Archive for the ‘CyberPocalypse’ Category
Fear and Loathing On The Internet: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Cyber Trenches
Image courtesy of GonzoPhD
O’Five Hundred
It was 5am and the coffee had just started to brew when I saw the tweets that the DPRK was back online. Immediately my bloodshot eyes closed in salutation because the game was on. I booted up the laptop and got the old terminal up and typed the old familiar line $ nmap -Pn 175.45.176.0/24. I hit enter and began the worship of caffeine as is my custom at this ungodly hour that I find myself in my old age waking up to more often.
Once the coffee had been poured I came back to my comfortable seat to find that one IP address in the subnet (/24) had come up with all kinds of ports open! “Ooooh, this will be interesting” I thought as I began to play with the ports in my browser and other tools. Little did I know then what I would know now about life in the 21st century cyber war!
No sooner had I begun to poke at the ports I began to sense dark forces moving against me. I decided to forge ahead though and hit the second sub that DPRK has. The Nmap began unleashing it’s port scanning hell upon the enemy and I went back to the SMTP server that I had located. It began to offer up it’s dirty flower to me as I poked and prodded. It seemed that because the DPRK had been down since the night or so before they were still recovering, their firewall still trying to come back from the oblivion that had been wrought upon it by… Whoever.
O’Five Thirty
As I started to get bored with the one address that was available I decided to turn on the old iPad and listen to a flick while playing. I had not been watching long when all of a sudden WHAM! I could feel the palpable blow from my.. Nay, OUR enemy! The DPRK had hit back! My iPad stopped mid sentence and began to just become completely verklempt. I checked the wireless sig and it was fine… What in holy hell was happening! A creeping feeling of dread began to creep up my coccyx with a cyber chill! “Could it be that the infernal Kim Jong Un has hit me?” I thought to myself. “Nah, just a wireless issue” I mused but I decided to check. I brought up my browser and hit the router address… Nada.
“Uh oh”
I flew to my office and booted up another wired box and frantically hit the router again… 500 error…
“Shit!”
I sat and pondered it all.. I had just become a casualty of the great cyber war of 2014! My router was offline, my shit was smoking and I knew that that creeping feeling of cold dread from my coccyx was in fact the cruel reality… I had been DDoS’d!!
O’Five Thirty Five and Three Seconds
I rebooted the everything and began to work the systems. I had my cyber helmet on now and I was prepared to fire a new salvo at the dreadnaught that was DPRK! The router cycled, the IPS… The Wireless… I frantically typed in the address for the IPS and began looking at logs. I scanned as the caffeine began to really sing in my veins to see the following addresses had hit me like a metric shit ton of SYN!
222.220.35.5
222.66.55.245
183.61.244.73
125.227.197.158
222.186.15.161
It was all there in black and white. The wiley Kim Jong Un and his frightening UNIT 121 had hit me with the dreaded SYN FLOOD! But wait, what? Those addresses aren’t DPRK! They are all in CHINA!
*cold sweat begins to trickle down my back with the realization that I had begun a new international incident!*
“CHINA! CHINA!” I yelled at the screen. I tried to calm myself and remember my cyber attribution training! “The IP’s are in China! I am being attacked by China! It’s incontrovertible! It’s China attacking me as a proxy for DPRK! MY GOD!” This is when the klaxons began going off.
INBOUND PACKETS!
WHAM!
I was hit again wave after wave from China. There was no way around it. I had to declare cyber war on DPRK because China attacked me after I used a network tool on DPRK addresses!
DAMN THE CYBER TORPEDOS!
The packets flew and the Chinese hit me with everything they could. I could hear KJU screeching in the background yelling orders of more salvo’s against the capitalist cyber swine that was me!
WHAM!
BOOM!
My cyber helmet developed a crack and there was only one thing left to do… I blocked them on my firewall. The war ended then… At approximately 0540 hours the great “Cyber War” of 2014 ended. I looked around to see posters torn from walls.
The. Horror!
Now I am a veteran of the cyber wars… I still have not gotten my purple heart. Listen well you young men and women. Heed the tale of this cyber warrior and his time in the cyber trenches. Cyber war is cyber hell.
K.
Digital Jihad: The Great Irhabi Cyber War That Won’t Be.
Islamic State militants are planning the creation of a ‘cyber caliphate’ protected by their own encryption software – from behind which they will launch massive hacking attacks on the U.S. and the West.
Both Islamic State and Al Qaeda claim to be actively recruiting skilled hackers in a bid to create a team of jihadist computer experts capable of causing devastating cyber disruptions to Western institutions.
They are now boasting it is only a matter of time before their plan becomes a reality.
The Great Cyber Jihad
Since Junaid Hussain escaped over the border to the new lands of jihad (aka Syria) he has been vocal on Twitter showing off his great cyber manhood in classic irhabi bloviating online. That Junaid made some inroads by hacking into the prime minister’s email address at Gmail only lends him dubious credit to his hacking skills to a person involved in the security field. This however is not how the great unwashed within the media and certain quarters of the government and the military seem to perceive the threat posed by Junaid today now that he is an ISIL irhabi.
Islamic State militants are planning the creation of a ‘cyber caliphate’ protected by their own encryption software – from behind which they will launch massive hacking attacks on the U.S. and the West.
Both Islamic State and Al Qaeda claim to be actively recruiting skilled hackers in a bid to create a team of jihadist computer experts capable of causing devastating cyber disruptions to Western institutions.
They are now boasting it is only a matter of time before their plan becomes a reality.
The above text came from just one of the spate of recent reports on the great “Cyber Jihad” that is being touted to come from the likes of Junaid and ISIS/L as they attempt to expand their reach from the Middle East globally. This ls.particular commentary makes the bile rise within my gut on so many levels though. But that kind of pales in comparison to the one right below…
“We’re in a pre-9/11 moment with cyber,” John Carlin, assistant attorney in charge of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, warned at a July conference in Aspen. “It’s clear that the terrorists want to use cyber-enabled means to cause the maximum amount of destruction as they can to our infrastructure.”
PRE-9/11 OMG!!! Look you fuckwit if that were the case then China would have already put us out of our misery really. For that matter some half assed pot sodden kid who happened to hack into our grid would have taken us down years ago. There is just no need for this posturing and certainly above all coming from someone without a clue in their head about how things really work in the world of computer security. This kind of scare tactic aimed at getting people to respond in fear to allow for the government to do anything in the name of protecting us is vile.
Meanwhile you have other players such as the one below making statements of “ALL OUT CYBER WAR” while commenting on Anonymous’ operation against ISIS. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed until I just wanted to cry at the sheer stupidity of it all. Look, Anonymous can’t get their shit together enough to be both leaderless and effective so really, how much of an “ALL OUT CYBER WAR” can there be there huh? Do you even know what a cyber war really means? Cyber warfare is both digital and kinetic in it’s purest form and what kinetics did Anonymous really carry out in this operation to DoS ISIS offline?
Lemme give you a clue… None.
“Anonymous announced late last week a full scale cyber war against the Islamic State (Operation Ice ISIS), intended to attack ISIS supporters using social media for propaganda purposes”
So aside from the bloviating and the scare tactics coming out of ISIS itself we also have our responses from the government and the media with all their so called experts on cyber war and jihad. There is a lot of wankery going on here but finally this guy makes a little sense in the middle of his post on this mess…
ISIS’s main effort to date in cyberspace has focused on psychological warfare by generating fear through flooding the internet with video clips portraying the brutal acts of beheading and mass executions, as well as victory parades, as part of developing deterrence and creating an illusion of force in excess of the organization’s actual strength. The essence of its online activity, however, is broader. It enables its supporters to obtain operational information, including training in preparing explosives and car bombs, and religious rulings legitimizing massacres in regions under ISIS control. In tandem, it distributes indoctrination materials, such as a maagzine called Dabiq: The Return of Khilafah, which focuses mainly on topics relating to formation of the new Islamic state headed by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. However, ISIS’s technological expertise is not the only factor. Perhaps the public, which is revolted by the organization’s deeds but closely follows these clips and photos as a kind of reality show, is contributing a great deal to the organization’s popularity.
Yes, there it is.. ISIS has been carrying out a PROPAGANDA war primarily and with that comes from PSYOPS as well. This is the first true set of statements I have seen to date over this whole debacle. Ok, they are waging a propaganda war and a recruitment drive for sure but really, a cyber caliphate? I mean to date I have not seen this show up verbatim anywhere on the boards or on twitter so who’s leaping logic here? Seems to me that there’s a sucker born every minute and about 99% of them want to go into journalism nowadays.
A propaganda war using Twitter does not a cyber war make.
Cyber Warfare and Jihad
So let’s chat about the realities here about the capabilities of the Irhabi (ISIS/L or AQ or SEA) in a context of what we have seen so far. What have we seen you ask? Well, DoS, some data thievery, some malware use and phishing, but generally nothing spectacularly scary. Certainly nothing on the level of a nation state actor like China has been seen out of any of the loose groups that claim some jihadi notions online to date. So where do we get all this BOOGA BOOGA over the likes of Junaid Hussain and ISIS taking down our grids and things?
*squint*
Yeah, there’s no there there. I am sorry but even if ISIS/L used it’s monies that it has stolen over the last months to set up a “cyber team” they still would be LIGHT YEARS behind the likes of China.. Hell they would even be way behind Iran for that matter so really, there is nothing to fear here. Never mind that many of these guys like Junaid are working in countries that are actively being bombed and shooting is happening so really, how much longer does Juny have anyway before he gets a Hellfile missile up his ass?
