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Pedro Gonçalves

Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124701806176209691.html

US South Korea North Korea Cyber Security Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jul 09 - Cached
  • U.S. and South Korean computer networks were besieged for days by a series of relatively unsophisticated attacks, possibly from North Korea, that were among the broadest and longest-lasting assaults perpetrated on government and commercial Web sites in both countries.
  • South Korean officials are investigating whether the attacks originated in North Korea, and a senior U.S. official said the U.S. also is probing North Korea's possible role. U.S. officials noted that the attacks, which appear to have started primarily in South Korea on July 4, coincided with North Korea's latest missile launches and followed a United Nations decision to impose new sanctions.
  • The senior U.S. official said the attacks seemed to have come from South Korea, but it was possible Pyongyang was using sympathizers there. "We're trying to assess whether this is some random attack or the North Koreans might be working through a proxy," said the official.
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  • If a North Korea link is found, it would mark a new turn in Pyongyang's attempts to lash out at the U.S. North Korea has been building up its capability for cyberattacks in the past couple of years, computer security specialists said. North Korea recently increased the number of people in a cyber-warfare unit, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported last month.
  • U.S. government Web sites attacked included those of the Defense Department, National Security Agency, Treasury Department, Secret Service, State Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the cyber-security unit of VeriSign Inc., a computer-security company, and others familiar with the attacks. The attacks appear to have occurred roughly from Saturday to Tuesday.
  • Private sites attacked, according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, included those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.
  • Most U.S. federal Web sites appeared to be running properly Wednesday. In South Korea, several government sites were down late Tuesday and early Wednesday but many were back to normal by Wednesday afternoon. "There is a connection between what is going on here in the states and what is going on in [South] Korea," said Richard Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense cyber-security unit.
  • North Korea turned more antagonistic after the illness of dictator Kim Jong Il last August and September. The country had done little to prepare for a successor, and Mr. Kim's illness triggered an internal shuffle that apparently raised the influence of hard-line military figures.
  • At the White House, spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said the attacks over the weekend "had absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations." The only effect, he said, was that some Internet users in Asia may not have been able to access the White House's Web site for a time.
  • President Barack Obama has made bolstering cyber-security a priority. He said in May he would create a new White House cyber-security post, though it hasn't yet been staffed. People familiar with the process say the White House has had difficulty finding someone to take the job.
  • Defense officials confirmed Pentagon networks were struck but said the intrusions were detected quickly and did no real damage. Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said Pentagon networks are under near-constant attack. "I grow increasingly concerned about the cyber-world and the attacks," he said.
  • James Lewis, a cyber-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the attack, "It's really a test of which U.S. agencies are ready and which aren't."
  • The New York Stock Exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, announced at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday that its Web site, but not its trading systems, had been targeted. Exchange officials weren't aware of the attack until notified by the government on Tuesday, said a person familiar with the events. An NYSE spokesman said the exchange's systems detected zero impact either on the Web site or on the separate trading operations. An official of Nasdaq said there wasn't any impact on its business.
  • Those responsible used a method similar to attacks in recent years on the governments of Estonia and Georgia, called a "distributed denial of service" attack. It is a maneuver in which many computers act in concert to overwhelm Web sites.
  • The cyberattacks came as Washington's point man on North Korea sanctions, Ambassador Philip Goldberg, concluded a weeklong trip to China and Malaysia aimed at tightening the financial screws on Pyongyang. Last week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on two North Korea-linked arms companies. The U.S. Treasury last month listed 17 North Korean banks and businesses that it is seeking to constrict financially.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Americas | US launches cyber security plan - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8073654.stm

US Cyber Security Cyber Warfare Pentagon

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 30 May 09 - Cached
  • US President Barack Obama has announced plans for securing American computer networks against cyber attacks.He said that from now on, America's digital infrastructure would be treated as a strategic national asset. He announced the creation of a cyber security office in the White House, and said he would personally appoint a "cyber tsar".
  • Acts of terror today, he said, could come "not only from a few extremists in suicide vests, but from a few key strokes of a computer - a weapon of mass disruption."
  • In 2007 alone the Pentagon reported nearly 44,000 incidents of what it called malicious cyber activity carried out by foreign militaries, intelligence agencies and individual hackers.
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  • In the past, no one US department was responsible for cyber-security, resulting in poor communication and co-ordination, he said. The new cyber-security office will be a multi-billion dollar effort designed to restrict access to government computers and to protect systems - such as those that run the stock exchange and air traffic control - that keep the country going.
  • The Obama administration is also expected to create a new cyber command at the Pentagon with the dual task of eradicating potential vulnerabilities in America's sensitive computer networks, while simultaneously creating ways to exploit them in the systems of potential enemies. An influential study published last year suggested that having an offensive computer warfare capability would have a deterrent effect against would-be attackers.
Pedro Gonçalves

