- NASHVILLE (UPI) -- The Defense
Department was braced for a new onslaught of cyber attacks from Chinese
hackers in May 2002 but they never materialized: the Chinese government
asked private hackers not to repeat the 2001 defacement of U.S. government
Web sites, a top Defense Department official said Tuesday.
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- "We expected another series of attacks from Chinese
hackers, but actually the government of China asked them not to do that,"
said Air Force Maj. Gen. John Bradley, deputy commander of the Pentagon's
Joint Task Force on Computer Network Operations, at an electronic warfare
conference Tuesday.
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- "I wouldn't call it state-sponsored, but state-controlled,
I guess," he said at the Annual Association of Old Crows conference
being held in Nashville.
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- The original hacking war took place in April and May
2001. It coinciding with the second anniversary of the U.S. bombing of
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and marked the collision of a U.S. surveillance
plane and a Chinese fighter. The Chinese pilot was killed in the collision.
The U.S. plane and its crew were held on Hainan Island for 11 days.
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- The hackers attacked a handful of government sites last
year, emblazoning the Web pages with a Chinese flag. No serious damage
was reported but Web sites were disabled for a period of time. The concern
was serious enough that the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center
put out an official warning.
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- Denial of service attacks on Web sites and networks,
primarily through viruses, is one of the most vexing problems faced by
the Defense Department. It uses the publicly available Internet to manage
its deployment, logistics, medical and personnel system.
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- "We couldn't wage war without using the Internet,"
Bradley said.
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- However, 85 percent of the successful infiltrations and
attacks on these unclassified military computer networks are preventable
with available patches and proper security procedures but system administrators
do not use them. Every time a new computer is unpacked and plugged in to
the Pentagon's network without patches installed -- an apparently frequent
occurrence -- the entire network is exposed to that one computer's vulnerabilities.
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- "We are our own worst enemy," said Bradley.
"The Defense Department is more vulnerable than anyone in the world."
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- Through September 2002 there have been 32,465 attempts
on the network by hackers, about 110 a day. Bradley did not say how many
were successful. But of those that were "99 percent would have been
very easily prevented."
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- Roughly 200 new viruses are spawned each month, each
of which requires a unique patch or firewall.
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- More than a third of the successful attempts by hackers
exploit vulnerabilities already directed to be fixed by Bradley's organization.
Actually doing the work falls to low-level system administrators.
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- This is nothing new. The infamous Solar Sunrise attack
of 1998 which compromised information on thousands of Defense Department
computers at a time when the Pentagon was preparing for a possible strike
in Iraq exploited a vulnerability discovered and warned about by the Pentagon
two months before the attack took place.
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- Another third of the successful attempts are attributed
to poor security practices -- like using "password" as a password.
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- "These are just stupid mistakes that are easily
avoided," Bradley said.
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- Nevertheless, computer network security has dramatically
improved since the Solar Sunrise wake up call. There is now 24-hour-a-day
monitoring of computer networks to detect illicit activity and automated
intrusion detection devices in place.
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- "By and large I'd call it highly successful,"
Bradley said. "We've not been shut down very often or damaged too
badly."
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- The Joint Task Force for Computer Network Operations
is responsible not just for the daunting work of securing the vast network
but also for the still evolving and highly classified area of computer
network attack.
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- At its simplest, computer network attack would be government
sanctioned hacking -- an attempt to deny an enemy use of is own computer
networks in wartime, to change critical information, or to trick him into
thinking they were working when they are not.
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- "The attacks could be extremely precise. We have
a wide range of capabilities but there are very, very tight controls on
this," Bradley said.
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- Only the president of the defense secretary can authorize
a computer network attack, according to the policies now being crafted.
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- The potential for network attacks as a "precision
weapon" is high but has not yet seen the light of day. There is not
even a network attack cadre set up yet, according to Air Force Deputy Director
for Information Warfare Col. Chris "Bulldog" Glaze.
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- Progress toward that end is moving quickly, however.
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- "I've got to tell you we spend more time on the
computer network attack business than we do on computer network defense
because so many people at very high levels are interested in developing
the policy for it," Bradley said.
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- The Pentagon is moving cautiously, aware of the potential
for collateral damage to the world's computer networks and economy.
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- "Any kind of attack we will have to know a great
amount of detail about the systems being used," he said. "It's
a very challenging new mission area for a us ... Many are very wary because
its so new.
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- "We haven't see what the consequences are, what
the collateral damage is. These are precision munitions of the non-kinetic
kind," Bradley said.
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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- http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20021028-091658-8410r
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- Navy aircraft carriers may soon give massive printing
presses and cluster bombs a whole new mission -- a reflection of the service's
growing involvement with psychological operations. PSYOPS, as they are
known, are heavily reliant on the printing of flyers, which carry messages
of peace or warning -- all an attempt to influence soldiers to put down
their arms and civilians to work with American troops.
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- Cryer worked in the new combined air operations center
at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, from which the air war in Afghanistan
was run. Early in the conflict, it became clear to him that the Taliban
and al Qaida were winning the information war.
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- "It was our belief in the CAOC we were losing the
information war early when we watched Al Jazeera. We came around but it
took a lot longer than it should have."
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- Cryer noted the Air Force -- which is land-based and
therefore has access to standard printing services -- is much farther along
in the PSYOPS world, particularly when it comes to distributing the messages.
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- Dropping the leaflets has proven a challenge for the
Navy, Cryer said. The service is now considering retrofitting Rock-eye
Cluster Munition casings to release not bombs but political notes.
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- --
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- The Air Force is also looking to strengthen its foothold
in the world of information. It is toying with creating a new position
in the service -- that of an "Influence Operator" who will be
specially trained in culture and languages and will coordinate psychological
operations, military deception and operational security.
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- "It's probably true in all services that military
deception and opsec are additional duties, and (we) don't get training
or experience to do them properly," said Col. Chris "Bulldog"
Glaze, deputy chief for information warfare in the Air Force plans and
operations office.
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- He stressed this initiative is still in the concept phase
-- as a matter of fact, it hasn't even left the confines of his Pentagon
office yet.
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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