Truly the cyber jihad is a non starter for me and it should be for you too. On the other end of that equation though is the fact that they are actively recruiting and getting their message out using social media and this is a problem. Now don’t get me wrong, it is not a clear and present danger kind of thing because really, 100 Americans out of how many people seeing their online drivel have actually left the country to go to jihad pretty much gives a sense of the threat. You have to be pretty unbalanced to want to do this shit to start with so if you get up and leave the country to join up you are a truly unbalanced person to start. One so easily swayed by the propaganda wing of ISIS needs help and what they will certainly get is a bullet instead while fighting. Even ISISL really doesn’t care about the Takfiri, you see kids, they are just bodies to be used… Nothing more. They may call you brother but under their breath they call you fodder.
Much Ado About Nothing
The reality is that ISIS is more a conventional force than anything else. They are not as well planned as AQ and they tend to be one dimensional thinkers. I will admit that their propaganda war has been interesting to watch but I don’t see that it is an existential threat. In fact, I concur with the assessment that AQ is still the real player here who can strike at the US and had a better track record thus far. Surely if ISIS continues to carry out the propaganda war they may garner more recruits but I just don’t see them being that inspirational to get lone wolves to activate/radicalize. I certainly don’t see them being able to put teams together to hack our infrastructure and take us down either. In fact I am not a proponent of that line of thinking anyway as a great threat. Our systems are too complex and fragmented to allow for such a spectacular attack.
So please news media… STFU.
K.
WEAPONS OF MASS INANITY: MIKE HAYDEN RETIRES BUT NEVER GOES AWAY
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LADIES AND GENTS, THE NEW DOCTOR CYBERLOVE IS….
What is it Mike? Why do you feel you need to sit and smirk on panels while spinning more and more exotic fantasist tales about the terrible cyber future out there? For that matter why do you feel compelled to joke about putting Ed Snowden on a kill list? I mean, you are retired man! You should be somewhere warm with your wife, sitting on a porch sipping a warm beer and enjoying life. Instead you are making the rounds trying increasingly more boldly to steal Dr. Cyberlove’s (Richard Clarke) thunder? What is up with you man? I mean are you trying to sell services or some kind of security appliance to the masses now that you are on that sweet sweet government pension? Or is it that you are now able to be the center of attention and talk after being bottled up so long as a secret squirrel at NSA?
Well in any case you are taking THE PRIZE with this little story you told about “CYBER MASS SHOOTERS!!” WHOA dude you went completely plaid with this one! You have my attention at the very least! Well, that may not be so good though having my attention but I digress. Shall I tell the folks out there what I think about your little story?
*looks conspiratorially at the crowd and ushers them closer with an eyebrow waggle*
BOLLOCKS! It’s absolu-fucking-lutely bollocks my friend! Holy what the hell? Dude you are delusional and those panels that people are inviting you to increasingly are going to be comprised of you and Alex Jones having aneurysm fights.
ZOMG IT’S A CYBER MASS SHOOTER WITH METASPLOIT! TAKE COVER!
The fastest-growing cyber threat is from a kind of digital mass shooter, a deranged or outraged hacker able to obtain cyberweapons currently available only to nation-states and organized crime, a former senior U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.
“They’re just mad, they’re mad at the world,” said retired Air ForceGen. Michael Hayden. “They may have demands that you or I cannot understand.”
Mr. Hayden warned that within five years hackers “will acquire the [cyberattack] capabilities that we now associate with criminal gangs or nation states,” such as being able to conduct online sabotage of industrial control systems that run power plants, factories and utilities.
Looks at that statements over and over and over again always having the same vapor lock.. HOLY WTF? Who do you think invented this shit in the first place? The hackers, the criminals, and YOU GUYS Mike! I cannot fathom just how clueless Mike seems here. I mean, he was in charge of the NSA so how could he be so out of touch? Perhaps he has early onset Alzheimers? Did he eat the British beef in the 80’s?
*shakes head*
Ok so yeah “cyber mass shooters” I am trying to stifle a giggle every time I say it in my head. I don’t think Mike has really thought this one through. Has he seen the hackers out there? Has he got a good grasp of the infrastructure as well that we have? I mean HOLY COW! First off, let’s look at the hackers. It would take a cabal to do what he is talking about. The only cabals I know of are the criminal gangs, the nation states, and maybe Anonymous. So yeah, it’s all groups Mike, not one sole hacker master mind. I mean really, we aren’t all Thomas Jane ya know..
*slips in Die Hard refence #score!*
Next we have the idea that one sole hacker is going to be able to attack the “infrastructure” in a way that will be able to take it down. Uh yeah Mike, I’m sorry but that is just not so easy. I mean, it’s not like all the power companies run all the same things and are all connected to the same subnet mmkay? No Mike, it will take nation state patience, money, and access to take down a section of the grid for example and cause mass annoyance. There will not be “mass casualties” as you allude to and what did you say.. “Dislocation”???
Head—>Desk—>Head—>Desk
Following that stellar statement we have this claptrap about how the hacker can now have “cyber weapons” like those of the nation state. Let me disabuse you of this notion right now Mikey…
WE ALREADY HAVE THEM! AND WE ARE MAKING THEM EVERY DAY!
The derp on that statement makes me want to just punch some small furry critter in the nuts man. SEE WHAT YOU DO TO ME MIKE!?!? Look, if you have a copy of Metasploit you are now actually, according to you Mike, A MASS CYBER SHOOTER! Your statement is infantile and it is the WORST type of fear mongering I have seen since your predecessor Dr. Cyberlove (aka Richard Clarke)
*hangs head*
Lastly, let’s talk about this infinitely stupid comment about how the “mass cyber shooter” may have no “demands” that we can understand.
*blink*
What? Just how many movies have you been watching since you retired man? I think you have some real misinformation in your head from watching one too many Die Hard movies my friend. Wow.. Just WOW man! I am in awe of your derp on this one and that is a hard thing for me to do. I am almost speechless here …. Well not really.
THE NEW MINISTRY OF FEAR
Finally I think Mike has envisioned a new “Ministry of Fear” for us all to cling to in troubled times. He will be in charge of the ministry and he will make the rounds to all of the appropriate places to spew his stories of “cyber mass shooters” to a ravening lame stream media machine. Your hopes I am sure, are that you and your pals can scare the straights into compliance with the NSA pogroms you and yours have been carrying out and are now in trouble over. As long as you keep the fear levels at the right height, you and your pals can keep on keepin on with the tacit approval from the people.
Mike, you’d be wrong.
The Ministry of fear will fail and as long as you are out there saying these epic derptastic things I will be here countering them on my measly little blog. So, for the news media I will now break this down into small bytes, which I will then puree into a nice baby food consistency for you to slurp down.
//BEGIN
- There will be no singular cyber mass shooter it takes too much effort and coherence to pull something off like this.
- WE ALREADY HAVE THE TECH TO WREAK HAVOC I MEAN, HAVE YOU SEEN ANONYMOUS? MASS ANNOYANCE IS ALREADY HERE!
- If demands are made sure, you may have to look up some terms on Wikipedia or 4chan but hey, you will understand what “we” want so rest assured you will know.
- FINALLY: NO NO NO NO THE GRID WILL NOT COLLAPSE FROM A HACKER. THIS IS NOT A BRUCE WILLIS FILM! THE END IS NOT NYE.
END\\
God I need a drink…
K.
So here’s my thing….
VQX HWMVCUSE JQJFASSNTG QV! X HQ JD ISIAVVE!
Face it.. We are all PWND six ways to Sunday
Every frigging day we hear more and more about how the NSA has been emptying our lives of privacy and subverting the laws of this land and others with their machinations. It’s true, and I have been saying as much since the day Mr. Klein came out of his telco closet and talked about how the NARUS system had been plugged into the MAE West back in the day. We are all well and truly fucked if we want any kind of privacy today kids and we all need to just sit back and think about that.
*ponder ponder ponder*
Ok, I have thought about it and I have tried to think of any way to protect myself from the encroachment of the NSA and all the big and little sisters out there. I am absolutely flummoxed to come up with any cogent means to really and truly protect my communications. Short of having access to the NSA supercloud and some cryptographers I don’t think that we will not truly have any privacy anymore. If you place it on the net, or in the air. We have reached in my opinion the very real possibility of the N-Dystopia I have talked about before in the Great Cyber Game post.
As the pundits like Schneier and others groan on and on about how the NSA is doing all of this to us all I have increasingly felt the 5 stages of grief. I had the disbelief (ok not completely as you all know but the scope was incredible at each revelation) Then the anger came and washed over me, waves and waves of it as I saw the breadth and scope of the abuse. Soon though that anger went away and I was then feeling the bargaining phase begin. I started to bargain in my head with ideas that I could in fact create my own privacy with crypto and other OPSEC means. I thought I could just deny the government the data. I soon though began to understand that no matter what I did with the tools out there that it was likely they had already been back door’d. This came to be more than the case once the stories came out around how the NSA had been pressuring all kinds of tech companies to weaken standards or even build full back doors into their products under the guise of “National Security”
Over time the revelations have all lead to the inescapable truth that there is nothing really anyone can do to stop the nation state from mining our communications on a technological level. Once that had fully set in my mind the depression kicked in. Of late I have been more quiet online and more depressed about our current state as well as our future state with regard to surveillance and the cyberwarz. I came to the conclusion that no matter the railing and screaming I might do it would mean nothing to the rapidly approaching cyberpocalypse of our own creation arriving. ….In short, we can’t stop it and thus the last of the five stages for me has set in. I accept that there is nothing I can do, nay, nothing “we” can do to stop this short of a bloody coup on the government at large.
