Entries Tagged "cyberwar"

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Cyber-Offence is the New Cyber-Defense

This is beyond stupid:

The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary’s computer network overseas—but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the strategy legally.

The department is developing a range of weapons capabilities, including tools that would allow “attack and exploitation of adversary information systems” and that can “deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy” information and information systems, according to Defense Department budget documents.

But officials are reluctant to use the tools until questions of international law and technical feasibility are resolved, and that has proved to be a major challenge for policymakers. Government lawyers and some officials question whether the Pentagon could take such action without violating international law or other countries’ sovereignty.

“Some” officials are questioning it. The rest are trying to ignore the issue.

I wrote about this back in 2007.

Posted on September 2, 2010 at 7:33 AM • View Comments

Security Vulnerabilities of Smart Electricity Meters

“Who controls the off switch?” by Ross Anderson and Shailendra Fuloria.

Abstract: We’re about to acquire a significant new cybervulnerability. The world’s energy utilities are starting to install hundreds of millions of ‘smart meters’ which contain a remote off switch. Its main purpose is to ensure that customers who default on their payments can be switched remotely to a prepay tariff; secondary purposes include supporting interruptible tariffs and implementing rolling power cuts at times of supply shortage.

The off switch creates information security problems of a kind, and on a scale, that the energy companies have not had to face before. From the viewpoint of a cyber attacker—whether a hostile government agency, a terrorist organisation or even a militant environmental group—the ideal attack on a target country is to interrupt its citizens’ electricity supply. This is the cyber equivalent of a nuclear strike; when electricity stops, then pretty soon everything else does too. Until now, the only plausible ways to do that involved attacks on critical generation, transmission and distribution assets, which are increasingly well defended.

Smart meters change the game. The combination of commands that will cause meters to interrupt the supply, of applets and software upgrades that run in the meters, and of cryptographic keys that are used to authenticate these commands and software changes, create a new strategic vulnerability, which we discuss in this paper.

The two have another paper on the economics of smart meters. Blog post here.

Posted on July 29, 2010 at 6:16 AM • View Comments

Internet Worm Targets SCADA

Stuxnet is a new Internet worm that specifically targets Siemens WinCC SCADA systems: used to control production at industrial plants such as oil rigs, refineries, electronics production, and so on. The worm seems to uploads plant info (schematics and production information) to an external website. Moreover, owners of these SCADA systems cannot change the default password because it would cause the software to break down.

Posted on July 23, 2010 at 8:59 AM • View Comments

Internet Kill Switch

Last month, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., introduced a bill (text here) that might—we’re not really sure—give the president the authority to shut down all or portions of the Internet in the event of an emergency. It’s not a new idea. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, proposed the same thing last year, and some argue that the president can already do something like this. If this or a similar bill ever passes, the details will change considerably and repeatedly. So let’s talk about the idea of an Internet kill switch in general.

It’s a bad one.

Security is always a trade-off: costs versus benefits. So the first question to ask is: What are the benefits? There is only one possible use of this sort of capability, and that is in the face of a warfare-caliber enemy attack. It’s the primary reason lawmakers are considering giving the president a kill switch. They know that shutting off the Internet, or even isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world, would cause damage, but they envision a scenario where not doing so would cause even more.

That reasoning is based on several flawed assumptions.

The first flawed assumption is that cyberspace has traditional borders, and we could somehow isolate ourselves from the rest of the world using an electronic Maginot Line. We can’t.

Yes, we can cut off almost all international connectivity, but there are lots of ways to get out onto the Internet: satellite phones, obscure ISPs in Canada and Mexico, long-distance phone calls to Asia.

The Internet is the largest communications system mankind has ever created, and it works because it is distributed. There is no central authority. No nation is in charge. Plugging all the holes isn’t possible.

Even if the president ordered all U.S. Internet companies to block, say, all packets coming from China, or restrict non-military communications, or just shut down access in the greater New York area, it wouldn’t work. You can’t figure out what packets do just by looking at them; if you could, defending against worms and viruses would be much easier.

And packets that come with return addresses are easy to spoof. Remember the cyberattack July 4, 2009, that probably came from North Korea, but might have come from England, or maybe Florida? On the Internet, disguising traffic is easy. And foreign cyberattackers could always have dial-up accounts via U.S. phone numbers and make long-distance calls to do their misdeeds.

The second flawed assumption is that we can predict the effects of such a shutdown. The Internet is the most complex machine mankind has ever built, and shutting down portions of it would have all sorts of unforeseen ancillary effects.

