Last week while working on cyber attacks against media web sites I discovered some information I thought you might benefit from reading.
One of the more significant concerns with cyber warfare is a targeted attack against the news media. There are two different strategies that play here. The first possibility is a disruptive strategy — where the cyber attack disables the media from reporting on activities and disrupting their ability to inform the public about events that are or have just taken place. The second strategy addresses the use of the media as a source of misinformation. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns are easily mounted and you can even find this tactic addressed in the well known work “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu. We have assessed the implication of both of these scenarios using the Scenario Based Intelligence Analysis Tool created by Spy-Ops. The result of that analysis is below.
Scenario 1 — Media Disruption
An attack against the entire media sector in an attempt to disrupt its ability to communicate with and inform the public is rated a 2.3 on our risk scale.
MEASUREMENT SCORE
Cost = 4.3
Complexity = 4.7
Difficulty = 4.4
Discovery Probability = 3.8
Success Probability = 2.0
Impact = 4.7
Current Defense = 2.5
___________________________________________
Overall Risk = 2.3
Scenario 2 — Dis or mis Information
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.
MEASUREMENT SCORE
Cost = 1.3
Complexity = 1.6
Difficulty = 2.2
Discovery Probability = 2.0
Success Probability = 4.0
Impact = 4.7
Current Defense = 2.5
___________________________________________
Overall Risk = 4.1
In support of the higher risk and increased likelihood of success in this type of attack is the following account of events that took place on June 17, 2007. The viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts saw a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic. CNN Europe reported that members of a Czech art group were responsible and got in trouble for hacking a television broadcast and inserting the phony video of the nuclear explosion.
One can only imagine the psychological impact on the viewers that witnessed this prank. The TV channel CT2 said that they received frantic phone calls from viewers who thought a nuclear war had started. By the way, just recently the artists were acquitted of the charges stemming from the fake nuclear blast on TV.
Watch the Video of the News/Weather Cast.
In a conversation I had with a security consultant he told me: “Sure it could happen in the U.S. today. The media industry has not made the necessary security improvements since the Captain Midnight incident in the late 80s.”
“The second strategy addresses the use of the media as a source of misinformation.“
NO! Say it isn’t so. I mean, it seems preposterous that our venerable news media and teetotaling foreign correspondants — striving hard for exquisite objective balance between American citizen soldiers and hajji headchoppers/orphanage bombers — would be a party to an disinformation campaign, why, it would break my heart.
I salute those brave reporters who hire local stringers so they can type reports and send it back to NYC. It is a foolproof plan: in pursuit of objective truth, hire the least objective folks possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTX3CZqDyOA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmZAfRqM6sw87
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.
Much higher tha that — any daily press briefing at the White House falls into that category …
Why would any of the US’s enemies want to do such a thing. The American “main stream media” & ITS misinformation/disinformation campaigns is perhaps their greatest “ally”…
Note that I am not saying that the American “main stream media” is literally ALLIED with our enemies but it sure does ACT like it at times (not just in what it DOES report but what it DOES NOT report).
Joshik,
When sandstorms momentarily halted the advance to Baghdad, the media screamed, “quagmire”; when we went to Afghanistan, it was all the dreaded “Afghan winter”; when the run-up to the elections in Iraq played, the news were full of assassinations and bombings, then quiet; the media hardly covered the Afghan elections; the NY Times published a photo of a haiji scoping in with a rifle (at what, we ask, would a haiji aim at, except a Coalition soldier?); the NY Times put Abu Ghraib on the front page for over forty days in a row (the incidents happened a single night the year before), they printed consistent op-eds against the surge (they were wrong).
The media print verbatim allegations — regardless of how ridiculous — that every air strike hits wedding parties, even on the border, in the middle of the desert.
The Marine that killed an ‘insurgent’ in the mosque during Fallujah was taken out of combat for criminal proceedings; a legal casualty, one less rifle on the frontline.
