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US Admits CyberWarfare against Yugoslavia
Anonymous Coward sent us a piece of cyberwarefare news. The US Military has said that during the conflict in Yugoslavia "cyber" war was used - although refused to get any more details. In related news, the the United States Space Command has been given the responsibilty to better guard the military computer systems against infiltration.
Not all hacking/cracking (no flames, please) is done through the Internet. Dial-in access modems are very common for utility equipment like phone/electricity (I wouldn't know about water and other infrastructure). These are susceptible. There are other ways into other networks as well, especially if you've compromised the telecom infrastructure in general. Example: They're using a leased line? Fine, the attackers "own" the switch and deal with it from another angle.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
You know, I've seen several posts now that assume that this was some kind of attack through the internet. I read the article and didn't get that impression. Hell, I read it and it was vague enough that you could substitute almost any type of attack for cyber and it still makes sense (well ... doesn't make any _less_ sense, anyway)
I wouldn't assume that this was a DoS attack against Slobodan's Military C&C NT server at www.babykillers.com or some such nonsense. As was pointed out, what real damage could you do? What critical assets are going to be accessible over the public network?
When I read it I got more the impression that it was some sort of attack against closed networks that might have involved a more direct form of sabotage (HERF, jammers, seal teams, etc). Ah dunno, it was pretty sketchy on details so its anybody's guess.
I'm reading into that perhaps too much, but if countries go to war, communication should increase, not decrease. If a government attempts to disable a communication medium dominated by citizens, that is bad. Disabling radar sites could be considered a viable strategy, and I have reservations about knocking out television sites, but the internet or ham radio operators? It just proves war is ugly and full of destruction in every way.
When reading this type of article most of us picture top secret NSA types sitting in front of their monitors and cracking systems. This assumption is incorrect in that it provides unreliable results especially considering during the bombing campaign the the cities where blacked out and there is a good chance that F16 or other aircraft are bombing communication centers (you can't crack a site if you can't connect to it).
It is more likely and i've heard rumors about this from several military contacts that conventional electromagnetic pulse bombs where used. These weopons are generally based on the Northrop GAM Mk.84 bomb kits and can be fitted to a wide variety of aircraft. The use of such a weapon reduces the cost in human lives because it is specificly designed to fry electronic equipment.
Just because it's information warfare doesn't mean the Internet is involved.
FooGoo
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Command is staffed by officers who are trained to handle that risk. The average hacker, on the other hand, is not.
Seargant: "Command?"
.02 for every post..oh wait)
S: "Command?"
S: "Command?"
Private: "Sir, they're coming. What should we do? Where's the rendevous? Is the airstrike coming? When?"
S: "Lock and load, son, we stand here."
(multiply by X units in the field)
Information is power, we know that. Controlling it and limiting it for the enemy will be a key to W.A.R. (We Are Right) in the 21st, and any other, century. Not that the above post wasn't funny, it was, but this looked like a good place for my $.02. (BTW: if CmdrTaco had
(~Singing)"Back to life, back to re-al-it-y(/~S)
+&x
The fact that cyberwarfare is going on, and the fact that almost everything is connected these days will make you scared how far it can reach.
I work for a company that produces electrical utility relays. For those who don't know a relay in this instance isn't just a little box that you apply power too and it flips a switch that allows greater amounts of power to flow through another circuit. Power relays are complicated microprocessor systems that monitor power lines for trouble, they then trip large breakers that will cut power.
Anyways back to the topic. The power industry is currently moving towards a standardized protocol called UCA. UCA is an application layer protocol that sits ontop of either TCP or a seven layer OSI stack. Within the protocol are things called GOMSFEE objects.
GOMSFEE objects are a standardized way of naming values the relays can report back to whoever has a UCA master station, they also have a standardized way of naming the controls that a relay can accept. Such as 'Trip breaker on feeder to Iraqi command post'. No there isn't a command that is called this exactly that's just an example.