I now luxuriate in my apathy and were I to really care any more I would lose my fucking mind.
OPSEC! OPSEC! OPSEC!
Speaking of losing one’s mind.. Lately people all have been yelling that OPSEC is the only way! One (the gruqq) has been touting this and all kinds of counterintelligence as the panacea for the masses on these issues. Well, why? Why should we all have to be spies to just have a little privacy in our lives huh? I mean it’s one thing to be a shithead and just share every fucking stupid idea you have on FriendFace and Tweeter but really, if you can’t shut yourself up that is your problem right? No, I speak of the every day email to your mom telling her about your health status or maybe your decision to come out etc. Why should the government have the eminent domain digitally to look at all that shit now or later?
If you take measures to protect these transactions and those measures are already compromised by the government why then should you even attempt to protect them with overburdened measures such as OPSEC huh? I mean, really if you are that worried about that shit then go talk to someone personally huh? I know, quite the defeatist attitude I have there huh? The reality is that even though I claim not to be caring about it (re: apathy above) I actually do but I realize that we no longer have privacy even if we try to create it for ourselves with technical means. If the gov wants to see your shit they will make a way to do so without your knowing about it. I fully expect someday that they will just claim eminent domain over the internet completely.
Fuck OPSEC.. I want my government to do the right thing and not try to hide all their skirting of the law by making it classified and sending me an NSL that threatens to put me in jail for breaking the law.
Fuck this shit.
CYBERWARZ
Then we have the CYBERWARZ!! Oh yeah, the gubment, the military, and the private sector all have the CYBERWARZ fever. I cannot tell you how sick of that bullshit I am really. I am tired of all the hype and misdirection. Let me clear this up for you all right here and right now. THERE IS NO CYBERWAR! There is only snake oil and espionage. UNTIL such time as there is a full out kinetic war going on where systems have been destroyed or compromised just before tanks roll in or nukes hit us there is no cyberwar to speak of. There is only TALK OF cyber war.. Well more like masturbatory fantasies by the likes of Beitlich et al in reality. So back the fuck off of this shit mmkay? We do not live in the world of William Gibson and NO you are not Johnny Mnemonic ok!
Sick. And. Tired.
I really feel like that Shatner skit where he tells the Trekkies to get a life…
Awaiting the DERPOCALYPSE
All that is left for us all now is the DERPOCALYPSE. This is the end state of INFOSEC to me. We are all going to be co-opted into the cyberwarz and the privacy wars and none of us have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything productive with our lives. Some of us are breaking things because we love it. Others are trying to protect “ALL THE THINGS” from the breakers and the people who take their ideas and technologies and begin breaking all those things. It’s a vicious cycle of derp that really has no end. It’s an ouroboros of fail.
RAGE! RAGE! AGAINST THE DYING OF THE PRIVACY! is a nice sentiment but in reality we have no way to completely stop the juggernaut of the NSA and the government kids. We are all just pawns in a larger geopolitical game and we have to accept this. If we choose not to, and many have, then I suggest you gird your loins for the inevitable kick in the balls that you will receive from the government eventually. The same applies for all those companies out there aiding the government in their quest for the panopticon or the cyberwarz. Money talks and there is so much of it in this industry now that there is little to stop it’s abuse as well.
We are well and truly fucked.
So, if you too are feeling burned out by all of this take heart gentle reader. All you need do is just not care anymore. Come, join me in the pool of acceptance. Would you care for a lotus blossom perhaps? It’s all good once you have accepted the truth that there is nothing you can do and that if you do things that might secure you then you are now more of a target. So, do nothing…
Derp.
K.
Book Review: An Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approach
IJPFRH CPAGP EIIL!
CYBER CYBER CYBER!
CYBER CYBER CYBER! or “CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DIGITAL DOGS OD CYBER WAR!”” is often what you hear from me in a mocking tone as I scan the internet and the news for the usual cyber-douchery. Well this time kids I am actually going to review a book that for once was not full of douchery! Instead it was filled with mostly good information and aimed at people who are not necessarily versed at all in the cyberz. I personally was surprised to find myself thinking that I would approve this for a syllabus (as it has been placed into one by someone I know and asked me to read this and comment)
The book really is a primer on IW (Information Warfare) and Cyber-Warfare (for lack of a better nomenclature for it) which many of you reading my blog might be way below your desired literacy level on the subjects. However, for the novice I would happily recommend that they read the book and then spend more time using ALL of the footnotes to go and read even more on the subject to get a grasp of the complexities here. In fact, I would go as far as to say to all of you out there that IF you are teaching this subject at all then you SHOULD use this book as a starting point.
I would also like to say that I would LOVE to start a kickstarter and get this book into the hands of each and every moron in Congress and the House. I would sit there and MAKE them read it in front of me *surely watching their lips move as they do so* There are too many people in positions of power making stupid decisions about this stuff when they haven’t a single clue. I guess the same could be said about the military folks as well. We have plenty of generals who have no idea either.. That’s just one man’s opinion though.
As we move further and further down the cyber-war road I think that books like this should be mandatory reading for all military personnel as well as college level courses in not only IW/INFOSEC but also political and affairs of state majors as well. We will only continue down this road it seems and it would be best for us all if the next wave of digital natives had a real grasp of the technologies as well as the political, logical, and tactical aspects of “Cyber”
I have broken down the book into rough chapters and subject areas as it is within the book (mostly) It really does cover more of the overall issues of cyber-warfare and methods used (not overly technical) The modus operandi so to speak of the actual events that have taken place are laid out in the book and give you a picture of the evolving of IW to what we see today as “cyber-warfare” I will comment on those sections on what I thought was good and what I thought was derpy of course, I mean would you all have it any other way?
IW (INFORMATION WARFARE) RUSSIA
The authors cover early IW with the Russian saga’s over Georgia and Estonia. There is a lot in there that perhaps even you out there might not know about the specifics of the incidents where Russia is “alleged” to have attacked both countries at different times with different goals and effects. Much of this also touches on the ideas of proxy organizations that may or may not be state run that were a part of the action as well as a good overview of what happened.
In the case of Georgia it went kinetic and this is the first real “cyber-warfare” incident in my mind as cyber-war goes. I say this because in my mind unless there is an actual kinetic portion to the fighting there is no “war” it is instead an “action” or “espionage” so in the case of tanks rolling in on Georgia we have a warfare scenario outright that was in tandem with IW/CW actions.
OUR CHINESE OVERLORDS
Ah Chairman Meow… What book on Cyber would be complete without our friends at the MSS 3rd Directorate huh? Well in the case of this primer it gets it right. It gets across not only that China has been hacking the living shit out of us but also WHY they are doing it! The book gives a base of information (lots of footnotes and links) to ancillary documentation that will explain the nature of Chinese thought on warfare and more to the point Cyber-Warfare. The Chinese have been working this angle (The Thousand Grains of Sand etc) for a long time now and there are more than a few treatises on it for you to read after finishing this book.
The big cases are in there as well as mention of the malware used, goals of the attacks and some of the key players. If you are out to start teaching about Chinese electronic/cyber/IW then this is a good place to start. Not too heavy but it gets the point across to those who are not so up to speed on the politics, the tech, or the stratagems involved.
ANONYMOUS/SEA/LULZSEC
Anonymous, as someone on my Twitter feed was just asking me as I was writing this piece, is also a part of this picture as well. The idea of asymmetric online warfare is really embodied by these groups. The book focuses more on Lulzsec and their 50 days of sailing but it doesn’t go too in depth with the derp. Suffice to say that all of them are indeed important to cyber-warfare as we know it and may in fact be the end model for all cyber-warfare. How so? Well, how better to have plausible denyability than to get a non state group to carry out your dirty war? Hell, for that matter how about just blame them and make it look like one of their ops huh?
Oddly enough just days ago Hammond wrote a piece saying this very thing. He intoned that the FBI via Sabu were manipulating the Anon’s into going after government targets. This is not beyond comprehension especially for places like China as well. So this is something to pay attention to. However, this book really did not take that issue on and I really wished that they had. Perhaps in the next updated edition guys?
THE GRID
OY VEY, the “GRID” this is one of the most derpy subjects usually in the media as well as the books/talks/material on cyber-warfare out there. In this case though I will allow what they wrote stand as a “so so” because they make no real claim to an actual apocalypse. Instead the book talks about the possible scenarios of how one could attack the grid. This book makes no claim that it would work but it is something to think about especially if you have an army of trained squirrels with routers strapped to their backs.
It is my belief that the system is too complex to have a systematic fail of apocalypse proportions and it always has been so. If the book talked about maybe creating a series of EMP devices placed at strategic high volume transformers then I would say they’d be on to something. However, that said, the use of a topological attack model was a good one from a logical perspective. They base most of this off of the Chinese grad students paper back years ago so your mileage may vary. So on this chapter I give it a 40% derp.
WHAT’S MISSING?
All in all I would have liked to have seen more in the political area concerning different countries thought patterns on IW/CW but hey, what can ya do eh? Additionally I think more could have been done on the ideas of offense vs. defense. Today I see a lot of derp around how the US has a GREAT OFFENSIVE CAPABILITY! Which for me and many of you out there I assume, leads me to the logical thought conclusion of “GREAT! We are totally offensive but our defense SUCKS!” So much for CYBER-MAD huh?