Would ATMs work? What about the stock exchanges? Which emergency services would fail? Would trucks and trains be able to route their cargo? Would airlines be able to route their passengers? How much of the military’s logistical system would fail?

That’s to say nothing of the variety of corporations that rely on the Internet to function, let alone the millions of Americans who would need to use it to communicate with their loved ones in a time of crisis.

Even worse, these effects would spill over internationally. The Internet is international in complex and surprising ways, and it would be impossible to ensure that the effects of a shutdown stayed domestic and didn’t cause similar disasters in countries we’re friendly with.

The third flawed assumption is that we could build this capability securely. We can’t.

Once we engineered a selective shutdown switch into the Internet, and implemented a way to do what Internet engineers have spent decades making sure never happens, we would have created an enormous security vulnerability. We would make the job of any would-be terrorist intent on bringing down the Internet much easier.

Computer and network security is hard, and every Internet system we’ve ever created has security vulnerabilities. It would be folly to think this one wouldn’t as well. And given how unlikely the risk is, any actual shutdown would be far more likely to be a result of an unfortunate error or a malicious hacker than of a presidential order.

But the main problem with an Internet kill switch is that it’s too coarse a hammer.

Yes, the bad guys use the Internet to communicate, and they can use it to attack us. But the good guys use it, too, and the good guys far outnumber the bad guys.

Shutting the Internet down, either the whole thing or just a part of it, even in the face of a foreign military attack would do far more damage than it could possibly prevent. And it would hurt others whom we don’t want to hurt.

For years we’ve been bombarded with scare stories about terrorists wanting to shut the Internet down. They’re mostly fairy tales, but they’re scary precisely because the Internet is so critical to so many things.

Why would we want to terrorize our own population by doing exactly what we don’t want anyone else to do? And a national emergency is precisely the worst time to do it.

Just implementing the capability would be very expensive; I would rather see that money going toward securing our nation’s critical infrastructure from attack.

Defending his proposal, Sen. Lieberman pointed out that China has this capability. It’s debatable whether or not it actually does, but it’s actively pursuing the capability because the country cares less about its citizens.

Here in the U.S., it is both wrong and dangerous to give the president the power and ability to commit Internet suicide and terrorize Americans in this way.

This essay was originally published on AOL.com News.

Posted on July 12, 2010 at 7:07 AM • View Comments

The Threat of Cyberwar Has Been Grossly Exaggerated

There’s a power struggle going on in the U.S. government right now.

It’s about who is in charge of cyber security, and how much control the government will exert over civilian networks. And by beating the drums of war, the military is coming out on top.

“The United States is fighting a cyberwar today, and we are losing,” said former NSA director—and current cyberwar contractor—Mike McConnell. “Cyber 9/11 has happened over the last ten years, but it happened slowly so we don’t see it,” said former National Cyber Security Division director Amit Yoran. Richard Clarke, whom Yoran replaced, wrote an entire book hyping the threat of cyberwar.

General Keith Alexander, the current commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, hypes it every chance he gets. This isn’t just rhetoric of a few over-eager government officials and headline writers; the entire national debate on cyberwar is plagued with exaggerations and hyperbole.

Googling those names and terms—as well as “cyber Pearl Harbor,” “cyber Katrina,” and even “cyber Armageddon“—gives some idea how pervasive these memes are. Prefix “cyber” to something scary, and you end up with something really scary.

Cyberspace has all sorts of threats, day in and day out. Cybercrime is by far the largest: fraud, through identity theft and other means, extortion, and so on. Cyber-espionage is another, both government- and corporate-sponsored. Traditional hacking, without a profit motive, is still a threat. So is cyber-activism: people, most often kids, playing politics by attacking government and corporate websites and networks.

These threats cover a wide variety of perpetrators, motivations, tactics, and goals. You can see this variety in what the media has mislabeled as “cyberwar.” The attacks against Estonian websites in 2007 were simple hacking attacks by ethnic Russians angry at anti-Russian policies; these were denial-of-service attacks, a normal risk in cyberspace and hardly unprecedented.

A real-world comparison might be if an army invaded a country, then all got in line in front of people at the DMV so they couldn’t renew their licenses. If that’s what war looks like in the 21st century, we have little to fear.

Similar attacks against Georgia, which accompanied an actual Russian invasion, were also probably the responsibility of citizen activists or organized crime. A series of power blackouts in Brazil was caused by criminal extortionists—or was it sooty insulators? China is engaging in espionage, not war, in cyberspace. And so on.

