Slashdot Mirror
America's 'CyberWar' With Foreign Governments Could Get More Aggressive (wral.com)
America's Department of Defense "has quietly empowered the United States Cyber Command to take a far more aggressive approach to defending the nation against cyberattacks, a shift in strategy that could increase the risk of conflict with the foreign states that sponsor malicious hacking groups," reports the New York Times. Long-time Slashdot reader TheSauce shares their report:
In the spring, as the Pentagon elevated the command's status, it opened the door to nearly daily raids on foreign networks, seeking to disable cyberweapons before they can be unleashed, according to strategy documents and military and intelligence officials... The new strategy envisions constant, disruptive "short of war" activities in foreign computer networks... "Continuous engagement imposes tactical friction and strategic costs on our adversaries, compelling them to shift resources to defense and reduce attacks"...
The risks of escalation -- of U.S. action in foreign networks leading to retaliatory strikes against U.S. banks, dams, financial markets or communications networks -- are considerable, according to current and former officials... The chief risk is that the internet becomes a battleground of all-against-all, as nations not only place "implants" in the networks of their adversaries -- something the United States, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have done with varying levels of sophistication -- but also begin to engage in daily attack and counterattack.
An article shared by schwit1 notes that officials in the Obama administration "were also worried that a vigorous cyber response...could escalate into a full scale cyber war."
Yet the Times reports that this new policy reflects "a widespread view that the United States has mounted an inadequate defense against the rising number of attacks aimed at America."
The risks of escalation -- of U.S. action in foreign networks leading to retaliatory strikes against U.S. banks, dams, financial markets or communications networks -- are considerable, according to current and former officials... The chief risk is that the internet becomes a battleground of all-against-all, as nations not only place "implants" in the networks of their adversaries -- something the United States, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have done with varying levels of sophistication -- but also begin to engage in daily attack and counterattack.
An article shared by schwit1 notes that officials in the Obama administration "were also worried that a vigorous cyber response...could escalate into a full scale cyber war."
Yet the Times reports that this new policy reflects "a widespread view that the United States has mounted an inadequate defense against the rising number of attacks aimed at America."
You don't say.
It's been obvious for a while that the NSA is too busy hacking other people's computers to properly defend important computers in the USA. I think this comes from the fact that the NSA is run by military leaders, who were all taught that the best defence is a good offence. Yet, no one in government appears to question whether this dogma applies to "cyberwar".
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
They're not really a "foreign" government now, more like a good buddy
Seriously, the west has been under attack from Russia, CHina, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and a few others, for the last 20 years. We have been in a defensive posture, and losing badly.
It is high time to do the right things and first off strengthen our telecommunications network. We should be running vlan on equipment that is made ONLY in the west. Utilities should be on 1 vlan, and with absolutely NO CROSS-OVER. Likewise, MIlitary/Intelligence should be on one, Roads on another, banks on another (used only for transfers between banks), etc, etc. Regardless, the internet/gen comm absolutely should be on a different vlan from the rest of this.
And above all, we need to stop offshoring of access to those vlans, as well as making sure that telcos techs have security checks. The idea that ATT is outsourcing access to their internal network to India and CHina is nothing less than amazing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You forgot to add the cheapening of security regardless if it's governmental or commercial. All the smarts means nothing if people will not pay for it.
Researching and designing a specific payload to decimate a targeted resource? Or doesn't an aggressive offense count? Smells like FUD to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
""a widespread view that the United States has mounted an inadequate defense against the rising number of attacks aimed at America.""
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Perpetrated by cave-men that think the only valid response to anything is to apply violence. The actual facts are that attribution is basically impossible and that you have an extremely high chance to hit the wrong target and that will obviously make matters worse, not better. There is even an attack-technique were you let some aggressive but brain-dead actor do your dirty work by faking an attack from the intended victim. So far this did usually not work because nobody was actually stupid enough to try an offensive "defense", but of we get that stupidity now, we will see these attacks. What is needed instead is that the utterly laughable level of defense prevalent in most businesses need to finally be brought so something that actually qualifies as defense. Hacking is a lot of work and hacking a reasonably defended enemy is economically non-viable. What is also needed is that DDoS for hire, bot-nets and the like get shut down fast and in coordinated actions, but that is law enforcement, not war. Might require some international treaties and collaboration, and the US currently seems to have forgotten the very high value of those.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Once upon a time the US was an ally many nations wanted to have (discounting the relationships fostered by the CIA). Today, the image of the US is one of isolationism and paranoia, very much in the frame of the leader.