I would have also like to have seen more in the way of some game theory involved in the book as well concerning cyber-warfare. Some thought experiments would be helpful to lay out the problems within actually carrying out cyber-war as well as potential outcomes from doing so more along the lines of what I saw in the Global Cyber-Game.
OVERALL TAKE
Well, in the end I think it is a good start point for people to use this in their syllabus for teaching IW/CW today. It is a primer though and I would love to see not only this end up on the list but also the Global Cyber Game as well to round out the ideas here. To me it is more about “should we do this?” as opposed to “LETS FUCKING DO THIS!” as the effects of doing so are not necessarily known. Much of this territory is new and all too much of it is hyped up to the point of utter nonsense. This is the biggest problem we have though, this nonsense level with regard to the leaders of the land not knowing anything about it and then voting on things.
We need a more informed populace as well as government and I think this book would be a good start. So to the person who asked me to review this..
K.
JIHADI’S HOLD LEGION OF DOOM CON CALL!! WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
AZIJ XXRZ HMCKIDACVA GZ UZZW!
The Legion of DOOM!
Yesterday the camel’s back finally snapped in my head after reading a post on Harper’s Magazine entitled “Anatomy of an Al Qaeda Conference Call” which the author called into question the whole story that was put out by the Washington Times and their “anonymous sources” The paper claimed that Ayman Zawahiri and all the heads of the various jihadi splinter groups got onto their polycom phones and their SIP connections to have a “concall” as we say in business today.
You all may remember the heady headlines in the last couple weeks where the mass media picked up on this story and began scribbling away on how the so called jihadi “Legion of Doom” dialed in for a sooper sekret meeting to plan the end of our Western Civilization. Now, I am sure some of you out there have seen my screeds (140 chars at a time more so recently) on just how we get played too often by the media and the government on some things but this, this is just epic stupid here. If you or anyone you know believed any of this claptrap coming from the media please seek psychiatric attention post haste.
Let me tell you here and now and agreeing with the article cited above, that the “LOD” did not have a skype or asterisk call to plan our downfall. At the most they likely had a meeting of the minds in a chat room somewhere within the jihadist boards out there or had a server set up somewhere for them all to log into an encrypted chat. I lean towards the former and not the latter as they usually lack subtlety online. Though, given the revelations from Mssr “Snowman” I can see how the prudent Ayman would want this to be on it’s own server somewhere and for people to authenticate locally and encrypted on a system that does not keep logs… But I digress…
Suffice to say that a group of leaders and minions thereof got together for a chat on <REDACTED> and that they talked about plans and ideas (from hereon I am going to coin the term ideating) for the destruction of the West and the raising of a new global caliphate. Does that sound familiar to you all? Gee, I can’t seem to put my finger on where I have heard that one before. … So yeah, there was a meeting, there were minions, and there were plans but here’s the catch; NOTHING WAS SAID THAT ALLUDED TO A REAL PLAN! No, really, there wasn’t any solid evidence that prompted the closing of the embassies all over. It was a smoke and mirrors game and YOU all were the captive audience!
As you can see from the article cited there seems to be a lot amiss with all of this now that some reality has been injected into the media stream of derp. Why was this all brought to you in the way it was put out there by the media? Was it only the demented scribblings of one reporter seeking to make copy for his dying paper? Or was there more to it? Was there a greater plan at play here that would have the media be the shill to the duping of the public in order to make them see say, the NSA in a different light in these times of trouble for them?
Makes you wonder huh?
DISINFORMATON & OPSEC
So yeah, a story comes out and there are “sources” sooper sekret sources that are telling the reporter (exclusively *shudder with excitement*) that the Great Oz of the NSA has intercepted a LIVE call with the LOD and that it had scary scary portents for us all!
WE. ARE. DOOMED!
That the NSA had help prevent a major catastrophe from happening because they had the technology and the will to listen in on a conversation between some very bad dudes like Ayman and the new AQAP leaders plotting and planning our cumulative demise.
*SHUDDER*
The truth of the matter though is a bit different from the media spin and disinformation passed on by the so called “sources” however. The truth is this;
- The “con call” never happened. There was no set of polycoms and Ayman is not a CEO of AQ.
- The fact is that Ayman and many of the other “heads” of the LOD were not actually there typing. It was a series of minions!
- The contents of the “chat” were not captured live. There was a transcript captured on a courier that the Yemeni got their hands on and passed it on to the Western IC. (So I have heard, there may in fact be a chance they captured the stream using this guys acct) the Yemeni that is, not so sure it was us.
- As I understand it, there was nothing direct in this series of conversations that gave any solid INTEL/SIGINT that there was a credible threat to ANY embassies.
There you have it. This has been WHOLLY mis-represented to the Amurican people. The question I have is whether not there was an agenda here on the part of one of the three parties or more.
- Right wing nutbag Eli Lake
- The “anonymous sources of intel”
- The “anonymous sources handlers”
These are the key players here that I would really like to get into the box and sweat for a while. After the madness was over and sanity let it’s light creep into the dialog, we began to see that these so called sources were no more or less better than “CURVEBALL” was during the run up to the Iraq war. In fact, I guess you could say they were less effective than old curveball because we did not actually go into another half baked war on bad intelligence this time did we?
Another question that should be asked here is why was this information leaked in this way to the press on an ongoing operation that I would say might be pretty sensitive. I mean, you have a channel into a chat room (or *cough* con call as the case may be har har) that you could exploit further and yet you decide to close all the embassies and leak the fact that you have closed said embassies because you intercepted their sooper sekret lines of communication?
*blink blink*
Holy what the Hell? What are you thinking POTUS and IC community? Oh, wait … Let me ideate on this a bit….
- The intel community is in the dog house right now because of the SNOWMAN FILES yup yup
- So a WIN would be very very good for PR wouldn’t it? I mean you don’t have to hire a PR firm to figure this one out right?
- HOLY WIN WIN BATMAN! We tell them we foiled their plans using sooper sekret means that the public hates for infringing on their “so called” rights and we can win hearts and minds!
Could it be that simple?
All joking aside though, think about it. Why blow an operational means of watching how the bad guys are talking UNLESS it was never something you really had access to in the first place right? You could win all around here (though that seems to be backfiring) IF the Yemeni passed this along and it was after the fact then how better to make the AQ set abandon the channel by saying you had access to it?
Right…
How better also to try and get a PR win by alluding (ok lying lying lying with pantalones on fire!) that you had compromised (you being the NSA and IC here) said channel! I guess overall the government thinks that the old axiom of “A sucker born every minute” still applies to wide scale manipulations of stories in the media to sway thought huh? Oh and by the way, if any of you out there think this is just too Machiavellian I point you to all those cables dropped by Wikileaks. Take a look at the duplicity factor going on in international realpolitik ok?
Political Wag The Dog
It seems after all once all the dust has settled that either one of two things happened here;
- Eli Lake did this on his own and played the system for hits on his paper’s page
- Eli Lake was either a witting or un-witting dupe in this plan to put out some disinformation in a synergistic attempt to make the IC and the government look good on terrorism in a time where their overreach has been exposed.
It’s “Wag The Dog” to me. Well, less the war in Albania right? I suggest you all out there take a more jaundiced eye to the news and certainly question ANYTHING coming from “ANONYMOUS SOURCES” on NATSEC issues. It is likely either they are leakers and about to be prosecuted, or there is a cabal at work and DISINFORMATION is at play using the mass media as the megaphone.
Sorry to sound so Alex Jones here but hell, even a clock is right twice a day.
K.
The Global Cyber Game
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The Global Cyber Game:
I had been meaning to write about this before when I had originally read the text but things got in the way as usual (work, more work, some more work after that, Defcon/Bsides) Now though I am in a space where I can reflect back on this paper and write about it here for you all to see. The Defence Academy (UK) put this together to describe how we might approach “cyberwar” on the level of game play or game theory. They constructed a board and began to set to the task of creating game play and tactics given certain scenarios in the cyber world. (see image of game board below) You can actually play this game if you create a board from this design and work within the rules of game theory but this is not why I find this treatise so important.
What I find most interesting is the actual scenario’s that play out within the game play as well as the end game status that the paper puts it all down to in the end of N-Utopia and N-Dystopia. As one can gather from the inherent meaning of the words, N-Utopia means that we all work out our problems globally and work on bettering society (which in the Nash equations is the best play) or we end up with N-Dystopia, a Balkanization of the net, and warfare that scales all levels up to kinetic and will be the death of us all. Can you guess where I think we are right now on the N-scale? Yes, you’d be right to lean toward the N-Dystopia area. In fact I would even like to see that idea rendered in a new way with an older iconography, that being the Doomsday Clock analogy. Perhaps someone can take that up online and create one for the cyebrwarz eh?
Power Dimensions:
What must be taken into account in the great cyber game is that all of this is centered around power plays. The use of information as power, the use of information to effect actions vis a vis “power” and the varying types of power that are being wielded by the players. This paper covers this idea pretty well and should be required reading for anyone looking to study cyber-warfare along side Clausewitz and other more well known pieces of doctrine. Some however may already be familiar with the ideas of hard and soft power but let’s take that into the electronic warfare arena which is a bit harder to scope today.
- Hard power
- Overt threats and rewards
- Kinetic action
- Coercion
- Soft power
- Cooperation
- Co-Option
Both of these types of dynamic play off of one another and work in tandem. There actually is a whole spectrum of power plays that can be derived from these basic premises but I will not go into all that here. To date I have seen an abundance of hard power tactics being employed on the game board and I fear that that seems to be what the governments of the world have locked on to as their aegis. I would love for more to try the soft power tactics and methods but I am too much of a realist to hope that it will ever really happen.
