by Andy Brudtkuhl on May 29, 2009
Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace – NYTimes.com
The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.
This is a complete overhaul of US safeguards for its computer networks set in motion by President Obama. The administration will be creating a new White House office that reports to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. This new effort has the “multibillion-dollar” price tag but will secure access to government computers and protect systems that run stock exchanges, global economic transactions and traffic control systems. I’d say it’s money well spent.
But he [President Obama] is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will
create the military cybercommand, officials said. It is a recognition
that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons
in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use — as a
deterrent or alongside conventional weapons — in a wide variety of
possible future conflicts.
UDPATE: Here’s more coverage from Wired
by Andy Brudtkuhl on April 30, 2009
Apparently, No. From the New York Times “Panel Advises Clarifying U.S. Plans on Cyberwar“…
The United States has no clear military policy about how the nation might respond to a cyberattack on its communications, financial or power networks, a panel of scientists and policy advisers warned Wednesday, and the country needs to clarify both its offensive capabilities and how it would respond to such attacks.
Don’t worry – they have a plan.
Pentagon and military officials confirmed that the United States reserved the option to respond in any way it chooses to punish an adversary responsible for a catastrophic cyberattack. While the options could include the use of nuclear weapons, officials said, such an extreme counterattack was hardly the most likely response.
So rather than addressing the situation at hand – cyber-security – we drop blanket threats basically saying, If you attack our information infrastructure, we will nuke you.
by Andy Brudtkuhl on April 8, 2009
Cyberwarfare, cybercrime, cyberespianoge, cyberspies – whatever you call it – is somewhat of an obsession of mine. As a military / history / war junkie it’s natural that the geek in me find something of awe in the idea of cyberwarfare. It could be my fascination with movies like Hackers and War Games.
A couple years ago I wrote about the “first internet war” where Russian hackers allegedly targeted the Estonian infrastructure after a World War 2 Memorial to the Unknown Russian Soldier (we have a similar memorial in the USA) was removed from the center of the capital city to a suburban cemetery.
A year after that Russia got caught up in another cyberwar – this time parallel to an actual physical fight with Georgia. This attack involved taking down or defacing Georgian government websites.
[click to continue…]
by Andy Brudtkuhl on August 11, 2008
The battling between Georgia and Russia has moved into cyber-warfare. From Wired…
Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is “under permanent [cyber] attack.” So they’ve switched their operations to one of Google’s Blogspot domains, to keep the information flowing about what’s going on in their country.
More information on this emerging cyber-war…
Georgia Under Online Assault
IntelFusion calls it a “full scale cyberwar being conducted by Russia against Georgia.” As always, however, its extremely difficult to sort out which hacks are being done with government involvement, which are being done with government wink-and-a-nod, and which have nothing to do with the government whatsoever.
Google and Estonia Help ‘Cyber-Locked’ Georgia
Meanwhile, Estonia — once the victim of Russian-based hackers — is now hosting Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And “in a historic first, Estonia is sending cyber defense advisors to Georgia,” Network World observes.
Cyberattacks knock out Georgia’s Internet presence
Hackers, perhaps affiliated with a well-known Russian criminal network, have attacked and hijacked Web sites belonging to Georgia, the former Soviet republic now in the fourth day of war with Russia, a security researcher claimed on Sunday.
Georgia accuses Russia of waging ‘cyber-war’
Georgia today accused Russia of waging a parallel ‘cyber-war’, using hacking techniques to block key Georgian government websites.
