Indian Strategic Studies: 04/21/15

21 April 2015

Revolt of the free-riding Netizens

Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Apr 21, 2015

WhatsApp can provide free messaging service to Indian users because its entry costs are negligible. It ‘free rides’ over the existing telecom pipes accumulating users, which in turn generate valuable and potential advertising revenue for it.

The 1857 Indian revolt (aka the Indian Mutiny) was sparked by a perception, circulated widely in an organised, albeit ingenious manner, that the British were secretly trying to subvert the religious beliefs of Hindu and Muslim soldiers. Once the perception took hold, it was the lightening rod which channeled grievances against the British Raj, accumulated over 100 years, into horrendous violence on both sides. To the credit of the Raj, it also resulted in improved governance practices and objectives.

Almost 158 years later, a similar event happened in India last week. Young, upwardly mobile, Netizens-citizens who live through the Internet revolted online. The cause was a perceived, veiled attack by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on the principle of “Net Neutrality”, concealed in its consultation paper on regulating over the top (OTT) services.

A hilarious video by All India Bakchod, lampooning the “evil” telecommunication companies (telcos) and the telecom regulator, making the former out to be money-grabbing machines and the latter a bumbling collaborator, went viral.

The great Game Folio: China in Bandung

By C Raja Mohan

April 21, 2015

If Chinese President Xi Jinping’s two-day visit to Pakistan was about celebrating Beijing’s all-weather friendship, his presence at Bandung, Indonesia this week is likely to see a definitive assertion of the Chinese claim to leadership in Asia. From Pakistan, Xi heads to Indonesia to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Bandung conference of Asian and African nations.

At Bandung in April 1955, China’s prime minister, Zhou Enlai, made an enormous impression on Asia that was deeply suspicious of the new communist rulers in Beijing. Zhou, who set out to win new friends in the region, certainly succeeded with Pakistan. Bandung was also where the Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai began to fade, as Zhou ran rings around Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was viewed as overbearing and condescending by the Chinese leader.

No frisson in talks over fission

V. R. RAGHAVAN

April 21, 2015

The 2015 Review of the Non Proliferation Treaty is a process expected to be stormy and contentious due to a new set of geopolitical drivers. Yet again, it could leave the dream of nuclear disarmament unattained and the purpose of preventing proliferation defeated

The 2015 Review of the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will take place in New York from April 27 to May 22 and the process is expected to be stormy and contentious. The event marks some significant anniversaries of conflict: the 100th — of the use of chemical weapons in Ypres, Belgium; the 70th — of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the 20th — of the indefinite extension of the NPT. A new set of geopolitical drivers will work the agendas of nuclear and non-nuclear members of the Treaty.

Coming into force in 1970, the Treaty has been subjected to numerous pulls and pressures which have left the dream of nuclear disarmament unattained and the purpose of preventing proliferation defeated. The last review, in 2010, followed the complete failure of the 2005 Review conference, as a consequence of serious disagreements which had emerged over a decade. The desire of non-nuclear states to see better progress on disarmament by the Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) will figure as before. The discourse on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons has given a new shape to the NPT debate.

Maoist attacks: Hunters become the Hunted

By Maj Gen Dhruv C Katoch

20 Apr , 2015

In yet another ambush by the Maoists in Sukma District, seven policemen of Chhattisgarh’s Special Task Force (STF) were gunned down and 11 were injured at Pidmal village near Dornapal in Sukma District of the Bastar Division of Chattisgarh. This ambush, which took place on the morning of 11 April 2015, had striking similarities to the one carried out four months earlier by the Maoists on 1 December 2014, in the Kasalpad forest area of Sukma district.

Set backs do happen in security force operations, but what is worrying is the explanations that came out from various quarters after every such incident.

Apparently, the right lessons were not learnt from the Kasalpad ambush and it is unlikely that any will be learnt from this one too, because the truth is unpalatable and difficult to digest.

Strategic Partnerships of the 21st Century

By S Rajasimman

20 Apr , 2015

The term “strategic partnership” has been in-vogue in the post cold War period with countries having multiple strategic partnerships. However matters related to realpolitik force to see “strategic partnership” as an idea (constructed) rather than a mirror image of the understood reality. For example, India is a strategic partner to Russia, United States, France, and China all at the same time.