The game play today that we are all seeing unfold before us is the hard power of Stuxnet or the ramping up of every piece of malware and 0day conceivable being purchased by the US government or others in an effort to be superior when the battle comes. That is though when they are not using those said same exploits in the darker games of realpolitik that they are prosecuting now. As I see it now we are hurtling towards a massive cyberfail of our own making and the real cost of the bad play will be economies around the world and other collateral damage that may not be an apocalypse as we currently understand them to be.
The power dimensions portion of this paper is quite enlightening and you should broaden the scope of how those plays are made with information and the internet. One must understand the playing field as well as the weapon you wield. This is the main problem I have of late is that all too many people and governments are not understanding the game play, the field of play, nor the tools they are using (pieces) well enough to play the game well. This makes not only for bad play, but in this game there are real world consequences for us all when some government or actor does something immensely stupid.
Cyber Games Today:
So what are we seeing today that has me worried? Well, we have the cybergames with Stuxnet and other malware to start. I liken the release of Stuxnet as skin to the release of a biotoxin or virus that eventually will be re-worked or manipulated into a more fearsome weapon. These are not one use tools, they are in fact re-usable and re-tune-able. Once these things are out there is no controlling them and with the idea of Stuxnet you have something that was used against one target but could affect hundreds more in friendly countries if they had the same configuration.
Another cybergame being played today is the new surveillance state that we find ourselves in. It seems in the case of the US we have people who are interpreting our Constitution to suit their needs under the rubric of protecting the homeland. This cybergame is all about information and the power dimension of controlling it. I have been watching this Snowden affair unfold and frankly I am frightened of the capabilities that the NSA has but I am much more scared that they claim that they are protecting us while a Snowden subverts the very systems they are saying cannot be misused. This particular cybergame when looked at, show’s all of the hard and soft power dimensions at play with the media and the law. This should also be brought into the cyber game play as well.
Yet another cybergame going on is within the public/private sector and I call the “Patriot Games” What I mean by this is that we have non state actors playing rolls of asymmetric warriors online to effect whatever change they see fit. A certain un-named clown for one is a primary actor in this space and really started the trend in my opinion. The cybergamers here are vigilantes nothing more and nothing less and may or may not have an effect on the grander scheme of things on the net and in public policy. For the most part however, these players are on the hard power end of the spectrum and thus just mostly come off as thugs.
Lastly, the cybergame that seems to be the one with the most chance of playing in the larger space is that of Anonymous. Anonymous has been able to leverage many players into semi cogent action and could in the future have a real effect on policy and other dimensions within the cybergame play. The only reason that I place Anon into this game is because of that mobilizing force that they seem to carry. If motivated and able to be cohesive enough this group could affect the greater games being played and have on a microcosmic scale thus far in recent history.
In all, the games that are being played, and they are games, all serve as a means to an end for those paying attention to understand and perhaps help those in the seat of power how not to play the game at all. Our petty squabbling on the internet is just that. The reality is that the net is important and much of our lives today require it to run smoothly but if the net were to go down permanently our society would not utterly collapse. We would survive and we would re-build. The question then becomes would we have learned from it and do things better the next time around?
Cyber-Utopia and Cyber-Dystopia:
The idea of Cyber-Utopia is a far fetched one in my mind and probably many others out there. This would be a great thing if we could make it happen but given the petty nature of our.. well nature.. We will only see this ideal wash up on the rocks and sink into the ocean rather quickly. In the Cyber-Utopia we all work together, we cooperate, and we work towards a better day. … And I just don’t see this happening barring some kind of alien intervention frankly.
Cyber-Dystopia though I am afraid is already the case in many respects. We are seeing an almost Balkanization of the internet today as it is never mind the games being played in reality with Stuxnet and cyberwar. If the N-Dystopia comes to pass we will find ourselves at war with each other constantly in a “cyberworld” much like the episode of STOS “A Taste of Armageddon” where all warfare is carried out via computer simulations and only the casualties report to be disintegrated as a means to balance it all out. Today though we will see attacks on economies as well as infrastructures to effect “war” (economic, political, or other) on our enemies and the real world costs will have to be measured in profit loss or perhaps even actual loss of human life.
The cyber-dystopia though is more than just an outcome of war. It is the outcome from our own inabilities to work with each other and our ability to rationalize warfare through a non apocalyptic destruction of life. It will be a tit for tat war of attrition that will not lead to any clear victories and certainly not elevate our societies in any way and that is the sad truth of it. Ladies and gents we are already in the dystopia. We just may not understand that yet.
Understand the game:
So, I leave you with the paper: The Global Cyber Game pull it down and read it. Learn from it, play the game if you like, and spend some time thinking about it all. We are on the cusp of another evolution in our society that we have seen repeated in every other evolution we have had. We create something, then we weaponize it. Perhaps if more of us understand it and the pitfalls we can prevent the N-Dystopia from becoming any worse.
K.
Cyberwar, Cyberdouchery, and Where The Rubber Meets The CyberRoad
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CYBER CYBER CYBER CYBER WAR! (A new song by Culture Club soon!)
I have been more quiet lately due to being a little burned out on the whole INFOSEC scene. The usual groups of factions are bellowing their usual bloviations and rutting like wild animals online, locking horns with others for dominance. It all frankly makes me just want to step back into my blind and clean my weapon, but, it also gives me pause to think and reflect on it all. It has been in this mode that I have sat and watched the “cyberwars” continue to amp up with the Kaspersky’s of the world finding more and more malware to write neat little papers on how they work and how “nation-statey” they are (oddly though never Russian in origin.. Gee I wonder why?)
Others out there are writing treatises on how “Cyberwar” will work all the while there has been no real definition put down and agreed upon by the masses as to what “cyberwar/Cyber-War/Cyber-Warfare” really is. It has not been codified really, even with the recent UN Tallinn document:
“A cyber attack is a cyber operation, whether offensive or defensive, that is reasonably expected to cause injury or death to persons or damage or destruction to objects.”
Tallinn Manual on The International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare – Michael N. Shmitt
Without a common definition we are all left with a great amount of confusion and gray area to move forward and commit actions that may or may not be “war” because there is no set ground rules, law, or definitions. So, here we are, we have all these people making a great hue and cry, plans and deeds, all without really understanding perhaps the potentials for their actions, all eager to get in on the ground floor of the “new war” and yes, you gentle INFOSEC reader are also part and parcel, willing participants to it all as well. The “cyberdouchery” it seems cannot be washed from your hands as well, and this includes me I think.
Mea culpa.. Mea culpa…
While reflecting in my recently infected state (pre-con flu) I sat down with the laptop and watched “Cyberwar: Not what we were expecting” a BruCon presentation that I had a hand in with Josh and Brian. The presentation went well, and as I had seen and thought about the material before, having had discussions with both in the process of creation, I began to have a bit of a paradigm change in thought on this after the final presentation. I looked back at my own mind set and writings on the douchery and realized my own shortsightedness, I too had fallen prey to the “cyberwars” and the only conclusion I could have now is that they are upon us, no matter the definition and I had better think on that.
Let’s face facts here… No matter how many times we call douchery, it’s here…
For all of the high handed railing that I have done in the past, I perhaps had missed the salient fact that people are people, and that we as a society will always latch on to the new “thing” that is super cool, but may in fact be the worst thing for us (think of the iPhone madness) We as a species, tend to go, like many other creatures, say parrots or cockatiels, for the “shiny things” It’s just our nature. So how much more shiny than anything else is the notion of a clean “cyberwar” where we take out the enemy with a click of the button, no, not with kinetic explosions but instead with the lights just going out or a centrifuge breaking.
Yeah, sound familiar?
This neat idea though could in fact cause some dystopian scenarios to happen and yes, in the idea of “war” as we commonly know it, kinetic actions (i.e. tanks and planes and bombs) would likely be employed as well, but, this in fact may not be the end goal of “cyberwar” in the minds eye of those dreaming and plotting it. After all, I would say that we are in the era of the “cyberwars” now in fact, and the only use of kinetic force seems to be only taking place in the non declared wars in Afghanistan and now the Horn of Africa right?
The “cyberwars” though, have been playing out mostly quietly, bits and bytes doing their non kinetic (mostly) damage, stealing data for financial gain or other espionage goals. Both nation state as well as personal, group, non nation state, whatever you decide to name the actors as, they are doing it, right now.. You can almost hear the clicks of the hard drives now right?
It’s really just a war of packet attrition… But then again I hear you thinking,
“But, you said war.. and well, that’s not war.. That’s espionage and maybe sabotage”
Well, yes, but, then there’s this notion of “Cold War” to deal with.
“Christ, I miss the Cold War.” (Cold War vs. Hot War)
The above quote was one of my favorites from “Casino Royale”, the recent re-boot of the James Bond story line. I find it apropos to this discussion as even with Josh and Brian, the idea of the nomenclature of war has been somewhat nebulous really. The idea of a “cold war” seemed elusive to them and perhaps even to me in some way, though I lived through the cold war and was actually in East Germany briefly just before the wall fell. Seeing the “cold war” first hand kind of gives you a new perspective I guess, so I was a little more pliable to the idea that a cold war was in fact a war, just not one where we have outright battles being fought in the “open” and that’s the key here.
Cold War Noun:
A state of political hostility existing between countries, characterized by threats, violent propaganda, subversive activities, and…
The state of political hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the US-led Western powers from 1945 to 1990.
