How the US is Preparing for Cyber
Warfare
(Artículo íntegramente redactado por
Pierluigi Paganini y traducido al inglés por el blog Infosec Island. Enlace:
Every government conscious of strategic
importance of cyber security and of the investments of other countries in cyber warfare capability is improving its effort. Last week I
wrote about Russian government and the Putin's request to
reinforce the garrison of the fifth domain, the cyber space, through a series
of investment to secure national critical infrastructures from cyber attacks, in the
previous months we have spoken of Iran, China and North Korea, all those governments are moving the
battlefield in the digital world.
According US officials the government
is “is constantly looking to recruit, train and retain world class
cyber personnel,”
Both governments, US and Israeli ones,
are improving their cyber capabilities in response to high number of
cyber attacks they daily suffer, The Pentagon has announced a major expansion
of its cyber army to defend national infrastructures, as well as to empower
offensive computer operations against hostile states.
The US government has decided an
increase of 4000 units for the Defense Department’s Cyber Command, considering
that actually the Command is composed by 900 specialists it has been decided to
quadruple the resources dedicated to the operations in the cyberspace.
The expansion will be structured and
will create the following three distinct areas controlled by Defense
Department’s Cyber Command:
1.
“national
mission forces” is responsible for the protection of computer systems that
support the nation’s power grid and critical infrastructure.
2.
“combat
mission forces” is responsible for offensive operations.
3.
“cyber
protection forces” is responsible for Pentagon’s computer systems security.
William J. Lynn III, a former deputy
defense secretary who worked on the Pentagon’s cyber security strategy
declared:
“The threat is real and we need to
react to it,”
Pentagon has started various projects
and initiatives to involve the private companies, universities and even computer-game companies to develop technologies to improve
its cyber warfare capabilities.
Obama administration is massive
investing in the cyber warfare preparing its structures to respond to cyber
threats and also creating the condition to launch effective attacks against
foreign and hostile states. If confirmed the ‘Olympic Games’ operation if the first sample of offensive
conducted in the cyber space and arranged without conventional weapon, using
digital attacks instead of military operations.
US has recently started the Plan X project that will involve also private non-military
entities in what is considered “a call to arms”, it is more oriented on
protecting the Defense Department’s computer systems than on disrupting or
destroying those of enemies according official sources. Plan X is a project of
the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a Pentagon section
responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military.
“Because the origins of cyberattack have
been in the intelligence community, there’s a tendency to believe that simply
doing more of what they’re doing will get us what we need,”
said Kaigham J. Gabriel, acting director
of DARPA.
“That’s not the way we see it. There’s a
different speed, scale and range of capabilities that you need. No matter how
much red you buy, it’s not orange.”
One of the main aspects of a warfare is
the deep knowledge of the battlefield, for this reason one of the main projects
to be financed is the tracking of cyberspace and all entities that populate it,
its map have to be updated over time to allow precise monitoring of main area
of battle. Other projects will be related to the hardening of Operating
Systems, for mobile devices and desktop installations, to resist to any king of
cyber attacks, US researchers have a clear idea of the OSs of the future,
totally different from the one we ordinary use.
Many experts sustain the one of the
primary target is to develop a new generation of cyber soldier, artificial
intelligence able to prevent cyber attacks and that is able to conduct powerful
offensives automatically. The research program promoted by DARPA agency has a
duration of five years and will be financed with $110 million starting from
this summer. The agency has allocated a total budget of $1.54 billion from 2013
to 2017 with the specific target to increase cyber-offense capabilities.
DARPA has recently announced the
development of many other interesting projects, one of the most ambitious is
the new Cyber Targeted-Attack Analyzer program that will attempt to
automatically monitor the entire defense network without human
intervention. Another interesting project is the Space Enabled Effects for
Military Engagements, also known as SeeMe, that will build a constellations of micro-satellites to
provide troops with accurate satellite imaging within 90 minutes.
What is the theme of the main projects
related to cyber warfare capabilities?
Governments all around the world are
committed for the definition of a proper cyber strategy that represents an
optimum balance between a good cyber offense and an efficient cyber defense. Cyber conflicts are characterized by the necessity
of an immediate cyber response to the incoming cyber threats, in many cases the
reaction must be instantaneous to avoid the destruction of assets and
resources.
