Cyber attacks on the horizon- threaten international escalation

Cyber attacks on the horizon- threaten international escalation

Many experts reckon the first cyberwar is already well under way. It’s not exactly a “cold war,” as the previous generation understood the term, because serious damage valued in millions of dollars has been done, and there’s nothing masked about the hostile intent of state-sponsored hackers. What has been masked is the sponsorship.

Every strike has been plausibly deniable, including whitehat operations such as the nasty little Stuxnet bug Iran’s nuclear weapons program contracted a few years back. Cyberwar aggressors like Russia and China officially claim to be interested in peace and security.

The cyberwar could get much hotter soon, in the estimation of former CIA counter-intelligence director Barry Royden, a 40-year intel veteran, who told Business Insider the threat of cyberterrorism is pervasive, evasive, and so damned invasive that, sooner or later, someone will give into temptation, pull the trigger, and unleash chaos.

Effective security against a massive attack by militarized hackers is “extremely difficult – in fact, it’s impossible,” according to Royden. “Everyone is connected to everyone, and as long as you’re connected you’re vulnerable. And there are firewalls, but every firewall is potentially defeatable, so it’s a nightmare in my mind. You have to think that other governments have the capability to bring down the main computer systems in this country, power grids, hospitals, or banking systems – things that could cause great economic upheaval and paralyze the country.”

There are, in fact, excellent reasons to believe hostile governments have the capability Royden describes. Even top-level systems at the State Department and White House have been penetrated by hackers, in what appear to be exploratory operations. North Korea, a relatively small cyberwar player, did a horrific amount of damage to Sony Pictures, possibly with the help of insiders. We don’t know how many “insiders” there are. Not only is hacker warfare fought on an entirely new battleground, but it adds new dimensions to old-school espionage.

Some non-governmental hacking incidents could be a result of military hacking units polishing their skills. Last week, Penn State University announced it was hit by “two sophisticated hacking attacks, one of which cyber-security experts say originated in China,” according to NBC News. The personal information of some 18,000 students and university employees was jeopardized. The university had to disconnect its systems completely from the Internet to deal with the threat.

Unplugging from the Internet won’t be an option if systems across the nation, including vital infrastructure systems, are hit simultaneously by a massive attack.

Penn State University President Eric J. Barron put the problem in perspective by vowing to “take additional steps to protect ourselves, our identities and our information from a new global wave of cybercrime and cyberespionage.”

The extent of the risk to our nation’s physical infrastructure was highlighted when security researcher Chris Roberts was removed from a United Airlines plane last month, because he was passing his time on the tarmac tweeting about the plane’s security vulnerabilities.

Popular Science notes that the Government Accountability Office recently published a report “highlighting the potential dangers posed by hackers using commercial airlines’ onboard wireless communications networks, including Wi-Fi, as a possible attack vector.”

Roberts previously claimed to have hacked the International Space Station and taken control of its thermostat, and he thought he might have a shot at hacking the Mars rover.

Economic infrastructure is equally at risk. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis confirmed on Tuesday that its systems were breached by hackers, “redirecting users of its online research services to fake websites set up by the attackers,” as reported by the New York Times.

US government officials becoming aware of cyber terror threats but no progress being made- threats will escalate in the short term

In a wide-ranging discussion at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Thursday evening, former U.S. Defense Secretary and past CIA Director Leon Panetta reiterated his concern over the threat of potential cyberattacks against the United States. Such attacks, he said, could do serious damage to technology that runs everything from the nation's transportation system to its power grid.

"We're now seeing viruses that can literally destroy computers," Panetta told a crowd of approximately 800 people at the event, held at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park.

Panetta's greatest fear is that this type of destructive technology "moves into the hands of terrorists, who then don't have to come to this country to blow us up. They can basically use that kind of technology to cripple our country."

Cyberterrorism was one of many topics covered at the talk, moderator by Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Asked about the Iran nuclear talks, Panetta started by saying, "Look, I don't trust the Iranians," explaining that "they've been engaged in promoting terrorism throughout the world."

"Add to that the fact that they have developed a nuclear enrichment capability ... with 19,000 centrifuges for God's sake, and they tried to hide it from the world," he said.

That being said, negotiations over Iran's nuclear program are "obviously ... worth the effort," Panetta said.

"If they can get the kind of inspection regime put in place that really makes it clear you can go in and go where you want to make sure that they're not doing any high enrichment and you can enforce that, that would give me some comfort in whatever deal is cut," he said.

As far as Russian President Valdimir Putin's actions in eastern Ukraine, Panetta said he approves of President Barack Obama's move to impose sanctions on Russia.

"I think it's very important to be very tough with Putin at this point," Panetta said, adding that he doesn't understand the "hesitancy" in giving military arms to Ukraine.

"You're providing a lot of stuff now, you might as well provide arms as well to try to give them half a chance at being able to be successful," he said.

At the top of the discussion, Panetta detailed the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. That operation, which Panetta oversaw as the then-CIA director, sent "a message to the world that nobody attacks our country and gets away with it," he stressed.

A good portion of the talk, however, involved Panetta expressing frustration over what he sees as a different kind of national security threat -- congressional gridlock.

Panetta said America will ultimately "pay a price" for the political stalemate in Washington, D.C.

"What I'm concerned about today is that because there's this conflict [in Congress] ... because all the rules of the game seem to be thrown out the window, that there's this kind of sense of giving up," he stressed. "And so major issues that are facing this country, there's a sense we're not going to deal with them."

"Right now we're fighting ISIS," Panetta noted, refering to the terrorist group. "We've got men and women in uniform out there putting their lives on the line and the damn Congress can't agree as to what war authority we ought to have. So the likelihood is they're probably not going to do anything ... Too often they do nothing, and we're going to pay a price for this."

Panetta, a Democrat, served in the U.S. House from 1977 to 1993, representing California's 16th congressional district. After that, Panetta was the director of the Office of Management and Budget before becoming President Bill Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.

Out of the many jobs he's had, Panetta said he enjoyed serving in Congress the most.

"As far as the mission of getting something done like the Bin Laden mission, being director of the CIA, obviously is tremendously satisfying as well," he said. "But I have to tell you, being a member of Congress at a time when ... both sides were working together to get something done, that was great."

After the program, Panetta signed copies of his recent book, "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace."

NSA circumvents encryption protocols

I believe we’re going to see more bulk access to our data by the NSA, because of the type of data it wants. The NSA used to be able to get everything it wanted from Internet backbone companies and broadband providers. This became less true as encryption— specifically a kind called SSL encryption—became more common. It will become even less true as more of the Internet becomes encrypted. To overcome this, the NSA needs to obtain bulk data from service providers, because they’re the ones with our data in plaintext, despite any encryption in transit. And to do that it needs to subvert the security protocols used by those sites to secure their data. Other countries are involved in similar skullduggery. It is widely believed that the Chinese government embeds the capability to eavesdrop into all networking equipment built and sold by its own company Huawei. And we have reason to suspect that British, Russian, Israeli, and French Internet products have also been backdoored by their governments.

Vulnerabilities within the government internet infrastructure make governmental cyber warfare a real possibility

What all this means is that the threat of hacking isn’t going away. For the foreseeable future, it will always be possible for a sufficiently skilled attacker to find a vulnerability in a defender’s system. This will be true for militaries building cyberweapons, intelligence agencies trying to break into systems in order to eavesdrop, and criminals of all kinds.