Cyberwar, is the new “black” of Cold War.
See what I am getting at here? Sure, there can be an all out war that employs a “digital aspect” to it, (i.e. disrupting comms and supply chains) but also, the mainstay thus far of digital warfare is “information war” and this is much closer to “cold warfare” as it has ever been as you can see from the standard definition. Case in point, we are trying to contain Iran from having its own nuclear weapons. What have we been doing? Well, sanctions, propaganda, espionage, and now, post Stuxnet, digital sabotage of their programs as well as great swaths of digital thievery of their data to see just how far along they are.
Now, look up at that definition again and think about it… See what I’m saying here? Of course this is one element though and there are others like the kinetic typical warfare also described. Actions in tandem (digital and physical/kinetic) like that of Estonia but you get the point. It’s mostly, at this point, about cold war tactics to manipulate an enemy without committing to all out warfare and that’s the rub. Of course there are many war planners out there looking at plans to do more than just manipulate an enemy politically, that’s more the bailiwick of the likes of the CIA and other three letter agencies.
Diplomacy it seems, has a new tool in it’s little black bag…. As does the military sector.. Truly “Dual use” technology here.
State vs. Non State, War vs. Non War (What’s in a name?)
In the rubric though of “cyberwar” lately, we have seen arguments made (some unqualified, some quite qualified) about just what it constitutes and one of those factors has been whether or not the actors are “state or non state” actors. I would put it to you right up front, who’s to say who is or is not state actors to start with? Have none of you ever heard about proxy wars? I mean come on people, we lived through the 80’s and the wars being fought by proxy and still you guys don’t get it?
Iran Contra
Afghanistan and the Mujahideen
The War on Drugs
The Current War on Drugs with boots on the ground in Mexico (CIA/MIL)
So, you are going to quibble over nation state and non nation state actors in cyber warfare? What’s more, you are going to do so when attribution is so damned hard? Wow, the hubris of it is just stunning on some people’s parts within this community. Talk about douchery, just take a look around people. Sure, there is a lot of douchery going around, but I just have to say look in the mirror here and take a good long look. I think we all could be blamed just as equally here.
Actions taken by entities, in this arena (cyber-warfare) no matter the attribution, which may be wholly wrong mind you, can always have a sliver of doubt attached to them as to whether they are a proxy of a nation. It’s as simple as that. So, in the case of say the Georgia DDoS that happened, who can be sure, unless they have a really solid HUMINT report in hand, that this attack was not in some way or shape condoned or sponsored by the Russian government or factions thereof?
*silence.. baleful stare*
All I’m really saying is that the world is grey and to make great pronouncements of “I know shit” isn’t going to cut it in reality, and that even goes for me. Like they say on the internets, photo’s or it never happened. What can be said though, is that it would seem, from all evidence within the media machine and the rhetoric of the governments of the world, that the Dr. Cyberlove’s of the world are beating the drums for “cyberwar” pretty damn hard… And that the governments are scurrying to get a piece of the action.
“A fool with a tool.. Is still a fool” (Or: Simians flinging digital poo)
Which brings me to my next diatribe. As the title above says, a fool with a tool.. Is still a fool. Folks, we have all kinds of work going on developing 0day’s and plans of action by various warfighting units new and old. It seems that whenever we, as a race, come up with a new way to get over on the other guy, we mass produce and refine it without really thinking about the ramifications of our actions. It’s just human nature it seems, but in cases like this we just rush headlong into it, like we did for so long with biological warfare.
“Surely digital warfare and code is nothing as bad as biological warfare” is what some of you are thinking out there now as you read these lines, and yes, you are right I think on the whole, but, there is always wiggle room for disaster right? The potentials for malware and unforeseen consequences are there and unlike Jericho’s take on the dangers of “cyberwar” now, I can give it a little more room for possible bad outcomes from what’s being created now. What will happen as we all reach the singularity that some are postulating as we network everything? Currently the grid is a big topic as we make the “smart grid”, a model that is already being attacked by hackers as well as perhaps nation states trying to gather intelligence on how it works/will work and how to manipulate it. This type of attack alone could be dual use, like the Stuxnet attack, it could be a way to manipulate a country and its policies, or the prelude to a further physical attack. Who’s to know until it happens right?
All in all, I just have to look on in wonder at the hubris of the whole affair. We truly are monkeys with digital guns. Unfortunately today we have political systems that are short sighted and, in the case of our own here in the US, groups of diametrically opposed morons in a political election cycle that looks much more like a high school election campaign for prom queen. These are the people in the political office that direct the policies and war plans for us, which now include the idealistic ideas of “clean cyber warfare, targeted and with little blowback or collateral damage”
Monkeys with digital guns…
Cyberwar and YOU
Well, so here we are, we are in the age of the “Cyberwars” as much as the term might stick in the craw of many in the community. I would put it to you that as a person with anything online, you are a target. Whether it be the cyberwarfare of the state, or the cyber machinations of the criminal gang seeking to steal your money or your data, we all are under the same threats. Infrastructure as well as your personal PC are targets within a larger game of digital Stratego. Face the fact, live with it a while, and then think about what you can do to insulate yourselves a bit better.
It seems that even if you do not have a computer (some don’t.. no, really!) you still have a digital presence online because the companies that you do business with have one. The governments have their records online and those records are your records! There is no escaping it really, you are a part of the picture and you should get used to the idea. The power that you suck up every day with your digital toys is somewhat vulnerable and a target, and even if the adversary cannot take out the whole country, let me tell you from experience, just take out one state and see the shit fly because people don’t have power. Where I live we had that big storm a year ago and when people could not get their gas to power their generators it started getting hairy, and that was with the power only being out a week or so. Imagine if it were in fact long term? It’s the people’s reactions (base and territorial) that worries me more than the power being off.
So, whether it’s your data, your power, or your money, you too are a cog in the vast cyberwar machine that is all the rage. Will bad things happen? Maybe. Will epic and tragically bad things happen? Maybe. I am not short sighted enough to say it won’t ever happen, nor can I say that these attacks will not be employed by some foreign power or Bondian villain. I’m just saying it is possible, not overly likely, but look at all the work going on at DARPA and other places looking into how to make it a reality.
The cyberwar is upon us and we had best start taking it seriously because people in power are making plans, and like biological warfare, it seems perhaps there could be unforeseen cirucmstances that could trigger bigger and worse things.
Plan accordingly and think a bit more cogently.
K.
Malware Wars!… Cyber-Wars!.. Cyber-Espionage-Wars! OH MY
X
Flame, DuQU, STUXNET, and now GAUSS:
Well, it was bound to happen and it finally did, a third variant of malware that is ostensibly connected to the story that Mikko Hypponen posted about after an email he got from a nuclear scientist in Iran has come to pass as true. The email claimed that a new piece of malware was playing AC/DC “Thunderstruck” at late hours on systems it had infected within the labs in Iran. I took this with a grain of salt and had some discussions with Mikko about it offline, he confirmed that the email came ostensibly from a known quantity in the AEOI and we left it at that, its unsubstantiated. Low and behold a week or two later and here we are with Eugene tweeting to the world that “GAUSS” is out there and has been since about 2011.
Gauss it seems had many functions and some of them are still unknown because there is an encryption around the payload that has yet to be cracked by anyone. Eugene has asked for a crowd sourced solution to that and I am sure that eventually someone will come out with the key and we will once again peer into the mind of these coders with a penchant for science and celestial mechanics. It seems from the data provided thus far from the reverse R&D that it is indeed the same folks doing the work with the same framework and foibles, and thus, it is again easily tied back to the US and Israel (allegedly per the mouthiness of Joe F-Bomb Veep) and that it is once again a weapon against the whole of the middle east with a decided targeting of Lebanon this time around. Which is an interesting target all the more since there has been some interesting financial news of late concerning banks and terror funding, but I digress…
I am sure many of you out there are already familiar with the technology of the malware so I am leaving all of that out here for perhaps another day. No, what I want to talk about is the larger paradigm here concerning the sandbox, espionage, warfare, and the infamous if not poorly named “CyberWar” going on as it becomes more and more apparent in scope. All of which seems to be centered on using massive malware schemes to hoover data as well as pull the trigger when necessary on periodic digital attacks on infrastructure. Something that truly has not been seen before Stuxnet and seems to only have geometrically progressed since Langer et al let the cat out of the bag on it.
Malware Wars:
Generally, in the information security sector, when I explain the prevalence of malware today I often go back to the beginning of the Morris worm. I explain the nature of early virus’ and how they were rather playful. I also explain that once the digital crime area became profitable and firewalls became a standard appliance in the network environment, the bad actors had to pivot to generally tunnel their data from the inside out home through such things as a firewall. This always seems to make sense to those I explain it to and today it is the norm. Malware, and the use of zero day as well as SE exploits to get the user to install software is the the way to go. It’s a form of digital judo really, using the opponents strength against them by finding their fulcrum weakness.
And so, it was only natural that the espionage groups of the world would turn to malware as the main means of gaining access to information that usually would take a human asset and a lot of time. By leveraging human nature and software flaws it has been a big win for some time now. I was actually amused that Henry Crumpton in the “Art of Intelligence” talks about how the CIA became a very early adopter of the network centric style of warfare. I imagine that some of the early malware out there used by spooks to steal from unprotected networks was CIA in origin and in fact that today’s Gauss probably has some relatives out there we have yet to see by people who have been doing this for some time now and we, the general public had no idea.