The Marines of Haditha have faced relentless allegations that they were war criminals, despite no proof to the contrary (and plenty of exculpatory evidence, including the MO of the insurgents to hide behind civilians).
The photographic evidence is damning — for the media — of either rank ignorance (for instance, a Shiite croon holding an unfired 7.62 round for the camera and claiming that the bullet had hit her home, for one example) and positive maliciousness (collusion with Pulitzer-winning stringer, Bilal Hussein, captured in the home of an al Qaeda terrorist, for one; Eason Jordan’s baseless assertion that the US military actively targeted journalists for another).
If the entirety of Madison Avenue was in the tank for the Pentagon, it still does not balance out the equation against the pronounced negligence of the media in regards to Iraq/Afghanistan/US.
“Scenario 2 — Dis or mis Information
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.“
Sounds like Fox News and CNN, oh and the Bush Administration.
“Scenario 2 — Dis or mis Information
An attack against a primary new source with the intent to inject mis-information for public dissemination is rated a 4.1 on our risk scale.“
Sounds like Fox News and CNN, oh and the Bush Administration.” This coming from someone named ‘Factory idiot’ — how apt.
Brads last post is a pretty much perfect summing up of the media and thier hatred for the military.
Scenario 1 — Media Disruption
Oh no, so I miss out on which suitcase has the money and where Lindsay and Paris got drunk?
Scenario 2 — Dis or mis Information
I thought that’s what Dana Perino, Tony Snow, Scott McClellan, and Ari Fleischer already do?
The sad part is that lightning hits the nail on the head. One missing rich white woman and all of a sudden there are no wars or other crime or anything at all. Hilarious and pathetic.
Why don’t you all stop complaining about the obvious flaws of the media at the end of a NEWS article, and start doing something pro-active about it. You don’t want to see Paris on TV? Write the tv station. That doesn’t work? Write your Congressman. Still doesn’t work? Turn off the TV!
There seem to be plenty enough people these days that don’t buy into the liberal media’s crap, yet everyone is too lazy to change it, so they just accept it.
It’s not dramatic as the options mentioned in the article, but a cyber attack against CNN website by Chinese hackers were planned after the pro-Tibet protest in San Francisco torch relay. The plan was mysteriously canceled afterward. Unknown media source report they recieved e-mail claiming pics of the uprise in Tibet, which in fact had malware infection to the attachment. The hackers Chinese had different options to disturb media operations. I’ve seen too much nasty cyber warfare engaged by China going on during the torch relay. It was just nasty and damn too much that I could write pages of the events. Cyber warfare is just part of the entire China’s information warfare. There are tens of tactics that was used for the torch relay fuss. It’s just sick. We really need to give China a hard kick.
“Why don’t you all stop complaining about the obvious flaws of the media at the end of a NEWS article, and start doing something pro-active about it… Turn off the TV!“
Done.
The Khasakstan center is a big threat. It could have disinformation in there to throw off our intelligence community. Their head quarters are in the mountainous regions, especially in winter to get better sat reception and stay warm. As for disinformation, we need to START a new program if necesary to disengage foreign journalists from spreading false prooganda or reporting that news before we get it. Especially if they are alleady in our cities in our news agencies. Otherwise we are like ducks in the water, awaiting foreign journalists news seeded with no information usefull int he articles. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Iv’e noticed delayed sound on certain tv channels
and then it combines foreign words or beats into
songs and voices…It has to be AC/RADIO WAVES!My
myspacepage,was attacked with the same stuff,and
my certain muscians stole my music etc…It looks
to be a war of METAL MUSIC SATANISTS and heretic
church groups…
Pro-active does nothing but delude the obvious
problem!Look at Philistia and Israel…Only action
brings destruction to hackers and terrorists…You
don’t protect yourself by pro-activeness either do
you?
HAHA!Just because you turn off a paid tv signal
doesn’t stop the hacking or truly doctored articles either,it’s an national scheme!