The Coming Cyber Wars - Harvard - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - 0 views

belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/...coming_cyber_wars.html

Cyber Command Cyber Warfare US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Congress should demand answers to questions like: What is the role of cyber war in US military strategy? Is it acceptable to do "preparation of the battlefield" by lacing other countries' networks with "Trojan horses" or "back doors" in peacetime? Would the United States consider a preemptive cyber attack on another nation? If so, under what circumstances? Does US Cyber Command have a plan to seize control and defend private sector networks in a crisis? Do the rules of engagement for cyber war allow for military commanders to engage in "active defense" under some circumstances? Are there types of targets we will not attack, such as banks or hospitals? If so, how can we assure that they are not the victims of collateral damage from US cyber attacks?
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China fury at US military report - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7965084.stm

China US Military

shared by Argos Media on 26 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Beijing has reacted angrily to a Pentagon report on China's military power, which claimed it was altering the military balance in Asia. A foreign ministry spokesman called it a "gross distortion of the facts", urged an end to "Cold War thinking". In its annual report to Congress, the Pentagon said China was developing "disruptive" technologies for nuclear, space and cyber warfare. It could be used to enforce claims over disputed territories, the report said.
  • The Pentagon reported that China was successfully managing to expand its arsenal of sophisticated weaponry, even though Beijing's ability to sustain military power at a distance remains limited. Chinese "armed forces continue to develop and field disruptive military technologies", including "nuclear, space, and cyber warfare".
  • The Pentagon analysis said China was developing weapons that would disable its enemies' space technology such as satellites, boosting its electromagnetic warfare and cyber-warfare capabilities and continuing to modernise its nuclear arsenal. It also noted a build-up of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan, despite a significant reduction in tension between the two in recent months.
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  • The report estimated China's military spending in 2008 was roughly double that of a decade ago.
  • China's armed forces are undoubtedly undergoing a dramatic transformation from a poorly-equipped peasant army to an increasingly sophisticated modern military, the BBC's defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says. But its level of training and co-ordination as well as actual war fighting capability is still in doubt, he adds.
Argos Media

Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124027491029837401.html

US Cyber Attacks Cyber Security F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Pentagon Lockheed Martin BAE Systems Northrop Grumman China Joel Brenner

shared by Argos Media on 22 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.
  • Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
  • The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure, have also been infiltrated by spies abroad.
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  • Attacks like these -- or U.S. awareness of them -- appear to have escalated in the past six months, said one former official briefed on the matter.
  • while the spies were able to download sizable amounts of data related to the jet-fighter, they weren't able to access the most sensitive material, which is stored on computers not connected to the Internet.
  • The Joint Strike Fighter, also known as the F-35 Lightning II, is the costliest and most technically challenging weapons program the Pentagon has ever attempted. The plane, led by Lockheed Martin Corp.
  • A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made "steady progress" in developing online-warfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military, the report said.
  • The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China "opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes." It called the Pentagon's report "a product of the Cold War mentality" and said the allegations of cyber espionage are "intentionally fabricated to fan up China threat sensations."
  • The U.S. has no single government or military office responsible for cyber security. The Obama administration is likely to soon propose creating a senior White House computer-security post to coordinate policy and a new military command that would take the lead in protecting key computer networks from intrusions, according to senior officials.
  • The Bush administration planned to spend about $17 billion over several years on a new online-security initiative and the Obama administration has indicated it could expand on that.
  • Former U.S. officials say the attacks appear to have originated in China. However it can be extremely difficult to determine the true origin because it is easy to mask identities online.
  • Six current and former officials familiar with the matter confirmed that the fighter program had been repeatedly broken into. The Air Force has launched an investigation.
  • Foreign allies are helping develop the aircraft, which opens up other avenues of attack for spies online. At least one breach appears to have occurred in Turkey and another country that is a U.S. ally, according to people familiar with the matter.
  • Joint Strike Fighter test aircraft are already flying, and money to build the jet is included in the Pentagon's budget for this year and next.
  • Computer systems involved with the program appear to have been infiltrated at least as far back as 2007, according to people familiar with the matter. Evidence of penetrations continued to be discovered at least into 2008. The intruders appear to have been interested in data about the design of the plane, its performance statistics and its electronic systems, former officials said.
  • The intruders compromised the system responsible for diagnosing a plane's maintenance problems during flight, according to officials familiar with the matter. However, the plane's most vital systems -- such as flight controls and sensors -- are physically isolated from the publicly accessible Internet, they said.
  • The intruders entered through vulnerabilities in the networks of two or three contractors helping to build the high-tech fighter jet, according to people who have been briefed on the matter. Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor on the program, and Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems PLC also play major roles in its development.
  • The spies inserted technology that encrypts the data as it's being stolen; as a result, investigators can't tell exactly what data has been taken. A former Pentagon official said the military carried out a thorough cleanup.
  • Investigators traced the penetrations back with a "high level of certainty" to known Chinese Internet protocol, or IP, addresses and digital fingerprints that had been used for attacks in the past, said a person briefed on the matter.
  • As for the intrusion into the Air Force's air-traffic control systems, three current and former officials familiar with the incident said it occurred in recent months. It alarmed U.S. national security officials, particularly at the National Security Agency, because the access the spies gained could have allowed them to interfere with the system, said one former official. The danger is that intruders might find weaknesses that could be exploited to confuse or damage U.S. military craft.
  • In his speech in Austin, Mr. Brenner, the U.S. counterintelligence chief, issued a veiled warning about threats to air traffic in the context of Chinese infiltration of U.S. networks. He spoke of his concerns about the vulnerability of U.S. air traffic control systems to cyber infiltration, adding "our networks are being mapped." He went on to warn of a potential situation where "a fighter pilot can't trust his radar."
Pedro Gonçalves

Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks | World news | guardi... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...a-china-targets-cyber-overseas

US Cyber Warfare OCEO

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 10 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO)
  • An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking – breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for "doing what we do every day", the source added.
Pedro Gonçalves

France24 - IT school denies role in cyber-attack on Google - 0 views

www.france24.com/...e-cyber-attack-google-internet

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A Chinese vocational school which trains IT technicians for the army has denied US media reports that it was behind recent cyber-attacks against Internet giant, Google.
  • the Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong Province,
  • The New York Times reported on Thursday that the cyber-attacks aimed at Google and dozens of other firms were reportedly traced to computers at two Chinese schools.
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  • newspaper said trails led to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School, which was created with military backing and trains some of its computer scientists.
Pedro Gonçalves

New Cyberwar Rules Of Engagement: Will The U.S. Draft Companies To Fight? - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...s-draft-companies-to-fight.php

Cyber Security Cyber Warfare US

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • In a speech to business leaders in New York City Oct. 11, Panetta for the first time admitted the U.S. armed forces were prepared to take on an offensive role against any cyber attackers who seek to cause significant harm to the U.S. - or the loss of life to its citizens. Prior to this statement, the military has acknowledged only a defensive stance against such attacks.
  • The Washington Post reports that among those new rules of engagement, "for the first time, military cyber-specialists would be able to immediately block malware outside the Pentagon’s networks in an effort to defend the private sector against an imminent, significant physical attack, The Post has reported. At present, such action requires special permission from the President."
  • at least one academic paper has argued that companies be drafted to participate in cyberwarfare. "Cyberwarfare… will penetrate the territorial borders of the attacked state and target high-value civilian businesses," wrote University of Dayton Professor Susan Brenner in 2011. "Nation-states will therefore need to integrate the civilian employees of these (and perhaps other) companies into their cyberwarfare response structures if a state is able to respond effectively to cyberattacks. "While many companies may voluntarily elect to participate in such an effort, others may decline to do so, which creates a need, in effect, to conscript companies for this purpose," Brenner and her co-author, attorney Leo Clarke, added.
Pedro Gonçalves

UPDATE 4-Powerful 'Flame' cyber weapon found in Iran | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...ar-flame-idUKL1E8GS1FJ20120528

Iran Israel US Cyber Warfare Stuxnet Duqu Flame

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 29 May 12 - No Cached
  • a highly sophisticated computer virus is infecting computers in Iran and other Middle East countries and may have been deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage. Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab
  • Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.
  • Kaspersky's research shows the largest number of infected machines are in Iran, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan and Syria.
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  • There is some controversy over who was behind Stuxnet and Duqu. Some experts suspect the United States and Israel, a view that was laid out in a January 2011 New York Times report that said it came from a joint program begun around 2004 to undermine what they say are Iran's efforts to build a bomb.
  • Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.
  • Hungarian researcher Boldizsar Bencsath, whose Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security first discovered Duqu, said his analysis shows that Flame may have been active for at least five years and perhaps eight years or more. That implies it was active long before Stuxnet.
  • "The scary thing for me is: if this is what they were capable of five years ago, I can only think what they are developing now," Mohan Koo, managing director of British-based Dtex Systems cyber security company.
Pedro Gonçalves

2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19china.html

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
  • the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.
  • Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
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  • The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School
  • Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
  • Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
  • Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
  • Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
  • A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Pedro Gonçalves

Chinese Army Cyberunit Apparently Attacking U.S. Targets Again - ReadWrite - 0 views

readwrite.com/...tly-attacking-us-targets-again

Cyber Security Cyber Warfare China US Unit 61398

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 21 May 13 - No Cached
  • The New York Times is reporting that Unit 61398 has resumed operations and is actively engaged in hacking into any U.S. systems that might hold information considered to be of use for the People's Republic of China.
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