Times change though, and it seems that Eugene’s infrastructure for collecting data is creating a very wide dragnet for his people to find these infections and then reverse them. As we move forward expect to see more of these pop up, and surely soon, these will not just be US/UK/IL based attempts. Soon I think we will see the outsourced and insourced products of the likes of Iran and other nation states.. Perhaps we already have seen them, well, people like Mikko and Eugene may have at least. Who knows, maybe someday I will find something rooting about my network huh? Suffice to say, that this is just the beginning folks so get used to it.. And get used to seeing Eugene’s face and name popping up all over the place as well.. Superior showman that he is.
An Interesting Week of News About Lebanon and Bankers:
Meanwhile, I think it very telling and interesting as we see the scope of these malware attacks opening up, that not only one or two countries were targeted, but pretty much the whole of the Middle East as well. Seems its an equal opportunity thing, of course the malware never can quite be trusted to stay within the network or systems that it was meant for can we? There will always be spillage and potential for leaks that might tip off the opposition that its there. In the case of Gauss, it seems to have been targeted more at Lebanon, but, it may have been just one state out of a few it was really meant for. In the case of Lebanon though, and the fact that this piece of malware was also set to steal banking data from that area, one has to look on in wonder about the recent events surrounding HSBC.
Obviously this module was meant to be used either to just collect intelligence on banking going on as well as possibly a means to leverage those accounts in ways as yet undetermined by the rest of us. Only the makers and operators really know what the intent was there, but, one can extrapolate a bit. As terror finances go, the Middle East is the hotbed, so any intelligence on movement of money could be used in that light just as well as other ways to track the finances of criminal, geopolitical, and economic decisions being made there. Whether it be corporations or governmental bodies, this kind of intelligence would be highly prized and I can see why they would install that feature on Gauss.
All of this though, so close to the revelations of HSBC has me thinking about what else we might see coming down the pike soon on this front as well. Cur off the funding activities, and you make it much harder to conduct terrorism huh? Keep your eyes open.. You may see some interesting things happening soon, especially given that the Gauss is out of the bag now too. Operations will likely have to roll up a bit quicker.
Espionage vs. Sabotage vs. Overt Warfare of Cyber-Warfare:
Recently I have been working on some presentation stuff with someone on the whole cyberwar paradigm and this week just blew the lid off the whole debate again for me. The question as well as the rancor I have over the term “Cyberwar” has been going on some time now and in this instance as well as Stuxnet and Flame and DuQu, can we term it as cyberwar? Is this instead solely espionage? What about the elements of sabotage we saw in Stuxnet that caused actual kinetic reactions? Is that cyberwar? If there is no real war declared what do you term it other than sabotage within the confines of espionage and statecraft?
Then there is the whole issue of the use of “Cold War” to describe the whole effect of these operations. Now we have a possible cold war between those states like Iran who are now coding their own malware to attack our systems and to sabotage things to make our lives harder. Is that a war? A type of war? All of these questions are being bandied about all the while we are obviously prosecuting said war in theater as I write this. I personally am at a loss to say exactly what it is or what to term it really. Neither does the DoD at this point as they are still working on doctrine to put out there for the warriors to follow. Is there a need for prosecuting this war? It would seem that the US and others working with them seem to think so. I for one can understand the desire to and the hubris to actually do it.
Hubris though, has a funny way of coming back on you in spectacular blowback. This is my greatest fear and seemingly others, however, we still have a country and a government that is flailing about *cough the Senate cough* unable to do anything constructive to protect our own infrastructure even at a low level. So, i would think twice about the scenarios of actually leaking statements of “we did it” so quickly even if you perceive that the opposition has no current ability to strike back.. Cuz soon enough they will. It certainly won’t be a grand scale attack on our grid or telco when it does happen, but, we will likely see pockets of trouble and Iran or others will pop up with a smile, waving, and saying “HA HA!” when it does occur.
The Sandbox and The Wars We Are Prosecuting There by Malware Proxy:
Back to the Middle East though… We have been entrenched in there for so so long. Growing up I regularly watched the news reports about Lebanon and Israel, Iran and the hostages, Iraq, Saddam, Russian Proxy wars via terrorism, Ghadaffi and his ambitions as well as terror plots (which also hit close to home with the Lockerbee bombing) You kids today might think this is all new, but let me tell you, this has been going on for a long long time. One might even say thousands of years (Mecca anyone? Crusades?) So, it’s little wonder then that this would all be focused on the Med.
We are conducting proxy wars not only because of 9/11 but also economic and energy reasons as well. You want a good taste of that? Take a look at “Three Days of the Condor” a movie about a fictional “reader” for the CIA who stumbles on to a plan to disrupt governments in the Middle East to affect oil prices and access. For every person that said the Iraq war and Afghanistan wasn’t about oil, I say to them look at the bigger picture. There are echoes there of control and access that you cannot ignore. Frankly, if there wasn’t oil and money in the region, I think we would have quite a different story to look on as regards our implementing our forces there.
So, with that in mind, and with terrorism and nuclear ambitions (Iran) look at the malware targeting going on. Look at all of the nascent “Arab Springs” going on (albeit really, these are not springs, these are uprisings) we have peoples who want not to live under oppressive regimes not just because they aren’t free to buy an iPhone or surf porn, but they are also oppressed tribes or sects that no longer wish to be abused. All of this though, all of the fighting and insurgency upsets the very delicate balance that is the Middle East. Something that we in the US for our part, have been trying to cultivate (stability) even if that stability came from another strongman that we really don’t care for, but, who will work with us in trade and positional relevance to other states.
In goes the malware.. Not only to see what’s going on, but also to stop things from happening. These areas can be notoriously hard to have HUMINT in and its just easier to send in malware and rely on human nature to have a larger boon in intelligence than to try and recruit people to spy. It’s as simple as that. Hear that sucking sound? That’s all their data going to a server in Virginia. In the eyes of the services and the government, this is clearly the rights means to the ends they desire.
We Have Many Tigers by The Tail and I Expect Blowback:
Like I said before though, blowback has a nasty habit of boomeranging and here we have multiple states to deal with. Sure, not all of them has the ability to strike back at us in kind, but, as you have seen in Bulgaria, the Iranians just decided to go with their usual Hezbollah proxy war of terrorism. Others may do the same, or, they may bide their time and start hiring coders on the internet. Maybe they will hire out of Russia, or China perhaps. Hell, it’s all for sale now in the net right? The problem overall is that since we claimed the Iran attack at Natanz, we now are not only the big boy on the block, we are now the go to to be blamed for anything. Even if we say we didn’t do it, who’s gonna really believe us?
The cyber-genie is out of the cyber-bottle.
Then, this week we saw something new occur. A PSYOP, albeit a bad one, was perpetrated by the Assad regime it seems. Reuters was hacked and stories tweeted/placed on the net about how the rebel forces in Aleppo had cut and run. It was an interesting idea, but, it was ineffective for a number of reasons. The crux though is that Reuters saw it and immediately said it was false. So, no one really believed the stories. However, a more subtle approach at PSYOPS or DISINFO campaigns is likely in the offing for the near future I’d think. Surely we have been doing this for a while against them, whether it be in the news cycles or more subtle sock puppets online in social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. The US has been doing this for a long time and is well practiced. Syria though, not so much.
I have mentioned the other events above, but here are some links to stories for you to read up on it…
- PSYOPS Operations by the nascent Syrian cyber warfare units on Reuters
- Hezbollah’s attack in Bulgaria (bus bombing) in response to STUXNET and other machinations
- Ostensible output of INTEL from Gauss that may have gotten HSBC in trouble and others to come (Terrorism funding and money laundering)
All in all though, I’d have to say that once the players become more sophisticated, we may in fact see some attacks against us that might work. Albeit those attacks will not be the “Cyber Pearl Harbor” that Dr. Cyberlove would like you to be afraid of. Politically too, there will be blowback from the Middle East now. I am sure that even after Wikileaks cables dump, the governments of the Med thought at least they could foresee what the US was up to and have a modicum of statecraft occur. Now though, I think we have pissed in the pool a bit too much and only have ourselves to blame with the shit hits the fan and we don’t have that many friends any more to rely on.
It’s a delicate balance.. #shutupeugene
Pandora’s Box Has Been Opened:
In the end, we have opened Pandora’s box and there is no way to get that which has escaped back into it. We have given the weapon framework away due to the nature of the carrier. Even if Gauss is encrypted, it will be broken and then what? Unlike traditional weapons that destroy themselves, the malware we have sent can be easily reverse engineered. It will give ideas to those wishing to create better versions and they will be turned on us in targeted and wide fashions to wreak as much digital havoc as possible. Unfortunately, you and I my friends are the collateral damage here, as we all depend on the systems that these types of malware insert themselves into and manipulate.
It is certainly evident as I stated above, our government here in the US is unable to come up with reasonable means to protect our systems. Systems that they do not own, Hell, the internet itself is not a government run or owned entity either, and yet they want to have an executive ability to shut it down? This alone shows you the problem of their thinking processes. They then decide to open the box and release the malware genie anyway… It’s all kind of scary when you think about it. If this is hard to concieve, lets put it in terms of biological weapons.. Weapons systems that have been banned since Nixon was in office.
The allusion should be quite easy to understand. Especially since malware was originally termed “Virus” There is a direct analogy there. Anyway, here’s the crux of it all. Just like bioweapons, digital “bioware” for lack of a better term, also cannot be controlled once let into the environment. Things mutate, whether at the hand of people or systems, things will not be contained within the intended victims. They will escape (as did all the malware we have seen) and will tend to have unforeseen consequences. God forbid we start really working on polymorphics again huh? If the circumstances are right, then, we could have a problem.