However while each of these strategic partnership share uncommon history, diplomatic memories, expectations, it does share a common foundation at a diplomatic level – No Explicit Negation. For example, according to Admiral (Retd) Arun Prakash the Russian sale of MI-31 Hind E attack helicopters to Pakistan upsets a informal tactical agreement between India and its largest supplier of arms, Russia. Is this aspect of India’s foreign policy engagement safe and beneficial to its foreign policy?

The dramatic evacuation of Indians from Yemen

April 18, 2015

The second-largest evacuation mission mounted by the government helped more than 5,000 Indians leave war-torn Yemen. The author goes behind the scenes to find out how this was achieved

"General sahab, aap march kijiye (General, please march)," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, looking at former army chief V K Singh. The senior ministers, intelligence officials and three service chiefs attending the meeting hurriedly convened by Modi on March 30 nodded their assent. The situation inYemen was dire after a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia had launched an offensive three days earlier against the anti-government Zaidi Shia rebels known as the Houthis.

35 Killed in ISIS' First Claimed Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan

April 20, 2015

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, and Daesh) claimed responsibility for a major suicide bomb attack, which took place on Saturday and killed 35 people and injured over 100 others, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Shahidullah Shahid, ISIS’ alleged spokesperson in the region, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Afghanistan’s Pajhwok News.

The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban claimed no responsibility for the attacks, and some affiliated groups, including Jamaat-ul-Ahrar outright condemned the suicide attack.

The target of the attack were Afghan government and military staff who were, according to the Independent, “waiting outside a bank to collect their monthly salaries.”

Obama’s Failed Afghan Peace Strategy

BRAHMA CHELLANEY

April 17, 2015

Since toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan 14 years ago, the United States has been waging a non-stop battle against its foot soldiers. Locked in a war that has already cost nearly $1 trillion, the US has now shifted its focus to making peace with the enemy. It will not work.

Months after President Barack Obama declared that America’s “combat role” in Afghanistan was over, the US and its allies continue to carry out airstrikes on Taliban positions regularly, while American special operations forces continue to raid suspected insurgent hideouts. In fact, beyond an increased role for Afghan forces in the fighting, the situation in the country has changed little since “Operation Enduring Freedom” was renamed “Operation Resolute Support.”

A Secret Weapon to Stop China's Island Building: The Environment?

Robert Williams

April 20, 2015

In the wake of recent revelations about the scope and speed of China’s land-reclamation activities in the South China Sea, no shortage of ink has been spilled decrying China’s behavior and calling for strategic responses.

But concerned states are hard-pressed to find easy solutions in their foreign-policy toolkits. No one is seriously discussing military measures or economic sanctions, and China has quickly dismissed criticism that it is bullying its neighbors. Long-standing diplomatic efforts within ASEAN to negotiate a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea have been undermined by the continuing failure of ASEAN countries to abide by the Declaration of Conduct they agreed to in 2002.

The net result is China’s increasingly rapid buildup of rocks and reefs in the Spratly Island chain, where it is building airstrips and other facilities on tiny features subject to claims by at least four different countries. Meanwhile, aside from the geopolitical implications, experts believe the dredging of ocean reefs required to facilitate this expansion is devastating the local marine ecology and contributing to an already dire environmental situation.

Family Planning, Chinese Style

By Tim Robertson

April 20, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/family-planning-chinese-style/

China’s one-child policy is frequently framed as an economic and social imperative, implemented not willfully, but rather as a necessity. Those favoring this argument often fail to acknowledge that the supposed necessity of state-sanctioned birth control came after decades of Mao Zedong dictating that the population give birth to hordes of children, so they could prop up the numbers of the People’s Liberations Army (PLA) and contribute to the country’s labor drive. The wombs of Chinese women have thus been the property of the state from the time the Communist Party came to power.

As callous as it may seem for states to think about their newborn citizens as a number that makes up a quota, it is in fact something every responsible government must do. Over-population is one of the gravest threats facing the planet. Still, even by cold-hearted standards, China takes a particularly brutal approach to ensuring these quotas are met. And the directive from the Central Committee in late 2013 to ease its one-child policy, to allow only-child parents to have a second child, is just as dubious as its more robust previous position.

Xi Jinping on Pakistan: 'I Feel as if I Am Going to Visit the Home of my Own Brother'

April 20, 2015

A few hours ahead of Xi Jinping’s scheduled touchdown in Islamabad for his first-ever state visit to Pakistan, an op-ed authored by the Chinese president appeared in Pakistan’s Daily Times. While the article is predictably primarily written through the use of diplomatic platitudes and offers little insight into the actual state of bilateral affairs between the two countries, Xi’s editorial is a good indicator of what Beijing would like to publicly emphasize about the China-Pakistan relationship.

