U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew

[-Cp]

We have such a bad-ass Military:

The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets.

The group's existence was revealed during a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month. Military leaders from U.S. Strategic Command, or Stratcom, disclosed the existence of a unit called the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW.

In simple terms and sans any military jargon, the unit could best be described as the world's most formidable hacker posse. Ever.

The JFCCNW is charged with defending all Department of Defense networks. The unit is also responsible for the highly classified, evolving mission of Computer Network Attack, or as some military personnel refer to it, CNA.

But aside from that, little else is known. One expert on cyber warfare said considering the unit is a "joint command," it is most likely made up of personnel from the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, the four military branches, a smattering of civilians and even military representatives from allied nations.

"They are a difficult nut to crack," said Dan Verton, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer. "They're very reluctant to talk about operations." Verton is author of the book Black Ice, which investigates the threats cyber terrorism and vandalism could have on military and financial networks.

Verton said the Defense Department talks often about the millions it spends on defending its networks, which were targeted last year nearly 75,000 times with intrusion attempts. But the department has never admitted to launching a cyber attack -- frying a network or sabotaging radar -- against an enemy, he said.

Verton said the unit's capabilities are highly classified, but he believes they can destroy networks and penetrate enemy computers to steal or manipulate data. He said they may also be able to set loose a worm to take down command-and-control systems so the enemy is unable to communicate and direct ground forces, or fire surface-to-air missiles, for example.

Some of the U.S. military's most significant unified commands, such as Stratcom, are undergoing a considerable reorganization. Stratcom, based at the massive Offutt Air Force base in eastern Nebraska and responsible for much of the nation's nuclear arsenal, has been ordered by the Defense Department to take over the JFCCNW.

Read the rest at:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,67223,00.html

 

[dmp]

see - it's funny...when they hired me for the job, they said it'd be secret!

 

[Hobbit]

Anybody here every play the original "Splinter Cell?" Tom Clancy is a genious.

 

[waltky]

Will 2013 be the year of cyberwar?...

Nations prepare for cyber war
January 7, 2013: Security analysts are predicting that 2013 is when nation-sponsored cyberwarfare goes mainstream - and some think such attacks will lead to actual deaths.

In 2012, large-scale cyberattacks targeted at the Iranian government were uncovered, and in return, Iran is believed to have launched massive attacks aimed at U.S. banks and Saudi oil companies. At least 12 of the world's 15 largest military powers are currently building cyberwarfare programs, according to James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. So a cyber Cold War is already in progress. But some security companies believe that battle will become even more heated this year. "Nation states and armies will be more frequent actors and victims of cyberthreats," a team of researchers at McAfee Labs, an Intel subsidiary, wrote in a recent report.

Michael Sutton, head of security research at cloud security company Zscaler, said he expects governments to spend furiously on building up their cyber arsenals. Some may even outsource attacks to online hackers. The Obama administration and many in Congress have been more vocal about how an enemy nation or a terrorist cell could target the country's critical infrastructure in a cyberattack. Banks, stock exchanges, nuclear power plants and water purification systems are particularly vulnerable, according to numerous assessments delivered to Congress last year.

But after legislation aimed at preventing such attacks stalled in Congress last year, some experts believe this will be the year when cyberattacks turn deadly. "Nation-state attackers will target critical infrastructure networks such as power grids at unprecedented scale in 2013," predicted Chiranjeev Bordoloi, CEO of security company Top Patch. "These types of attacks could grow more sophisticated, and the slippery slope could lead to the loss of human life." Security firm IID also predicted that cyberattacks will lead to the loss of life this year.

But others say that such event is unlikely. Our most potent online foes, Russia and China, haven't shown an interest in infrastructure attacks. Those that would pursue them -- Iran is often mentioned -- haven't yet proven capable of pulling off something on that scale. Verizon, which runs an extensive cybersecurity business, is in the doubters' camp. "Many security experts are using anecdote and opinion for their predictions, whereas Verizon's researchers are applying empirical evidence," said Wade Baker, head of Verizon's security division. "First and foremost, we don't believe there will be an all-out cyber war, although it's possible."

