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China Pissed Over U.S. Congressional Report

China had a less than happy reaction to a US congressional report that accused Beijing of developing sophisticated cyber warfare and militarising its space program. The annual China report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was aimed at misleading the public and impeding bilateral cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

“The commission has all along seen China through dark glasses and has deliberately attacked China with slanderous accusations aimed at misleading public opinion and obstructing the development of Sino-US relations,” Qin said.

“The report is unworthy of rebuttal and the aims of the commission are doomed to failure,” he said in a statement on his ministry’s website.

The report issued in Washington Thursday accused China of developing a sophisticated cyber warfare program aimed at penetrating US computer networks to extract sensitive information.

“China has an active cyber espionage program,” the report said.

“China is targeting US government and commercial computers.”

The panel also criticized Beijing of exercising “heavy handed government control” over its economy and “continuing arms sales and military support to rogue regimes” such as Sudan, Myanmar and Iran.

The commission also issued a warning about China’s space program. “China continues to make significant progress in developing space capabilities, many of which easily translate to enhanced military capacity,” it said.

Qin urged the commission to stop issuing such reports and refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs.

Tags: beijing, china, cyber war, cyber warfare, cyberwar, qin, space weapons, weapon, Weapons

Cyber warfare needs Rules of Engagement

The rapid advancement of cyber attacks and the emergence of cyber warfare have caught government and military leaders around the world off guard. Decision making in time requiring defensive measures or military crisis is guided by doctrine and rules of engagement, but in the case of cyber attacks and cyber warfare they do not currently exist. The complexities and unique characteristics of cyber warfare mandate establishing Cyber Attack and Warfare Rules of Engagement (CAWRoE).

Cyber warfare is different than the conventional war in many ways. It is this difference that will challenge the minds of experts around the world when they attempt to create cyber warfare doctrine and ROE. To frame this discussion, below you will find two definitions that put this challenge in context.

Definition - Cyber Warfare & Terrorism - “The premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, against computers and/or networks, with the intention to cause harm or further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives. Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives.” Source: This definition was published in the U.S. Army Cyber Operations and Cyber Terrorism Handbook 1.02. This definition was written by Kevin Coleman back in 2004 for an online article.

Definition - Rules of Engagement - Rules of engagement date at least to the Middle Ages in Europe. In military terms this refers to a directive issued by a military authority controlling the use and degree of force, esp. specifying circumstances and limitations for engaging in combat. The directive delineates the limitations and circumstances under which forces will initiate and prosecute combat engagement with other forces encountered. Source: This definition is based on multiple authorities’ sources and combined to clearly articulate ROE.

NOTE– After months of research, we will soon publish a paper that addresses the question: “What constitutes an act of cyber war?”

History has shown that ROE are often over controlled and regulated by politicians and military leaders. It is anticipated that this will also be the case as it relates to cyber attacks and warfare. In addition, commanders and government leaders at all levels must understand the situation, complexities and uncertainty they face.

The increase in complexity, technical aspects and difficulty in tracing the cyber attacks back to the aggressor will combine to increase the difficulty of creating the ROE for cyber. Careful crafting of cyber ROE is required to diminish ambiguities that could caused delays in actions when the use of force is required and will surely lead to increased implication on the United States.

Cyber attack and warfare rules of engagement will undoubtedly require hundreds of pages to establish a decision framework. That being said, there are a few critical areas that will pose the most significant challenge to policy makers. One of these areas will be the level of confidence in the identification of the entity behind an attack on a nation. Tracing and tracking cyber attacks back to those responsible is not an easy task. Usually this takes months or years not minutes and hours. Current intelligence and surveillance capabilities will provide only minimal assistance in this effort. Although promising research on tracking and tracing cyber attacks is currently underway and advances are occurring on a regular basis, we are far from being able to rapidly identify the party or parties behind the attack with the high degree of confidence and hard evidence necessary to launch an offensive cyber response. At the present time, the newness of cyber attacks and weapons coupled with their potential, but unproven power and the uncertainty about how they might be used, have pushed the decision around the response to cyber attacks all the way to the top and in the hands of the President of the United States.

Conclusion
Over 140 countries around the world have cyber weapons development efforts underway but lack a comprehensive doctrine and legal framework for responding to cyber attacks as well as using offensive cyber weapons against attackers and adversaries. President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team will have to rapidly establish the rules of engagement as they relate to cyber attacks and all out cyber warfare. His national security team is said to include: Sarah Sewall, Tom Donilon, Wendy R. Sherman, Michelle A. Flournoy, John P. White, Robert R. Beers, Clark Kent Ervin, Gayle E. Smith, Aaron Williams, John O. Brennan and Judith A. (”Jami”) Miscik.

The United States Military has an expansive arsenal of sophisticated cyber weapons at its disposal, policy makers have yet to define the rules of engagement that govern when and how to use them. In a briefing earlier this year I said: “This is totally uncharted territory for policy makers. The characteristics of cyber attacks coupled with the operational aspects of cyber weapons make this a unique challenge.”