The editorial, titled “Pak-China Dosti Zindabad” (Long Live the Pakistan-China Friendship), begins with a quote from an Urdu poem, which Xi uses to set Pakistan up as “a good friend in my heart.” He continues:

When I was young, I heard many touching stories about Pakistan and the friendship between our two countries. To name just a few, I learned that the Pakistani people were working hard to build their beautiful country, and that Pakistan opened an air corridor for China to reach out to the world and supported China in restoring its lawful seat in the United Nations. The stories have left me with a deep impression. I look forward to my upcoming state visit to Pakistan.

Why China’s New Family-Planning Policy Hasn’t Worked

By Lotus Yang Ruan

April 20, 2015

Population concerns vary. For most developed countries, declining birth rates have emerged as acommon concern, whereas developing countries are struggling to keep up with population booms. China, too, is facing its own unique population worries. According to figures issued by China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), the country’s fertility rate is between 1.7 and 1.8; the Beijing-based Brookings-Tsinghua Centre for Public Policy has put the figure below 1.5. Either way, the fact that China’s fertility rate is lower than 2.1 per couple, which is the population replacement rate according to demographers, has alarmed policymakers. Following a number of “pilot programs” in small cities, China relaxed its decades-long family-planning policy in 2013, allowing couples to have two children if either parent is an only child. Before the policy was enacted, some scholars worried that it would trigger a baby boom, with its attendant concerns such as resource allocation.

'Great Cannon of China' turns internet users into weapon of cyberwar

The “Great Cannon” has entered the cyberwar lexicon alongside the “Great Firewall of China” after a new tool for censorship in the nation was named and described by researchers from the University of Toronto.

The first use of the Great Cannon came in late March, when the coding site GitHub was flooded by traffic leaving it intermittently unresponsive for multiple days. The attack, using a method called “distributed denial of service” or DDoS, appeared to be targeting two specific users of the site: the New York Times’ Chinese mirror, and anti-censorship organisation GreatFire.org.

Both users focus their efforts on allowing Chinese residents to bypass the country’s Great Firewall – the system China uses to restrict access to parts of the internet.

China launches new cyber attack weapon

17 APR 2015

The Chinese government has developed a new tool to prevent its citizens from accessing the internet freely.

The “Great Cannon” has entered the cyberwar lexicon alongside the “Great Firewall of China” after a new tool for censorship in the nation was named and described by researchers from the University of Toronto.

The first use of the Great Cannon came in late March, when the coding site GitHub was flooded by traffic, leaving it intermittently unresponsive for multiple days. The attack, using a method called distributed denial of service, appeared to be targeting two specific users of the site: the New York Times‘s Chinese mirror and anticensorship organisation, GreatFire.org.

NEW CHINESE SUBMARINES TO PAKISTAN

By Jeffrey Lin and P.W. Singer

April 7, 2015

http://www.popsci.com/new-chinese-submarines-pakistan

The S-20 SSK was first offered at the IDEX 2013 arms show in the UAE; it is a quiet 2,600 SSK capable of firing cruise missiles and torpedoes, in addition to inserting special forces and mines. Pakistan's Chinese subs are likely to be based off the S-20 design.

On March 31st, Pakistan announced plans to buy eight new Chinese-made submarines. The submarines are likely to be based of the Type 39B Yuan SSK, of which the export version is designated the S-20. The S-20 displaces about 2,300 tons, but air independent propulsion (AIP) is not standard to the submarine. AIP a closed off propulsion system, like a gas compression Stirling engine or fuel cells, that doesn't require a separate oxygen supply It is a must have for modern SSKs, allowing them to stay underwater for up to four weeks without using noisy snorkels to recharge batteries (often SSK batteries have enough charge to last several days at most). Pakistan's S-20s are likely to have AIP since its Agosta 90B submarines already have the technology; the PLAN's 12 Yuan SSKs all have sophisticated AIP systems.

Why India needs to reformulate its China policy

Brahma Chellaney

The hype over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s China visit next month is likely to obscure the underlying strategic dissonance and tensions between the world’s two most populous countries on issues extending from land and water to geopolitical aims.

