bil­i­ties and threats for war exist (that’s obvi­ous) and all agree. Remember that this is the inter­net which allows ‘free’ and ‘bor­der­less’ flow of infor­ma­tion. So how can we assume that this ‘free and bor­der­less’ chan­nel will be avail­able for two par­ties to engage in lob­bing data bombs at each other.
    This is bound to be covert and may already be hap­pen­ing. Get your tro­jans in place ready for the com­mand, and in the mean­while keep mon­i­tor­ing (spy­ing ?) every­one.
    The spot­light is on China and Russia since they seem to be build­ing a track record of mali­cious activ­i­ties, but can we dis­count any small state ? After all you do not need to build fac­to­ries or test mis­siles (all vis­i­ble signs of threat devel­op­ment), because for this type of war you need a ded­i­cated band of geeks and a lot of mega­lo­ma­nia. Or some idiot script kid­die who flips the nuclear switch, just for kicks.

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21. Alexis A. says:

    February 28, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    I agree with Kevin: “This is a clear indi­ca­tor how our laws failed to keep up with the evo­lu­tion of Technology”. I am doing cybert­er­ror­ism for a research project, if any­one has more infor­ma­tion to offer, please con­tact me.

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28. Hellgate London Palladium says:

    August 2, 2008 at 3:05 am

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30. forex newsletter, forex automated trading systems, forex system says:

    June 29, 2009 at 8:42 pm

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31. forex newsletter, forex automated trading systems, forex system says:

    June 29, 2009 at 8:45 pm

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