This remains the case and time is growing short before the next significant cyber attack is launched. Cyber warfare requires new rules of engagement.

See How the Air Force is Developing a Cyber Defense Plan

Tags: air force navy, cyber attack, cyber defense, cyber war, cyber warfare

Military wants Internet patrol

You would have figured that the NSA and its far reaching Echelon System would have already been covering these bases, not to mention the Air Force and It’s new cyberwarfre and information awareness branch.

In a solicitation posted on the Web last week, the U.S. Army’s Fifth Signal Command in Mannheim, Germany said it was looking for a contractor to provide “Internet awareness services” to support “force protection” — a term relating to the security of U.S. military installations and personnel.

Although this approach seems a little different in contrast to the “private” information that the NSA makes itself privy to, this method will use a private contractor to troll certain “types” of websites and chat rooms (including Usenet), which are all in the public domain, which would supposedly add another dimension of security apparently not covered elsewhere.

If that is true, I have to ask the question, what has the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) been up to lately?
It just seems to me that there will be, and already is a lot of “Overlap Cost”, Although the following statement by a similar web information analyst would appear to refute the concern of “Overlap”

Experts say Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida use the Web for propaganda and fundraising purposes. Although the extent to which it is employed in operational planning is less clear, most agree that important information about targeting and tactics can be gleaned from extremists’ public pronouncements.

Hembrook said the main purpose of the contract is to analyze “trends in information.” The contractor will “help us find those needles in that haystack of information.”

The solicitor says the contractor’s team will include a “principal cyber investigator,” a “locally specialized threat analyst” and a “foreign-speaking analyst with cyber investigative skills,” as well as a 24/7 watch team.

The contractor will produce weekly written reports, containing “raw data and supporting analysis.”

The addresses of the Web page sources will be “captioned under alias to preserve access,” says the solicitation. Experts have noted in the past that publishing the addresses of some extremists’ sites has led to them being attacked or moving. However, the contractor will “consider releasing specific (Web page addresses) on an as-needed basis … if explicit threat materials or imminent threat to personnel or facilities are discovered.”

The contractor also will notify the command immediately “upon receipt of any and all stated or implied threats that contain timing and/or targeting information relating to personnel, facilities or activities, and to specifically designated areas of concern.”

While declining to comment on the specific solicitation, Ben Venzke, CEO of IntelCenter, an Alexandria, Va.-based company that monitors Islamic extremist propaganda for clients including U.S. government agencies, said it was “common” for the military or other agencies to employ contractors “to support their own work on these issues.”

“What most people don’t get,” he said, “is that (each agency or entity) has their own very specific requirements. … They are looking for one type of thing in particular.”

Venzke explained that while an analyst for a big-city police department might be looking at extremist Web sites for certain kinds of information, their requirements would be different from those of intelligence analysts looking for evidence of trends in extremist targeting or ideology, which in turn would be different from those concerned — like the Fifth Signal Command — with force protection.

“There is some overlap,” he said, “and you always have to work to minimize that, but generally, there are so many different … pieces you can look at … it’s not duplication.”

Tags: cyber warfare, dia, force protection, IAO, information awareness, Intelligence, military intelligence, NSA

Air Force Seeks Complete Computer Control

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it “access” to — and “full control” of — any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their “adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected.”

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a “Cyberspace Command,” with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion “national cybersecurity initiative.” That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks. “You used to need an army to wage a war,” a recent Air Force commercial notes. “Now, all you need is an Internet connection.”

On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for “Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement.” “Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access,” a request for proposals notes, “to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms… any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware.” This isn’t just some computer science study, mind you; “research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities.”

Unlike an Air Force colonel’s proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, “low and slow” approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then “stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information” from adversaries’ networks.

But, in the end, the Air Force wants to see all kinds of “techniques and technologies” to “Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy” hostile systems. And “in addition to these main concepts,” the Research Lab would like to see studies into “Proactive Botnet Defense Technology Development,” the “reinvent[ion of] the network protocol stack” and new antennas, based on carbon nanotubes.

raditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed — and become more bellicose. “Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense,” said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service’s Cyberspace Task Force. “If you’re defending in cyber, you’re already too late.”

“We want to go in and knock them out in the first round,” added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues.

“An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels,” a recent Defense Department report notes. “Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals… should be compelled to consider… an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security.”

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Tags: air force, computer control, control, cyber warfare, cyberwar, hacker, hacking, information awareness

Information Warfare Push

The Pentagon is to spend $30 Billion building a super secret “National Cyber Range” in order to prepare for all out cyber warfare by using it to conduct mock online battles with realistic info-warriors.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), previously responsible for the development of electronic surveillance programs such as Total Information Awareness and MATRIX, LifeLog and the Brain Machine Interfaces enterprise, has been ordered by Congress to create what is essentially a new internet as a cyberspace battleground.

Wired.com has reported “According to a defense official familiar with the program: ‘Congress has given DARPA a direct order; that’s only happened once before — with the Sputnik program in the ’50s’”

The NCR will not only allow for defense from electronic attack, but will also allow offensive strikes against “adversaries online”. It is rumored to be the keystone of a so called “Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative”, created via a secret presidential order in January.