Two issues stand out: An increasingly asymmetrical trade relationship and a gradually rising pattern of Chinese border incursions in several regions since 2006, when China for the first time claimed Arunachal Pradesh as ‘South Tibet’.

India-China commerce constitutes one of the world’s most lopsided trade relationships: China’s exports are 3½ times greater in value than its imports, and it buys mainly primary commodities from India but exports value-added goods to it. For example, China’s steel producers find India an easy dumping prey, with Chinese dumping of steel items rising almost fourfold under Modi’s watch in 2014. New Delhi, by tamely allowing China to rake in growing profits through such trade, in effect funds the Chinese strategy to encircle India.

Why the United States Needs to Be Patient with Iran

April 20, 2015

The nuclear framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany) has a real chance of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability. However, some critics argue that it will not change Iran’s domestic politics and its policies in the Middle East. They argue that an “ascendant” Iran will become even more powerful as sanctions are eased and more resources flow into Iranian government coffers.

After all, Iran’s top leadership—including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards—has expressed opposition to political reforms or détente with the West. And while President Hassan Rouhani has stated that a nuclear agreement will enhance Iran’s engagement with the world, he is not in the best position to make fundamental changes. Nevertheless, the real hope lies not in Iran’s aging leadership, but with its youthful and forward-looking people. Millions of Iranians may not have a direct say in the nuclear negotiations now, but they strive to have a say in their country’s future. Their battle with an ossified political system will not be easy. But it can be won.

Al Qaeda Is Beating the Islamic State Get ready for the clash of caliphates

By DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS and BRIDGET MORENG

April 14, 2015

The Islamic State’s lightning offensive through Iraq and Syria last year has dominated the headlines, but the jihadist group that has won the most territory in the Arab world over the past six months is Al Qaeda. On balance, the Islamic State has lost territory during this period—though it still controls more overall than Al Qaeda—most prominently, Tikrit and the southern half of the Salah al-Din province.

What we are likely to see now is a titanic war of ideology and tactics between two vicious, radical groups that together probably command more prestige among Arab peoples than the weak, often delegitimized governments they have outsmarted and outfought. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that, in an era when the threat of terrorist violence is arguably worse than it was on the eve of 9/11, it is Al Qaeda—a decade ago, the scourge of Sunni governments—that may come to be seen as the more acceptable of the two by these same governments.

Yemen and the American Impulse to Take Sides

April 17, 2015

A strong Manichean streak runs through American perceptions of the outside world. That streak involves a habit of seeing all conflict and instability in binomial terms, a presumption that one of the perceived two sides is good and the other bad, and an urge to weigh in on the presumptively good side. The influence that these tendencies have had on U.S. policy has varied over time. The influence was readily apparent, for example, during the George W. Bush administration's days of “you're either with us or with the terrorists.” The Obama administration has tried to move in a less Manichean and more realist direction, especially in conducting diplomacy with Iran and in so doing opening a door to a more fruitful all-azimuths diplomacy in the Middle East generally. But the current administration still operates in a political environment in which the old perceptual habits set limits on what the administration can do, or perhaps push it into doing things it might not otherwise have done.

There have been ample demonstrations throughout the Middle East of how inaccurate and inapplicable the Manichean perspective is. There is Iraq, where the United States and the Iranian bête noire are on the same side in countering the so-called Islamic State or ISIS. There is the even more complicated deadly brawl in Syria, where the people who from the viewpoint of the West are the closest thing to good guys are opposing the same regime that also is opposed by ISIS and the local al-Qaeda affiliate.

Russia and America: Stumbling to War

Graham Allison Dimitri K. Simes

April 20, 2015

AFTER THE Soviet Union collapsed, Richard Nixon observed that the United States had won the Cold War, but had not yet won the peace. Since then, three American presidents—representing both political parties—have not yet accomplished that task. On the contrary, peace seems increasingly out of reach as threats to U.S. security and prosperity multiply both at the systemic level, where dissatisfied major powers are increasingly challenging the international order, and at the state and substate level, where dissatisfied ethnic, tribal, religious and other groups are destabilizing key countries and even entire regions.

Most dangerous are disagreements over the international system and the prerogatives of major powers in their immediate neighborhoods—disputes of the sort that have historically produced the greatest conflicts. And these are at the core of U.S. and Western tensions with Russia and, even more ominously, with China.