Human factor and human capacity of
judgment could represent element of delay not acceptable in an electronic
disputes that happen in real time, due this reason is assuming fundamental
importance the concept “proactive defense“. The massive introduction of
technologies in every object the surround us has increased nation attack
surface, power grids, telecommunications and any other critical infrastructure are still vulnerable to cyber
attacks.
The protection of national
infrastructures is one of the primary goals for cyber strategies, but due nature
of the possible offense, instantaneous and unpredictable, has highlighted the
need to develop systems for automatic defense that can independently respond to
a cyber threats from cyber space, but this option introduces significant
problems in terms of “devolution of decision” and “rule of engagement”.
Are we ready to trust in such
critical decisions taken by the machines?
The Homeland Security Department In
September has released REQUEST FOR INFORMATION – RFI-OPO-12-0002 titled “Developing a Capability
Framework for a Healthy and Resilient Cyber Ecosystem Using Automated
Collective Action”
to gather information from Industry to evaluate the current state of technology
in the cyber ecosystem environment.
This Department is working with NIST to
develop system capable of using a defensive concept called Automated Collective
Action, following the definition provided in the document:
“Automated collective action refers
to processes in a cyber ecosystem or community of interest (COI) that select
(and perhaps formulate) automated courses of action that will be performed by
the ecosystem or COI in response to cybersecurity events. Policies, procedures,
technology, and a high level of trust are necessary to enable automated
collective action. An appropriate level of human intervention might be required
to ensure unintended consequences do not result from flawed courses of action.
Determining which cybersecurity events are normal and which are unauthorized or
malicious remains a major challenge. “
The officials of DHS declared that US
need to respond in automated fashion to automated attacks from cyber space. The
researches need to evaluate the feasibility of a system completely independent
in the detection of anomalous situations and able to respond in a proportionate
manner, the solution thanks to automated processes have to be able to
monitor and respond to cyber threat while maintaining mission-critical
operations.
The final target is the
substitution of humans into the decision loop to respond to increasingly
sophisticated attacks.
In more than one occasion U.S. Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, has expressed very
concern about the possibility of a major cyber attack against the country and
its critical infrastructures, to aggravate the scenarios the
economic crisis which has inevitable effects on the budget allocated to the defense.
The government is planning the biggest
cuts to defense budget of the last decade, around $450 billion over a period of
ten years. Persistent rumors speak of a further cut of $500 billion due an
automatic mechanism of protection known as sequestration after members of
Congress failed to reach an agreement to reduce the nation’s deficit.
In June 2012 Panetta warned on the
possible risks deriving from the cuts, on the argument he said:
“It would guarantee that we hollow
out our force and inflict severe damage on our national defense. I think you
all recognize that sequester would be entirely unacceptable and I really urge
both sides to work together to try to find the kind of comprehensive solution
that would de-trigger sequester and try to do this way ahead of this potential
disaster that we confront,”
“I’m very concerned that the
potential in cyber to be able to cripple our power grid, to be able to cripple
our government systems, to be able to cripple our financial systems would
virtually paralyze this country and as far as I’m concerned that represents the
potential for another Pearl Harbor as far as the kind of attack that we
could be the target of using cyber,”
The scenario hypothesized by Panetta is
realistic and dramatic, a cyber attack against an US critical systems could
represent a disaster. The possible source of attacks could be foreign
governments but also cybercriminals or cyber terrorists.
In October, Mr. Panetta raised again the
question with strong words, the US was facing the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and was increasingly vulnerable to
cyber attacks against its critical infrastructures that could cause a
catastrophe.
Panetta was particularly concerned by
the growth of Iranian cyber army that many sources accredit for the attacks to
Saudi Aramco and that could be able to hit US on national soil through a cyber
attack.
But cyber espionage campaigns are also considered operations of
cyber warfare, foreign governments could be interested to spy on intelligence
agencies and government offices to steal sensible information, let’s remind the
recent attack to the White House.
Also industry and defense subcontractors
are considered strategic targets for state-sponsored hackers that try to
acquire intellectual property on military technology.
The world is changing and also warfare
operations are shifting to cyber space, the battlefield is changed and also the
actors of new conflicts are totally mutated, US such as any government must be
prepared to the cyber warfare empowering its cyber capabilities.
Pierluigi Paganini
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/12070/security/how-the-us-are-preparing-to-cyber-warfare.html
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