Cyberwar is not coming to the US – it’s already here

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/04/cyberwar-not-coming-to-the-us-is-already-here-dnc-hacks

As recent high-profile hacks show, cyberwar is a very real danger and is likely to get much worse, says a US security expert

Dan Tynan in Las Vegas

Thursday 4 August 2016 

As the recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign have shown, cyberwarfare has reached US shores – and it’s likely to get much worse, says Kenneth Geers, a senior research scientist with cyber security firm Comodo.

Speaking to an audience at this year’s BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas, Geers declaed cyberwar a real and present danger.

“There is no question cyberwar exists,” he says. “Whether it rises to the level of weapons of mass disruption is another question. We don’t have a decisive answer yet.”

For the past two years, Geers has been working with Nato, observing cyber warfare in Ukraine. At its Warsaw Summit in July, the international treaty organisation recognised cyberspace as “a domain of operations in which Nato must defend itself as effectively as it does in the air, on land, and at sea”.

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Using malware, denial of service attacks, website defacements and disinformation campaigns, Russia is waging a war just as real, if less deadly, than the one it waged with tanks in Crimea, he says.

The first acknowledged incidence of cyberwar occurred in Estonia in 2007, when attackers launched a huge distributed denial of service attack against the Baltic nation’s computer infrastructure. Though the source of the attacks has never been confirmed, forces friendly to the Kremlin are widely assumed to be behind it.

For the past four years, adversaries sympathetic to Vladimir Putin’s claims on Crimea have been waging a multifaceted cyberwar on the Ukraine. They have cut network cables, commandeered communications satellites, even changed the Wikipedia entries of Ukrainian officials, says Geers.

FacebookTwitterPinterest For the past four years, adversaries sympathetic to Vladimir Putin’s claims on Crimea have been waging a multifaceted cyberwar on the Ukraine. Photograph: Dan Tynan/Kenneth Geers at BlackHat

In May 2014, pro-Russian forces hacked the Ukranian presidential election – one of the most technically advanced attacks researchers had seen – and declared hard-right candidate Dmytro Yarosh the winner on Russian TV, even though he captured less than 2% of the popular vote.

Though the attackers were unable to alter the final result, their actions may have influenced some voters, says Geers.

In an even more sophisticated attack, adversaries struck three power plants in Ukraine in December 2015, plunging more than 200,000 citizens into darkness.

The 2007 attacks on Estonia were about availability – denying its citizens access to essential services, says Geers, who is also the editor of Cyberwar in Perspective, a collection of essays by experts about Russian aggression the Ukraine.

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The Ukraine attacks in 2014 were focused on undermining the integrity of both the country and its elections. In the US in 2016, he says, the attacks are about confidentiality; by releasing the DNC emails to Wikileaks, attackers were attempting to “dox” Democratic party leaders in order to embarrass them.

One day, he adds, cyber-attacks could end up costing as many lives as a bullet or a bomb. “Today’s tanks, planes and ships are really just rolling, flying and floating computers,” he says. “If you’re a tank commander and the enemy launches a zero-day attack against an application you’re depending on, you may not win on the battlefield that day.”

A well-placed cyber-attack against our forces could turn out the lights for a while, confuse our military leadership, or attack the decision-making process, he adds.

Even in times of relative peace, adversaries will need to probe networks and prepare their attacks for the day when the shooting starts, says Geers. Or they might possibly use cyber-attacks to help install an administration more friendly to their interests.

Could the US elections be hacked by the Russians, just as Ukraine’s was? Absolutely, says Geers.

“But they could probably change the election more easily by doing influence operations in the runup to the election,” he adds. “Maybe doxxing is the best way to do that. You’re embarrassing the hell out of somebody. Lives are ruined.”