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[waltky]

The attack suggests a form of encryption may have been cracked...

'Red October' cyber-attack found by Russian researchers
14 January 2013 : A major cyber-attack that may have been stealing confidential documents since 2007 has been discovered by Russian researchers.

Kaspersky Labs told the BBC the malware targeted government institutions such as embassies, nuclear research centres and oil and gas institutes. It was designed to steal encrypted files - and was even able to recover files that had been deleted. One expert described the attack find as "very significant". "It appears to be trying to suck up all the usual things - word documents, PDFs, all the things you'd expect," said Prof Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey. "But a couple of the file extensions it's going after are very specific encrypted files."

In a statement, Kaspersky Labs said: "The primary focus of this campaign targets countries in Eastern Europe, former USSR Republics, and countries in Central Asia, although victims can be found everywhere, including Western Europe and North America. "The main objective of the attackers was to gather sensitive documents from the compromised organisations, which included geopolitical intelligence, credentials to access classified computer systems, and data from personal mobile devices and network equipment."

'Carefully selected'

In an interview with the BBC, the company's chief malware researcher Vitaly Kamluk said victims had been carefully selected. "It was discovered in October last year," Mr Kamluk said. "We initiated our checks and quite quickly understood that is this a massive cyber-attack campaign. "There were a quite limited set of targets that were affected - they were carefully selected. They seem to be related to some high-profile organisations."

Red October - which is named after a Russian submarine featured in the Tom Clancy novel The Hunt For Red October - bears many similarities with Flame, a cyber-attack discovered last year. Like Flame, Red October is made up of several distinct modules, each with a set objective or function. "There is a special module for recovering deleted files from USB sticks," Mr Kamluk said. "It monitors when a USB stick is plugged in, and it will try to undelete files. We haven't seen anything like that in a malware before." Also unique to Red October was its ability to hide on a machine as if deleted, said Prof Woodward. "If it's discovered, it hides. "When everyone thinks the coast is clear, you just send an email and 'boof' it's back and active again."

Cracked encryption

 

[whitehall]

Super secret you say?

 

[waltky]

Rules of engagement for U.S. forces for cyberwar...

Cyberwar manual lays down rules for online attacks
Mar 19,`13 -- Even cyberwar has rules, and one group of experts is putting out a manual to prove it.

Their handbook, due to be published later this week, applies the practice of international law to the world of electronic warfare in an effort to show how hospitals, civilians and neutral nations can be protected in an information-age fight. "Everyone was seeing the Internet as the `Wild, Wild West,'" U.S. Naval War College Professor Michael Schmitt, the manual's editor, said in an interview before its official release. "What they had forgotten is that international law applies to cyberweapons like it applies to any other weapons."

The Tallinn Manual - named for the Estonian capital where it was compiled - was created at the behest of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, a NATO think tank. It takes existing rules on battlefield behavior, such as the 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration and the 1949 Geneva Convention, to the Internet, occasionally in unexpected ways. Marco Roscini, who teaches international law at London's University of Westminster, described the manual as a first-of-its-kind attempt to show that the laws of war - some of which date back to the 19th century - were flexible enough to accommodate the new realities of online conflict.

A copy of the Tallinn Manual, a rulebook on cyberwarfare, is held up in a posed photograph in London, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. Even cyberwar has rules, and one group of experts is publishing a manual to prove it. The handbook due to be published later this week applies the venerable practice of international law to the world of electronic warfare in an effort to show how hospitals, civilians, and neutral nations can be protected in an information age fight.

The 282-page handbook has no official standing, but Roscini predicted that it would be an important reference as military lawyers across the world increasingly grapple with what to do about electronic attacks. "I'm sure it will be quite influential," he said. The manual's central premise is that war doesn't stop being war just because it happens online. Hacking a dam's controls to release its reservoir into a river valley can have the same effect as breaching it with explosives, its authors argue. Legally speaking, a cyberattack that sparks a fire at a military base is indistinguishable from an attack that uses an incendiary shell.

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