Will we eventually have to have another treaty ban on malware of this kind?
Time will tell.. Until then, we all will just be along for the cyberwar ride I guess. We seem to be steadily marching toward the “cyberwar” everyone is talking about… determined really to prosecute it… But will it get us anywhere?
K.
Krypt3ia 
SONY: The Laughing Man Effect
with one comment
Preface:
In the past I have written about “The Ghost In The Shell” referring to current incidents online and the future of network warfare. I mostly wrote about the anime show’s prescience with regard to the fact that many of us in the business of computer security it seems gravitated to it because of those very scenarios in the first place and a certain cool factor to them. Of course all of that was science fiction and it could not happen in the real world could it?
Well, once upon a time the idea of a plane flying in the air or a submarine for that matter were pure SCIFI and now we take them for granted. So it is too with some of the ideas put forth by G.I.T.S. where online culture and warfare are concerned. If you are not familiar with the G.I.T.S. franchise I suggest you go to Amazon or Hulu and watch them all. If you are familiar with them, then you might have the same “Ah ha!” reaction that I did watching the evolving story of the Sony hack.
SONY HACK
So to catch you all up, Sony it seems got hacked. Not just hacked, but utterly hacked, penetrated, compromised, whatever adjective you would rather use all of them applies here. Suffice to say that Sony was taken down in such a way that absolutely nothing electronic should be trusted within its environment whether it be a router, switch, desktop, laptop, server down to USB sticks. The hackers had complete control over what seems to be all of their infrastructure and for an indeterminate amount of time.
The adversary, once gaining access began to plunder all of Sony’s secrets, ex-filtrating them out of their networks to the tune of one hundred and eleven terabytes of data. This is an astounding amount of data to take and one has to wonder just how they got it out of there. I mean, did they move it on TB drives? Did they FTP that out? What? You also have to wonder just how long that would take if they were being sneaky about it. It also begs the question of whether or not the attackers had to be sneaky at all because perhaps Sony had not learned it’s lessons from previous attacks and just was not watching traffic at all to see the immense amounts of data leaving their domain.
It gets worse though for Sony… If that were even conceivable to many. The adversary then inserted a special feature to the malware they were using to compromise systems with to destroy the MBR section of hard drives on systems that were infected. This poison pill was then activated when the attackers were done to perform the coup de grâce that would take Sony down hard. As it was described the malware changed the login screen for all the users and then the game was on. Sony knew something was up and then systems went BOOM. Or did they? I am not too sure on this fact because I have not seen much out of Sony as to what happened next.
The net effect here is that Sony cannot trust anything and anyone potentially within their walls and had to shut down their whole network. They handed people pens and pencils and continued working as best they could as they called in Mandiant to perform the incident response for them. Meanwhile, the adversary had made contact with Sony either with the screen change (see below) or other means to say that they had that 111tb of data and laid out terms of what they wanted to not let it out on the net. That was around Nov 24 and it’s now December 6th. Since then there has been two data drops by a group calling themselves the GOP (Guardians of Peace) One drop was small, around a gig and the next was 27 gig. Within those files were found great swaths of Sony data that included numerous SSN’s and personal data for people who worked with or for Sony. In short, it’s a nightmare for all involved really.
Then things got… Weird.
Suddenly Variety (the Hollywood trade rag) was reporting that Sony thought that their adversary was in fact the DPRK and Kim Jong Un. Why? Because Sony was going to release a film that KJU did not appreciate. That film is called “The Interview” and it’s a comedy whose premise is that two Hollywood types are invited to DPRK to interview KJU and are asked “humorously” to whack KJU by the CIA.
Eh.. It could be funny. I really don’t think it would have nor will be but that’s just me. I am not a big fan of the two major stars of the film and of late Hollywood has mostly been the suck anyway, but yeah I digress…
So yeah, Variety is reporting that DPRK hacked Sony and with Mandiant being signed on HOLY CHINA! We all in INFOSEC began popping the popcorn and waiting on Tao to start talking about where DPRK touched him. It was and is still, rather unreal. The modus operandi for some of the hacking does match what DPRK has done before with wiper malware, or shall I say “has been attributed to have done before” and attribution as you all know is hard. However, the data kinda looked like maybe it was possible but with the lens of time it seems less likely that it was a nation state actor especially if the reason for the attack was in fact over this movie.
Since the advent of the DPRK theory, this whole story has just become a media frenzy about “CYBER CYBER CYBER WAR PEARL HARBOR BE AFRAID!!” The reality though seems to be a bit different from the popular media fallderall in that the GOP has all along said that this attack was in response to Sony’s bad practices and they needed to be taken down for them.
The Laughing Man Effect
This is the juncture where the Ghost In The Shell comes in and a certain arc in the story line from the Standalone Complex. If you are a fan you might remember the series of episodes concerning “The Laughing Man” In these episodes we are introduced to a hacker who appears from nowhere and begins a campaign of attacks against corporations for their misdeeds. In particular one company that was colluding in surveillance and stock manipulation but I will leave all that to you to watch.
What happens though is that The Laughing Man takes on the corporation and through hacking exposes them for what they had done as well as effects their bottom line greatly financially as well as damaging their reputation. It was the spectacular nature of the hack though, on live TV in this future Japan that got others completely obsessed with the Laughing Man and what he had done. If you have not seen the series there is a box set of just the episodes that concern the Laughing Man you can watch.
The story line though sparked with me because it showed the great asymmetric power of this kind of warfare that could be carried out by one person. One person with the skill sets to do it, could affect the bottom line of a company at a distance as well as anonymously. This is a powerful thought and one that in today’s society is much more of a reality than ever before and it is precisely because of technology. This idea I personally now call “The Laughing Man Effect” and in tandem with meme’s could spell real trouble for the world today. We have seen this already taking place with Anonymous and their various wars against injustice or just for the lulz as we saw in LulzSec. In fact, I would claim that HB Gary would have been the first instance of the Laughing Man Effect and it just took the Sony incident for it to solidify in my head.
Memetics
Now consider the meme. Meme’s are ideas or images that catch fire with people and are passed on rather like cognitive malware. Anonymous was a meme as well as means of creating and delivering meme’s on the internet. Born of the 4chan boards where meme’s are born every second, some dying on the vine while others catching fire, Anonymous caught on once they went after Scientology. The reality is that Anonymous lit this fire and now GOP has taken up the notion ostensibly and acted upon their personal desires of retribution much like Anon’s did on Scientology.
If the GOP is in fact a real group or person with an agenda to destroy Sony then I believe that their idea has come from Anonymous(s) successes. I also think that if they do really exist as a group then they have learned from Anonymous successes and failures. So far GOP has been pretty cagey with their use of dead drop email accounts and the use of various servers around the globe to send email to reporters. Which, if they are not caught right away, will give them more power of the meme as the David who slew Goliath.
In the end, I believe this to be just the meme taking root in the collective unconscious spurred on by the likes of Anonymous, Snowden, Wikileaks, and the Occupy movements. We live in a time where the small can in fact easily take down the big with technologies that we all use and often times do not secure properly. In the case of Sony it seems that they neglected a lot and got burned badly by doing so. If that is the case then who’s to say when the next big corporation is taken down by another person or persons with an axe to grind or a valid grievance?
The meme is catching and the Laughing Man Effect may be a real concern for the governments and corporations of the world. The more flashy and catchy or perhaps just downright motivational the more chance that others will follow. This is the nature of the meme and it’s ability to propagate so quickly and effectively in our hyper connected world. If you just look at all the media coverage of the Sony incident and then look at all the armchair detection going on around it you can see how this one too has sparked the collective imagination and curiosity.
Future State Electronic Warfare
So here it is. What some have been fearing and perhaps not getting across well enough is coming to pass. In our connected world it is easy to take things down and burn them. I the case of Sony they will come back sure. If you look at their stock the last few days as revelations surfaced, their prices took a dive but then went back up. Perhaps the real world just doesn’t understand the ramifications of what has happened here. However, the fact remains that Sony was completely decimated on a technical level to start. This is an important point that should be thought about.
That Sony was likely hit by an insider is highly probable. Was that insider sent in or actively recruited? Are they someone who just did this because they felt abused? I guess time will tell on these questions but insider attacks have always been a problem and they won’t go away. How do you really protect against that without making life harder for end users? Much more, how do you protect against insider attacks without alienating workers as they are watched every second of the day as they work to insure they aren’t setting off an attack? It’s a vicious cycle really.
Alternatively, how can any company expect to defeat a determined attacker anyway? The dreaded APT’s have had it easy and still do to a large extent but even after we all have learned our lessons, it will still always be a surety that a determined attacker will get you in the end. With that knowledge then what do you do? Do you just accept that fact like something akin to the AA credo of “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” or do you fight harder? It is a never ending battle.
What Sony can teach us though now is that the idea of this kind of warfare is out there. Ordinary people are feeling empowered to take on corporations and governments with the aid of the very technologies they use to carry on daily business. Technologies that are now commonplace and we cannot do without. This is a scary thing to many in power and it’s been made all the scarier when things like the Sony hack happens so utterly and completely well.
Welcome to the future of online/electronic asymmetric warfare kids.
K.
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Written by Krypt3ia
2014/12/06 at 22:49
Posted in Commentary, Covert Ops, Cyber, CYBER CYBER CYBER, CyberPocalypse, CyberSec, CyberSociology, CyberWar