All the President’s Drones: Obama’s Targeted-Killing Problem

April 20, 2015

WHEN THE Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its “torture report” in December 2014, it reignited the battle over the George W. Bush administration’s conduct of the “war on terror.” Unfortunately, the interrogation program was not an anomaly in its lack of transparency. A similar problem exists with the U.S. drone program—which, after more than ten years of use and nearly two years after President Barack Obama’s speech promising greater transparency and accountability, remains shrouded in secrecy and uncertainty.

If an internal critique of the U.S. drone program exists, it has been kept from open discussion and debate. Yet the most basic questions about the program have not been answered: What are the goals of the program? Are drones effective in accomplishing those goals? What metric is used to evaluate their effectiveness? Such queries arise at an important moment in American history.

War in Yemen: The African Dimension

Richard Reeve

17 April 2015

Download this briefing (pdf)

The war in Yemen and its exacerbation through international military intervention is a tragedy first and foremost for the Yemeni people as their state fragments and thousands of lives and livelihoods are lost. Yet the shifting alignments that the build-up to Operation Decisive Storm has occasioned in inter-Arab relations may also have far-reaching consequences for Northeast Africa. Saudi Arabia’s growing rapprochement with Qatar, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood may be an opportunity for conflict resolution in Libya but it will cement the power of Sudan’s once isolated regime.

Continuity and Change in Arabian Geopolitics

The internationalisation of the war in Yemen since late March has sucked in a coalition of nine Arab states, the United States and, reportedly backing the Ansar Allah (better known as Houthis) insurgency, Iran. Operation Decisive Storm, the Saudi-led intervention, is the most overt manifestation yet of the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran as the Middle East’s competing regional powers.

Examining Tech Solutions To Natural Disasters

By David Richards

Apr 9, 2015

When Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu, it struck a very vulnerable target. The Pacific nation is considered one of the world’s poorest and is ranked by the United Nations’ WorldRiskIndex as the most disaster-prone country.

Yet for a storm significantly stronger than Hurricane Katrina, Cyclone Pam resulted in a relatively low number of casualties. Early warnings helped save scores of lives across the 80 low-lying islands, which have a population of roughly 260,000.

It was difficult to gauge the extent of Pam’s devastation even after the storm subsided, with communication failures making it difficult for authorities to have a true picture of the devastation. But like in many disaster zones, authorities expected the worst, with the vast majority of civilians still without access to water, food, shelter or power. And with only one main hospital, the nation’s limited infrastructure buckled under the pressure.

5 cybersecurity trends to watch at the RSA Conference

April 20 2015

What will feature at one the world's key cybersecurity events?

This week the cybersecurity industry will descend on the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the RSA Conference, one of the sector's most prestigious events.

For five days visitors will be bombarded with information on cloud computing, smartwatches, and everything in between, the last year having seen cybersecurity rise up the board agenda as the likes of Home Depot, Sony and eBay were penetrated by hackers.

Security vendors are naturally hoping to flog their wares and advice to the conference's numerous attendees. As such many have released security reports discussing the latest trends, which will dominate the event.

Here is what you need to know:

1. Verizon - Hackers are going pro

The "death of the perimeter" was a much discussed trend last year, not least in Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), which tracks denial-of-service attacks, insider threats and cyberespionage, among other things.

Speaking to CBR about the 2015 edition, Jay Jacobs, principal of Verizon Risk, said: "The interesting thing is when we look at these nine patterns [of attack] overall they don't shift this year. There's some variation here and there but there but there's no major shift."

What Jacobs puts this down to is a move towards a more professional kind of crook, with gangs of hackers now operating in teams and frequently reusing tactics and infrastructure to maximise efficiency. For some cybercrime is now a career.

Russian Cyber Spies Have Exploited Two Previously Unknown Security Flaws to Spy on U.S. Targets

April 19, 2015

A widely reported Russian cyber-spying campaign against diplomatic targets in the United States and elsewhere has been using two previously unknown flaws in software to penetrate target machines, a security company investigating the matter said on Saturday.

FireEye Inc (FEYE.O), a prominent U.S. security company, said the espionage effort took advantage of holes in Adobe Systems Inc’s (ADBE.O) Flash software for viewing active content and Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) ubiquitous Windows operating system.

The campaign has been tied by other firms to a serious breach at U.S. State Department computers. The same hackers are also believed to have broken into White House machines containing unclassified but sensitive information such as the president’s travel schedule.