Granted, it is hard to tell what is due to the commander in chief and what is simply politics as usual? It is also hard tell who is creating more spin?
Whatever happens the next leader needs to heal the wounds and divisions created by Trump (he already started during Obamaâ(TM)s terms), but that wonâ(TM)t be easy while Trump is still respected by his base. It also wonâ(TM)t be easy while the Democrats donâ(TM)t listen to the nation.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Many times there is a lot more to these military contracts than what the media reports. These tools won't just be used on foreign populations. Feel free to continue bashing the snowflakes.
its a good thing the tubes can't be disconnected, you know, to stop stupid shit.
they are using our dirty tricks back on us!
If there is going to be any real defense of our critical systems then what we actually need is to have our own government bringing down vulnerable systems. Allowing these systems to continue to function when they could fail at any moment is like building on a fractured foundation: it's a disaster waiting to happen.
This effort will cause annoying outages but it will also force companies to invest in real security while allowing those who already have will thrive. Most companies have been complacent for far too long and it's made us very vulnerable.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
... than what?
We hear about Russia, China, Ukraine ...
What has the US ever done?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... can't get rid of Kaspersky.
US Government Can't Get Controversial Kaspersky Lab Software Off Its Networks
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You have an official cyber sex department?
Ambient Authority is a design decision which only appears once you have multiple users sharing a computer. As a result, everyone just kept using it without much thought... until we find ourselves in a world of persistent networks, mobile code, no system administrators, and multiple layers of firmware and OS from various hardware and software vendors.
In such a system, any code runs with the full authority of the user who started the task, and the users have no effective means of limiting the side effects of running a given program. This in turn means we have to try to guess the intent of code (which is equivalent to solving the halting problem, and is thus impossible). The band-aid is to then try to enumerate all the bad code in the world (virus scanners), and to enumerate all the code bugs in all our programs (security updates), and to eliminate the trust of users (DRM, forced updates, "safety" filters in our browsers). None of these band-aids will work against a determined individual, let alone a nation-state.
Running tasks with the least possible privilege, the "Principle of Least Authority" (POLA) allows a user in such a system to decide ahead of time exactly what files the program is allowed to read, write, etc. Because we're all used to dialog boxes, and drag to drop GUI elements, this doesn't even require any special training of users to accomplish.
Of course, rebuilding our infrastructure to fix a design flaw of the size and scope of using 2 digit years (the Y2K problem we once faced), isn't going to be easy... especially when there's no deadline to make the need for action obvious. It's just going to remain an insidious vulnerability instead for decades to come.
If you think EAL certifications address this, they don't. 8(
Hahaha +5, just shows how far this site has fallen if people think a simple vlan will do all those things...
But in the olden days everyone believed my nonsense...
FTFY. For christsake you spend more than the rest of the world combined, so stop being a tough guy crybaby.
"Stuxnet was a game-changer because it opened people's eyes to the fact that a cyber event can actually result in physical damage," says Mark Weatherford, deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity in the National Protection Programs Directorate at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
...and this guy was a stupid tool if he didn't realize this sooner. There were viruses back in the 1980s that could cause physical damage to computers by parking the head on a spinning platter of a hard disk, or wrecking the monitor by setting the refresh rate to an unsupported value. And those sorts of things could be done to a computer that WASN'T hooked up to a uranium centrafuge.
Stuxnet might have opened the eyes up of the uninformed desk clowns, but programmers and security people knew this for decades.
The US didn't open this can of worms...it is hubris to think that every country in the world doesn't have smart people in intelligence working these sorts of plans 24/7. If Stuxnet wasn't done by the US / Israel / whoever did it, someone else would have in fairly short order. The Russians were meddling in US elections via the internet because nobody had tried it before. NK attacked Sony Pictures. EVERYBODY is experimenting right now to see what you can get away with before you catch a retaliatory nuke.
Furthermore, this is the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more operations being run by ALL nation actors to steal, hack, destroy enemy information and infrastructure right now. Nobody is talking about it, because it is bad spy craft to talk about what you do and do not know. It cost pennys on the dollar to hack when you compare that with conventional military operations.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
Our top security guys (NSA, NSA, (yes, twice) CIA, FBI) consistently tell us we are not prepared, we are under continuous attack, and we must get direction from Trump for them to do more.