One problem is that there’s no clear definition of “cyberwar.” What does it look like? How does it start? When is it over? Even cybersecurity experts don’t know the answers to these questions, and it’s dangerous to broadly apply the term “war” unless we know a war is going on.

Yet recent news articles have claimed that China declared cyberwar on Google, that Germany attacked China, and that a group of young hackers declared cyberwar on Australia. (Yes, cyberwar is so easy that even kids can do it.) Clearly we’re not talking about real war here, but a rhetorical war: like the war on terror.

We have a variety of institutions that can defend us when attacked: the police, the military, the Department of Homeland Security, various commercial products and services, and our own personal or corporate lawyers. The legal framework for any particular attack depends on two things: the attacker and the motive. Those are precisely the two things you don’t know when you’re being attacked on the Internet. We saw this on July 4 last year, when U.S. and South Korean websites were attacked by unknown perpetrators from North Korea—or perhaps England. Or was it Florida?

We surely need to improve our cybersecurity. But words have meaning, and metaphors matter. There’s a power struggle going on for control of our nation’s cybersecurity strategy, and the NSA and DoD are winning. If we frame the debate in terms of war, if we accept the military’s expansive cyberspace definition of “war,” we feed our fears.

We reinforce the notion that we’re helpless—what person or organization can defend itself in a war?—and others need to protect us. We invite the military to take over security, and to ignore the limits on power that often get jettisoned during wartime.

If, on the other hand, we use the more measured language of cybercrime, we change the debate. Crime fighting requires both resolve and resources, but it’s done within the context of normal life. We willingly give our police extraordinary powers of investigation and arrest, but we temper these powers with a judicial system and legal protections for citizens.

We need to be prepared for war, and a Cyber Command is just as vital as an Army or a Strategic Air Command. And because kid hackers and cyber-warriors use the same tactics, the defenses we build against crime and espionage will also protect us from more concerted attacks. But we’re not fighting a cyberwar now, and the risks of a cyberwar are no greater than the risks of a ground invasion. We need peacetime cyber-security, administered within the myriad structure of public and private security institutions we already have.

This essay previously appeared on CNN.com.

EDITED TO ADD (7/7): Earlier this month, I participated in a debate: “The Cyberwar Threat has been Grossly Exaggerated.” (Transcript here, video here.) Marc Rotenberg of EPIC and I were for the motion; Mike McConnell and Jonathan Zittrain were against. We lost.

We lost fair and square, for a bunch of reasons—we didn’t present our case very well, Jonathan Zittrain is a way better debater than we were—but basically the vote came down to the definition of “cyberwar.” If you believed in an expansive definition of cyberwar, one that encompassed a lot more types of attacks than traditional war, then you voted against the motion. If you believed in a limited definition of cyberwar, one that is a subset of traditional war, then you voted for it.

This continues to be an important debate.

EDITED TO ADD (7/7): Last month the Senate Homeland Security Committee held hearings on “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset: Comprehensive Legislation for the 21st Century.” Unfortunately, the DHS is getting hammered at these hearings, and the NSA is consolidating its power.

EDITED TO ADD (7/7): North Korea was probably not responsible for last year’s cyberattacks. Good thing we didn’t retaliate.

Posted on July 7, 2010 at 12:58 PM • View Comments

Lt. Gen. Alexander and the U.S. Cyber Command

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the current Director of NSA, has been nominated to head the US Cyber Command. Last week Alexander appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer questions.

The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin (D Michigan) began by posing three scenarios to Lieutenant General Alexander:

Scenario 1. A traditional operation against an adversary, country “C”. What rules of engagement would prevail to counter cyberattacks emanating from that country?

Answer: Under Title 10, an “execute” order approved by the President and the Joint Chiefs would presumably grant the theater commander full leeway to defend US military networks and to counter attack.

Title 10 is the legal framework under which the US military operates.

Scenario 2. Same as before but the cyberattacks emanate from a neutral third country.

Answer. Additional authority would have to be granted.

Scenario 3. “Assume you’re in a peacetime setting now. All of a sudden we’re hit with a major attack against the computers that manage the distribution of electric power in the United States. Now, the attacks appear to be coming from computers outside the United States, but they are being routed through computers that are owned by U.S. persons located in the United States, so the routers are in here, in the United States.

Now, how would CYBERCOM respond to that situation and under what authorities?”

Answer: That would be the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI.

Alexander was repeatedly asked about privacy and civil liberties impact of his new role, and gave answers that were, well, full of platitudes but essentially uninformative.