FireEye has been assisting the agencies probing those attacks, but it said it could not comment on whether the spies are the same ones who penetrated the White House because that would be classified as secret.

The growing cyberthreat from Iran: The initial report of Project Pistachio Harvest

https://www.aei.org/publication/growing-cyberthreat-from-iran/

Iran is emerging as a significant cyberthreat to the US and its allies. The size and sophistication of the nation’s hacking capabilities have grown markedly over the last few years, and Iran has already penetrated well-defended networks in the US and Saudi Arabia and seized and destroyed sensitive data. The lifting of economic sanctions as a result of the recently announced framework for a nuclear deal with Iran will dramatically increase the resources Iran can put toward expanding its cyberattack infrastructure.

We must anticipate that the Iranian cyberthreat may well begin to grow much more rapidly. Yet we must also avoid overreacting to this threat, which is not yet unmanageable. The first requirement of developing a sound response is understanding the nature of the problem, which is the aim of this report.

Pistachio Harvest is a collaborative project between Norse Corporation and the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute to describe Iran’s footprint in cyberspace and identify important trends in Iranian cyberattacks. It draws on data from the Norse Intelligence Network, which consists of several million advanced sensors distributed around the globe. A sensor is basically a computer emulation designed to look like an actual website, email login portal, or some other kind of Internet-based system for a bank, university, power plant, electrical switching station, or other public or private computer systems that might interest a hacker. Sensors are designed to appear poorly secured, including known and zero-day vulnerabilities to lure hackers into trying to break into them. The odds of accidentally connecting to a Norse sensor are low.

RETHINKING THE CYBER DOMAIN AND DETERRENCE – ANALYSIS

By Dorothy E. Denning

As the US Department of Defense (DOD) formulates strategy and doctrine for operating in cyberspace, it is vital to understand the domain and how it relates to the traditional domains of land, sea, air, and space. While cyberspace has distinct technologies and methods, it shares many characteristics with the traditional domains, and some of the conventional wisdom about how cyberspace differs from them does not hold up under examination.

These similarities are especially relevant when it comes to strategies for deterrence. Just as any attempt to develop a single deterrence strategy for all undesirable activity across the traditional domains would be fraught with difficulty, so too for cyberspace. Yet this is how many authors have approached the topic of deterrence in cyberspace. Instead, by focusing on particular cyber weapons that are amenable to deterrence or drawing from existing deterrence regimes, the issues become more tractable.

Morale: Chinese Soldiers Get Their Cell Phones On

April 14, 2015: The Chinese military leadership apparently decided that morale was more important than unenforceable security rules and is going to allow Chinese military personnel to carry and use their cell phones while on duty. Many Chinese troops already do this, often with the assent (but not official permission) of their superiors. Chinese commanders have apparently noted the experience of their counterparts in other nations and decided that the best way to deal with this problem is to let the troops have their cell phones.

One reason for this attitude is the impact of widespread cell phone use on the ability of the government to control the media. From the time the communists took control of China in the late 1940s until the Internet became widely available in China at the turn of the century, the government controlled the media. The Internet and cell phones changed all that. It is no secret that China is fighting a losing war with cell phones in general. In 2014, the Chinese military surprised everyone by admitting that in early September two J-15 jet fighter test pilots had died recently during landing and takeoff operations on China’s first aircraft carrier.

Can Lasers Save America's Military Dominance?

April 19, 2015

"After a nearly half-century quest, the U.S. military today is on the cusp of finally fielding operationally relevant directed-energy weapons."

Technology is an indispensable component of war. Since the first human picked up a rock in anger, warfighters have leveraged technology to increase their advantage on the battlefield. In modern times, technology has allowed combatants to fight at vast distances, launching missiles across the globe, and has expanded warfare into the air, undersea and into space.

Modern militaries invest heavily in new technologies to modernize their forces, but determining which technologies hold the greatest promise is more art than science. It requires militaries to think on multiple levels simultaneously.

China’s Great Cannon

April 10, 2015

Section 1: Introduction, Key Findings

On March 16, GreatFire.org observed that servers they had rented to make blocked websites accessible in China were being targeted by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. On March 26, two GitHub pages run by GreatFire.org also came under the same type of attack. Both attacks appear targeted at services designed to circumvent Chinese censorship. A report released by GreatFire.org fingered malicious Javascript returned by Baidu servers as the source of the attack.1 Baidu denied that their servers were compromised.2

Several previous technical reports3 have suggested that the Great Firewall of China orchestrated these attacks by injecting malicious Javascript into Baidu connections. This post describes our analysis of the attack, which we were able to observe until April 8, 2015.

