MICHAEL EVANS
File footage of a North Korean ballistic missile launch is relayed on monitors at Seoul Railway Station on April 16, 2017.
Advances in cyberwarfare have provided the Pentagon with unique capabilities to target weapon systems and covert nuclear programs operated by hostile states such as North Korea.
Pyongyang has suffered dozens of missile failures. While some were due to engineering defects, others may have fallen victim to a covert Pentagon operation to jam or disrupt launches with sophisticated computer viruses.
Indeed, former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has suggested the malfunctioning North Korean missile launch on Sunday could have been caused by a US cyber attack.
The Pentagon has two departments that have developed powerful tools to attack a hostile state’s computers.
Cyber Command and the National Security Agency work together on programs to provide the president with an offensive option that does not require boots on the ground, Tomahawks or the US air force.
The insertion of viruses, or worms, into North Korea’s ballistic missile program has the same effect as electronic jamming. The missile “brain” becomes confused and the rocket veers off course and plunges into the sea or explodes in mid-air soon after launch. It is likely that viruses would also have been inserted during the construction of the missiles, so that they have a built-in vulnerability.
The Pentagon has not yet developed a fail-proof cybersystem because North Korea has succeeded in launching several medium-range missiles in recent months.
America’s covert use of cyberwarfare was first made public eight years ago, with the revelations about the infamous Stuxnet virus, which was inserted into Iran’s computers running the gas centrifuge systems for enriching uranium to weapon-grade levels.
The joint US-Israel Stuxnet program began in George W Bush’s administration. The malicious virus was fed into the Siemens-built computer systems inside Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Stuxnet was designed to have two functions: accelerate the gas centrifuge spinning system until it crashed; and send a separate code which falsely indicated that the machinery was running at normal levels.
The virus was inserted inside computers known as controllers, which ran all the operations being carried out at Natanz. It then targeted and crippled the computers that were operating the gas centrifuges.
It was an inspired example of covert sabotage that set back Iran’s clandestine nuclear program until Tehran realised what was going on and took steps to block out the Stuxnet virus.
Cyberwarfare against North Korea’s ballistic missile program has followed a similar pattern.
Targeting the nuclear weapon program proved too big a challenge because all the work is carried out deep underground.
However, to judge by the history of failed missile flight tests in recent years, it is likely that many of them may have been caused by sophisticated malware inserted remotely into the weapon systems while under development and, subsequently, in the days leading up to a flight test.
Responding to speculation that the North Korean ballistic missile launch failed as a result of a US cyberwarfare attack, a Pentagon spokeswoman said: “I am not aware of anything like this but we don’t discuss intelligence matters.”
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