A request for proposals, released by DARPA yesterday outlined how the agency wants the NCR to be able to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” and feature “realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces”.

The NCR’s operators should be able to “integrate, replicate, or simulate” military satellite and digital radio communications, mobile ad-hoc networks, physical access control systems, U.S. and foreign “unmanned aerial vehicles, weapons, [and] radar systems” — even “cyber cafes” and “personal digital assistances [sic].” the proposal states.

A previous notice outlined that the NCR would allow the Pentagon to:

• Conduct unbiased, quantitative and qualitative assessment of information assurance and survivability tools in a representative network environment.
• Replicate complex, large-scale, heterogeneous networks and users in current and future Department of Defense (DoD) weapon systems and operations.
• Enable multiple, independent, simultaneous experiments on the same infrastructure.
• Enable realistic testing of Internet/Global-Information-Grid (GIG) scale research.
• Develop and deploy revolutionary cyber testing capabilities.
• Enable the use of the scientific method for rigorous cyber testing.

The project is so secret that it has been referred to as an electronic“Manhattan Project“. The Senate Homeland Security committee, a key Senate oversight panel has cited concerns about the secrecy around the project and has been forced to write to the DHS to request basic information on the project.

Commentators have speculated that the entire project may be a huge new part of the federal government’s so called “terrorist surveillance program”, which has so far only been shown to constitute cyberwarfare against everyday Americans via warrantless wiretapping and interception of communications.

“Why might citizens be worried about privacy and civil liberties? Consider that the whole initiative appears to have been launched after the Director of National Intelligence told the President Bush that a cyber attack might wreak as much economic havoc as 9/11 did. Consider that the NSA, which currently protects classified networks, wants to expand into protecting all non-classified federal government networks. Consider that Congress is set to legalize the NSA’s monitoring rooms in the nation’s phone and internet infrastructure. For its part, the FBI says it also needs access to the internet’s backbone, while the Air Force is hyping its own efforts at cyber defense and offense. […]

Now it seems the only question is whether the government will be able to turn the net into a controllable, monitorable and trackable pre-internet AOL-type service or whether the chaotic net will live on as just another frontier for the military-industrial complex to start an arm’s race and rake in billions of government dollars.”

Could this be the Pentagon’s ultimate “solution” to counter the internet, an arena of freedom and progress that military strategists now view as a bastard child they let slip from their grasp some twenty or so years ago?

While Homeland Security head Chertoff has denied that the project is part of a vast effort to restrict or “sit on the internet”, the Pentagon has previously made it clear that the internet, free of restriction and holding such potential for free speech, is in direct opposition to their goals.

The Pentagon has stressed that the internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy “weapons system”.

Recently, a document entitled Information Operation Roadmap (PDF) was declassified by the Pentagon due to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

One portion of the document states:

“Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future….. Information operations should be centralized under the Office of the Secretary of Defence and made a core military competency.”

“Objective: IO [information operations] becomes a core competency. The importance of dominating the information spectrum explains the objective of transforming IO into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations. The charge to the IO Roadmap oversight panel was to develop as concrete a set of action recommendations as possible to make IO a core competency, which in turn required identifying the essential prerequisites to become a core military competency.”

Another section of the document focuses on what is referred to as “Computer Network Attack”:

“When implemented the recommendations of this report will effectively jumpstart a rapid improvement of CNA [Computer Network Attack] capability.” - 7

“Enhanced IO [information operations] capabilities for the warfighter, including: … A robust offensive suite of capabilities to include full-range electronic and computer network attack…” - 7

While other sections urge the Department of Defense to “Fight the Net”:

“We Must Fight the Net. DoD [Department of Defense] is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to “fight the net.” ” - 6

“DoD’s “Defense in Depth” strategy should operate on the premise that the Department will “fight the net” as it would a weapons system.” - 13

A previous document that echoes such sentiments is the now infamous Rebuilding America’s Defences by The Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In this 2000 document those that would go on to become the nucleus of the Bush administration stated:

“It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies… are creating a dynamic that may threaten America’s ability to exercise its dominant military power.” - 4

“Control of space and cyberspace. Much as control of the high seas - and the protection of international commerce - defined global powers in the past, so will control of the new “international commons” be a key to world power in the future. An America incapable of protecting its interests or that of its allies in space or the “infosphere” will find it difficult to exert global political leadership.” - 51

“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes.” - 60

The importance of information warfare is clearly laid out in both these documents. Brent Jessop, a regular contributor to Infowars.net and Prisonplanet.com has exhaustively documented the phenomenon of “Full Spectrum Information Warfare” in a four part series of articles.

There have been moves to kill off the internet as we know it today by the federal government.

Note that the enemy is never specifically named, it is merely whoever uses the net, because the enemy IS the net. The enemy is the freedom the net provides to billions around the globe and the threat to militaristic dominance of information and the ultimate power that affords.

Tags: cyber warfare, DARPA, Homeland Security, information warfare, pentagon, war, warfare