We show that, while the attack infrastructure is co-located with the Great Firewall, the attack was carried out by a separate offensive system, with different capabilities and design, that we term the “Great Cannon.” The Great Cannon is not simply an extension of the Great Firewall, but a distinct attack tool that hijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses, and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle.

New Technology Detects Cyberattacks By Their Power Consumption

Kelly Jackson Higgins

1/20/2015

Startup's "power fingerprinting" approach catches stealthy malware within milliseconds in DOE test.

A security startup launching early next week uses trends in power consumption activity, rather than standard malware detection, to spot cyberattacks against power and manufacturing plants. The technology successfully spotted Stuxnet in an experimental network before the malware went into action.

PFP Cybersecurity, which officially launches on Monday and was originally funded by DARPA, the Defense Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, basically establishes the baseline power consumption of ICS/SCADA equipment such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), supervisory relays, or other devices and issues an alert when power consumption or RF radiation changes outside of their baseline usage occur. Such changes could be due to malware, as well as to hardware or system failures, for instance.

The US Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) recently tested the PFP technology's ability to detect Stuxnet-like attacks. Joe Cordaro, advisory engineer with SRNL, says the PFP system right away found small changes to the code on the PLC while it was dormant. "The dormant state is a lot tougher to find because there are no outward signs, and little or no impact on the processor," Cordaro says. "We did some subsequent [malware] tests on other PLCs with the same results."

AS MOORE’S LAW TURNS 50 – THE REVOLUTION IN COMPUTING IT FORETOLD IS ON THE CUSP OF EVEN MORE-RADICAL PROGRESS

April 19, 2015

“Gordon E. Moore, set out to graph the rapid rate of improvement in semiconductor-chip performance — and ended up discovering the heartbeat of the modern world.”

Michael Malone, a Wall Street Journal writer focusing on technology, has an Op-Ed in this weekend’s (April 18/19, 2015) edition discussing the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law — and what the future may hold going beyond 2020. In order to figure out where you are going — it is almost always helpful to know — where you began. Mr. Malone writes that “fifty years ago [today] on April 19, 1965, chemist and reluctant entrepreneur, Gordon E. Moore, set out to graph the rapid rate of improvement in semiconductor-chip performance — and ended up discovering the heartbeat of the modern world.”

“That discovery is what became known as “Moore’s Law,” which is the observation that performance (speed, price, size), of integrated circuits, aka microchips, regularly doubled every 18 months. The graph began as an illustration to an article in Electronics Magazine, and it didn’t acquire the name “Moore’s Law,” for another decade,’ Mr. Malone writes. “And, for a decade after that, it remained a topic of interest — mostly inside the semi-conductor industry.”

DIGITAL ‘ARMS TRADE’ FLOURISHING IN THE ‘BACK ALLEYS OF CYBERSPACE; NEW DARK WEB MARKET IS SELLING ZERO-DAY EXPLOITS TO HACKERS — A PLACE WHERE A ‘DR. NO IN CYBER SPACE MAY EMERGE

April 18, 2015

Andy Greenberg, writing on the April 17, 2015 edition of Wired.com, warns that hackers are getting new weapons for their cyber space arsenal, as a Dark Web Market is selling zero-day exploits to hackers. “Hackers for years have bought and sold their secrets in a de facto gray market for zero-day exploits — intrusion techniques for which no software patch [currently] exists. Now,” Mr. Greenberg warns, “a new [digital] marketplace hopes to formalize that digital arms trade…in setting where it could flourish: under cover of the Dark Web’s anonymity protections.”

“Over the last month,” Mr. Greenberg notes, “a dark net marketplace calling itself TheRealDealMarket has emerged; focusing on brokering hackers’zero-day attack methods. Like the Silk Road and its online black-market successors, TheRealDeal uses the anonymity software Tor and the digital currency Bitcoin — to hide the identities of its buyers, sellers, and administrators. But. while some other sites have sold only basic, low-level hacking tools, and stolen financial details, TheRealDeal’s creators say they’re looking to broker premium hacker data…like highly sought after zero-days, source code, and hacking services. In some cases, these are offered on an exclusive, one-time basis.”

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