Upping our cyber defenses? Says who? If they have an (R) associated with their name I don't believe it.
Trump is scheduling talks with Putin. I wonder what that is going to be about. (No, I don't actually wonder.)
CHina, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc have been working to destroy the west since the 90s.
It's still here...
Espionage
Traditional espionage is not an act of war, nor is cyber-espionage,[17] and both are generally assumed to be ongoing between major powers. Despite this assumption, some incidents can cause serious tensions between nations, and are often described as "attacks". For example:
Massive spying by the US on many countries, revealed by Edward Snowden.
After the NSA's spying on Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was revealed, the Chancellor compared the NSA with the Stasi.[18] The NSA recording nearly every cell phone conversation in the Bahamas, without the Bahamian government's permission,[19] and similar programs in Kenya, the Philippines, Mexico and Afghanistan.[20] The "Titan Rain" probes of American defense contractors computer systems since 2003.[21] The Office of Personnel Management data breach, in the US, widely attributed to China.[22][23]
The idea is that it is foolish to have a single producer of CPU, OS, components.
Think about it: Where is all the Win 10 telemetry going ?
How many "conveniente bugs" do a modern CPU have ?
How many ways are there (that we do not know) to "shutdown" a network infrastructure ?
By having country level perople and experts you also enhance the employment...
What can you wish more ?
What do you think all those computer chip which were verifying that program were certified (trusted computing) and the reason why it is failing/rejected is clear : many of us recognized that who hold the hand at deciding what may or may not run, can simply decide that you as a user are only allowed specific programs, this is not POLA anymore but rather PUHNA (Principle of User having NO authority). Think for example a PS4. And yes I see no reason why user would be trusted with POLA when the one making the products would see a much more benefit with PUHNA.
But were they going on longer than American attacks before Stuxnet?
Even if these groups that are allegedly tied to various governments might be somewhat independent, like for example the white power organizations in Russia driving race war across the world, the costs of not controlling such efforts legally from the country of origin are only realized if the affected party actively brings about them. If the dialogue and discussions fail to create an understanding of the issue and create action on it, there is now more options on the table, particularly when the perpetrators are acting globally.
"the Pentagon elevated the command's status, it opened the door to nearly daily raids on foreign networks, seeking to disable cyberweapons before they can be unleashed"
All the Pentagon has to do is stop running their infrastructure on Microsoft Windows.
...was proven so well in the gaming sector - superhuman in fact, turning these tech will key to discovered new zero-expliots to pwn any system on the Earth. I fear what superhuman AI is classified, not only ours but theirs.
The greatest achievement of mankind, now just another warzone.
The Pentagon is trying to CyberAttack our way to a more secure future. But Security comes from Defense, not attack.
Thousands of years of human experience have shown that destruction is easier than creation. One man can quickly destroy something that takes a community months to create. It may be that "To every thing there is a season; and a time for every purpose under heaven." But, if you don't spend more time on creation than destruction, you end up a lonely, starving scavenger. Any stable, prosperous society must provide more rewards for creation then destruction.
Modern economies of manufacture and transportation have made many things better, but this is not one of them. In almost every way, the modern economy favors attack:
The Internet has made many things better, but this is not one of them. In almost every way, the Internet favors attack over defense:
The transition to digital has made many things better, but, again, this is not one of them. In almost every way, being able to make effortless, accurate copies favors attack:
The reality is, Internet attack is like poisoning a common watershed, and hoping that your enemy dies first. There is no "Win" in "CyberWar". We all have to defend the same stuff. Every successful attack weakens us all.
We have a fairly clear understanding of how to increase security through defense. Almost every Internet Security expert agrees on the general shape of the necessary changes. But, the changes are HARD and EXPENSIVE. So, we keep hauling out the "Security Through Destruction" fantasy. If we were really serious about improving Defense, we would make changes like:
It's funny how this is worded like it's going to happen in the future when all of this has ben going on for decades. Welome to the real world.
If we're going to hit back out of the fear that the people attacking us will be mad about it (as if we aren't), why bother defending ourselves at all?
The NSA's actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on anti-Vietnam-war leaders and the agency's participation in economic espionage.
Ppl really do not realize that nsa really are the good guys.