With a standardized way of naming controls, and information, it makes it easier for utilities to control their equipment. And it makes it easier for utilities to figure out what a device is telling them without having to look up a points list. But this also makes it easier for everyone else to as well.
UCA runs over TCP, which means it can run over ethernet and over the internet. If a cyberwarrior knew where a UCA enabled relay was in the world, he could hack his way through the network and then tell it to turn off power to whatever site, and in some cases in such a way that the large UPSes won't kick in. The smaller APC UPSes will always kick in. But if the relay that cuts off main power to a system, also controls the bus transfer to the site UPS, the cyberwarrior can completely shut down a site.
I don't know the UCA protocol as much as I should, but I don't think there are securities built into it like encrypted master/slave authentication. And I really don't think this would matter if it did. I'm pretty sure that a large national defense department will have the legal leverage to foce the equipment manufactures to hand over the keys to let them into the control equipment.
This is only one case of how our connected world makes it easier for the armies/terrorists of the world to do some truely dangerous things. It may be hard to kill a person accross the internet. But if you shut down the bus transfer relays in a hospital that the person is on life support in....
BTW these are my view alone, not my employers. I only deal with UCA from the outskirts at most, so I may be wrong with how it works. But I'm pretty sure I have the basic points of it.
Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
I see. Thank you for the clue-in.
Oh, surprise, we used cyberwarfare. Big deal. In fact, I'm all for it -- it's a lot easier to accidentally kill some innocent civilians with a bomb than over a network. Furthermore, any way to attack the enemy without putting American lives at risk is fine by me. This seems to be the least savage piece of warfare I've ever seen, really. I kind of wish they'd tell us exactly what they did, though. Maybe in 50 years.
Think real hard! Which scares you more? The NSA hacking into you computer systems? Or maybe the USAF dropping a few dozen 1000 pound bombs near and around your house?
/. was that the article glossed over the important bits of cyber-terrorism. Well, I think that the US military is a lot better at making things explode in third world countries than they are at shutting down the Subway system in downtown Sarejvo.
Sure they used "cyber-warfare." Hacking doesn't blow shit up!
This actually has a lot more to do with the Jane's article then is first apparent. Consensus on
I certainly hope that our world will progress to the point that cyber-enabled warfare is a possibility. It may end war as we know it.
But I think we should also remeber that Gatling (of the large spinning machine gun fame) and Nobel (father of blowing things up and inventor of TNT) both thought the same thing of their inventions.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
Back when I was in college, the internet was just a very useful medium in which to exchange ideas. Sure, there were problems that errupted from flamewars, a few compromised accounts, denial of service attacks, etc.
If the net was down for a day due to a dumptruck backing into the air conditioner system letting the computers overheat, satellite was down, someone cut the cable, or whatever, life went on. It was never made into a federal case. Someone may have got a talking to or wrists got slapped. The worst case when the VAX was rooted. The person in charge was fired over the incident and the student was later in school.
Now, it seems people are taking the internet more seriously by putting all their eggs in this basket, but understanding less about what happens to that traffic. The net these days seems to have connotations of Al Gore, Microsoft, AOL, the FBI, and child molesters, and terrorism.
Few people think about the community of people that make this information network happen. Its about people hooking up hardware and writing the software to make it all happen. Money seems to distort the fun nature of all this into corruption.
Al Gore created the internet? Bullshit. Microsoft innovate the internet and the road ahead? Big Lie. FBI and the NSA need to watch it? Keep their Goddamn hands out of it! AOL the internet? They provide many people now, but started off badly.
So, how exactly does the government gather their personnel for this?
Are there secret cracker training grounds near Langley, VA?
Or perhaps they get them the "Stainless Steel Rat" way, by asking the crackers that they catch if they'd like to join up and actually get paid to do the things that they do so well?
-Vel
Exactly how do you translate "l am 3l337 hax0r d00d" into Serbian?
George
Hmmm, I wonder if you have to know the difference between Imperial and Metric 100baseT cabling lengths...