He also played up the threat, saying that U.S. military networks are seeing “hundreds of thousands of probes a day,” whatever that means.

Prior to the hearing, Alexander answered written questions from the commitee. Particularly interesting are his answers to questions 24 and 27.

24. Explaining Cybersecurity Plans to the American People

The majority of the funding for the multi-billion dollar Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (SNCI) is contained in the classified National Intelligence Program budget, which is reviewed and approved by the congressional intelligence committees. Almost all important aspects of the CNCI remain highly classified, including the implementation plan for the Einstein 3 intrusion detection and prevention system. It is widely perceived that the Department of Homeland Security is actually likely to simply extend the cyber security system that the NSA developed for DOD into the civilian and even the private sector for defense of critical infrastructure. DOD is creating a sub-unified Cyber Command with the Director of NSA as its Commander.

24a) In your view, are we risking creating the perception, at home and abroad, that the U.S. government’s dominant interests and objectives in cyberspace are intelligence- and military-related, and if so, is this a perception that we want to exist?

(U) No, I don’t believe we are risking creating this perception as long as we communicate clearly to the American people—and the world—regarding our interests and objectives.

24b) Based on your experience, are the American people likely to accept deployment of classified methods of monitoring electronic communications to defend the government and critical infrastructure without explaining basic aspects of how this monitoring will be conducted and how it may affect them?

(U) I believe the government and the American people expect both NSA and U.S. Cyber Command to support the cyber defense of our nation. Our support does not in any way suggest that we would be monitoring Americans.

(U) I don’t believe we should ask the public to accept blindly some unclear “classified” method. We need to be transparent and communicate to the American people about our objectives to address the national security threat to our nation—the nature of the threat, our overall approach, and the roles and responsibilities of each department and agency involved—including NSA and the Department of Defense. I am personally committed to this transparency, and I know that the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the rest of the Administration are as well. What needs to remain classified, and I believe that the American people will accept this as reasonable, are the specific foreign threats that we are looking for and how we identify them, and what actions we take when they are identified. For these areas, the American people have you, their elected representatives, to provide the appropriate oversight on their behalf.

(U) Remainder of answer provided in the classified supplement.

24c) What are your views as to the necessity and desirability of maintaining the current level of classification of the CNCI?

(U) In recent months, we have seen an increasing amount of information being shared by the Administration and the departments and agencies on the CNCI and cybersecurity in general, which I believe is consistent with our commitment to transparency. I expect that trend to continue, and personally believe and support this transparency as a foundational element of the dialogue that we need to have with the American people on cybersecurity.

[…]

27. Designing the Internet for Better Security

Cyber security experts emphasize that the Internet was not designed for security.

27a) How could the Internet be designed differently to provide much greater inherent security?

(U) The design of the Internet is—and will continue to evolve—based on technological advancements. These new technologies will enhance mobility and, if properly implemented, security. It is in the best interest of both government and insustry to consider security more prominently in this evolving future Internet architecture. If confirmed, I look forward to working with this Committee, as well as industry leaders, academia, the services, and DOD agencies on these important concerns.

27b) Is it practical to consider adopting those modifications?

(U) Answer provided in the classified supplement.

27c) What would the impact be on privacy, both pro and con?

(U) Answer provided in the classified supplement.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for that classified supplement. I doubt we’ll get it, though.

The U.S. Cyber Command was announced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in June 2009. It’s supposed to be operational this year.

Posted on April 19, 2010 at 1:26 PM • View Comments

Cyber Shockwave Test

There was a big U.S. cyberattack exercise this week. We didn’t do so well:

In a press release issued today, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC)—which organized “Cyber Shockwave” using a group of former government officials and computer simulations—concluded the U.S is “unprepared for cyber threats.”

[…]

…the U.S. defenders had difficulty identifying the source of the simulated attack, which in turn made it difficult to take action.

“During the exercise, a server hosting the attack appeared to be based in Russia,” said one report. “However, the developer of the malware program was actually in the Sudan. Ultimately, the source of the attack remained unclear during the event.”

The simulation envisioned an attack that unfolds during a single day in July 2011. When the council convenes to face this crisis, 20 million of the nation’s smartphones have already stopped working. The attack—the result of a malware program that had been planted in phones months earlier through a popular “March Madness” basketball bracket application—disrupts mobile service for millions. The attack escalates, shutting down an electronic energy trading platform and crippling the power grid on the Eastern seaboard.

This is, I think, an eyewitness report.

Posted on February 19, 2010 at 1:33 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.