:)
This might be my opportunity to send Mir crashing down onto the AntiOnline servers...
Seriously though, I rather like the fact that these two are now related fields.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
...[Scenes from the front, WWIII news coverag]
...'"
:)
"Sir, we've got incoming!"
"Lieutenant, keep that firewall up, damnit!"
"Ach! ICMP everywhere! I canna take it anymore!"
"Get me a line to the Pentagon."
"PTPP link established. Using 1024-bit encryption. Go ahead, sir."
[Typed: Colonel Johnson requesting permission to use the secret weapon.]
...
"Crap! They're e-mailing us porn!"
"Damnit! Shut down the routers!"
"Sir, we've got Back Orifice, trying to get in through that last NT server."
"Ahh! Why didn't that get switched to BSD?!?"
"Too much red tape, sir."
"Unplug it. We won't need to worry about rebooting anyway."
"Aye, sir."
"Status on the Linux boxes?"
"They're under a lot of stress, but they are taking it well."
"Good."
"Sir, you know that inefficent router we have? Well, I just found out it's M$ based. We can't shut it off. We're going to have to wait for the porn to finish."
"Damn. I hope HQ gets back to us soon."
...[Incoming message from the Pentagon: Permission granted. Give 'em hell, Colonel.]
"Yes! We have permission! Get ready to launch the secret weapon."
"SMTP online, preparing to send."
"Set it up for HTML plus plain text. I want both mime and UUEncoding. Let's get ready. Images will be 32 bit RGBA. Text is to be as follows: 'Buy! Buy! Buy! *LOW* prices on your favorite collectable items!
...
[Bad Text to Speech Synthesis] "S.P.A.M. launcher ready. Please enter authorization code."
...
"FIRE!"
...
"150 billion spam messages sent. They're falling back! They have offered to surrender!"
Yeah, okay. So, it's kind of long, but I was in the mood to write a dumb story about 'cyberwarfare'.
I can see it now
:-)
*KLAXONS, RED FLASHING LIGHTS*
"What is it, lieutenant? Inbound ICBM?"
"No sir. Inbound pingflood from some 3l33t high school jerk."
"Ah, OK. Standard response. But use the 350 Kiloton yield for being stupid enough not to change the source IP."
"Yes sir!"
Do we really want an office where it's your JOB to overreact to be in charge of electronic security?
Just a thought...
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
So, say you're a hacker and you're hired by the US government to work securing .mil networks, and make good money, and later on you are offered a position on a black hat squad for things like messing with an enemy country's phone system, et cetera.
Military pay sucks, and your skills are in demand, so you blow off suggestions that you go through boot camp (who needs that, right?). In another world, the army would respond by offering you huge pay if only you agree to go to boot camp and an officer training course. But there's hardly enough budget to get you even to look at the armed forces, and they need you.
And then a war starts. From the comfort of your office in a military base you set out to root machines on the other side of the front, you're having the time of your life. But, guess what:
you're a fair target for the enemy now. Look sharp, soldier! On the bounce! Forget about going to your favorite net cafe until the end of the war. Don't show your face in public. You don't know who might be waiting to shoot you in the back of the head.
Think about. If you're engaging in efforts to disrupt an enemy's infrastructure, why should he not try to find you and shoot you? Why should you be regarded as a civilian?
So, I don't know uder what terms the military hired its current crop of crackers, but I do have to wonder..
Hmmm. I don't believe it said anything about crippling, but this not an administration known for coherent policy...
I do seem to remember an official using the phrase "diddle with Milosevic's bank accounts" or something like that. {shrug}
Of course, it could be disinformation.
* It _may_ get some reporters off your back -- those who'd be saying "No? Then why not?" if the DOD denied trying it.
* It might concern the Belgrade regime, who are left to wonder if they really *can* trust their systems.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Will you be exposing "national security" secrets by telling people in other countries about bugs in the software and how to fix them? Will helping someone improve security in their system be treason?
Next thing you know, open source will be considered munitions.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."