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Chinese hackers are accused of hacking U.S firms linked to the South China Sea. They seemed to be going after information that would be useful to the Chinese government. The hackers wanted information that dealt with maritime information and such.
David Tweed, "Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Firms Linked to South China Sea Dispute", Bloomberg, 16 March 2017, [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/china-hackers-hit-u-s-firms-linked-to-sea-dispute-fireeye-says]

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Chinese hackers have launched a wave of attacks on mainly U.S. engineering and defense companies linked to the disputed South China Sea, the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. said.

The suspected Chinese cyber-espionage group dubbed TEMP.Periscope appeared to be seeking information that would benefit the Chinese government, said FireEye, a U.S.-based provider network protection systems. The hackers have focused on U.S. maritime entities that were either linked to -- or have clients operating in -- the South China Sea, said Fred Plan, senior analyst at FireEye in Los Angeles.

"They are going after data that can be used strategically, so it is line with state espionage," said Plan, whose firm has tracked the group since 2013. "A private entity probably wouldn't benefit from the sort of data that is being stolen."

The TEMP.Periscope hackers were seeking information in areas like radar range or how precisely a system in development could detect activity at sea, Plan said. The surge in attacks picked up pace last month and was ongoing.

Increased Attacks

While FireEye traced the group's attacks to China, the firm hasn't confirmed any link to Chinese government entities or facilities. FireEye declined to name any targets. Although most were based in the U.S., organizations in Europe and at least one in Hong Kong were also affected, the firm said.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing Friday in Beijing that China opposed all kinds of cyber attacks. "We will continue to implement the important consensus on cybersecurity reached in 2015," he said.

Plan said suspected Chinese cyber-attacks on U.S. targets has picked up in recent months, after both sides agreed not to attack civilian entities. The 2015 deal to tamp down economic espionage was hammered out between then-U.S. President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. indicted five Chinese military officials in 2014 on charges that they stole trade secrets from companies including Westinghouse Electric Co. and United States Steel Corp. after hacks were detected by Mandiant, a unit of FireEye. China denies the charges and argues the country is a victim rather than an instigator of cybersecurity attacks.

Strategic Data

Data sought in the latest incidents could be used, for instance, to determine how closely a vessel could sail to a geographical feature, Plan said. "It is definitely the case that they can use this information for strategic decision-making," he said.

The U.S. Navy sometimes conducts so-called freedom of navigation operations to challenge Chinese claims to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea -- one of the world's busiest trading routes. China has reclaimed some 3,200 acres (1,290 hectares) of land in the waters and built ports, runways and other military infrastructure on seven artificial features it has created.

China has been involved in other attacks related to the South China Sea. In 2015, during a week-long hearing on a territorial dispute in the water, Chinese malware attacked the website of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, taking it offline.

The latest attacks were carried out using a variety of techniques including "spear-phishing," in which emails with links and attachments containing malware are used to open back doors into computer networks. In some examples, the emails were made to look as if they originated from a "big international maritime company," Plan said.

FireEye said in a separate report that government offices, media and academic institutions have been attacked, along with engineering and defense companies. Plan declined to comment when asked whether the U.S. Navy was among the targets.

"Given the type of organizations that have been targeted -- the organizations and government offices -- it is most likely the case that TEMP.Periscope is operating on behalf of a government office," Plan said.
- With assistance by Dandan Li, Peter Martin, and Andy Sharp

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Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Firms Linked to South China Sea Dispute

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Chinese hackers have launched a wave of attacks on mainly U.S. engineering and defense companies linked to the disputed South China Sea, the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. said. The suspected Chinese cyber-espionage group dubbed TEMP.Periscope appeared to be seeking information that would benefit the Chinese government, said FireEye, a U.S.-based provider network protection systems. The hackers have focused on U.S.

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The U.S. government accused Russia of the biggest cyber attack in history. The attack crippled major companies and governments. The attack hurt Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Andy Greenberg, "The White House Blames Russia for NotPetya, "The 'Most costly cyberattack in history,'" Wired, 15 February 2018, [https://www.wired.com/story/white-house-russia-notpetya-attribution/]

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It's been nearly eight months since the malware known as NotPetya tore through the internet, rippling out from Ukraine to paralyze companies and government agencies around the world. On Thursday, the White House finally acknowledged that attack. And in a reversal of its often seemingly willful blindness to the threat of Russian hacking, it has called out the Kremlin as NotPetya's creator.

"In June 2017, the Russian military launched the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history," reads the short statement published by the White House Thursday afternoon. NotPetya, the statement continues, "quickly spread worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It was part of the Kremlin's ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine, and demonstrates ever more clearly Russia's involvement in the ongoing conflict. This was also a reckless and indiscriminate cyberattack that will be met with international consequences."

That brief statement, which follows similar from the UK and Danish governments earlier today, represents a long awaited-or perhaps long overdue-response to a Russian cyberwar that has barraged every level of Ukrainian society, and with NotPetya, spilled out into the rest of the world.

'This is the first step in actually drawing a red line.'

Thomas Rid, Johns Hopkins University

After years of hacker attacks on Ukrainian targets that have destroyed hundreds of computers, terabytes of government data, and twice caused the first-ever hacker-induced blackouts, the NotPetya worm hit Ukraine in late June of last year and quickly spread beyond of the country's borders. Within days, in part thanks to a leaked NSA hacking technique, it had paralyzed multinational giants including Merck, Maersk, Fedex, and many others, permanently encrypting the hard drives of tens of thousands of those victims' computers. The attack cost those companies hundreds of millions of dollars each in cleanup costs and lost business, according to their disclosures to shareholders.

Though the White House didn't provide any evidence of the link between NotPetya and Russia, the notion that Russian military hackers were behind it doesn't come as a surprise to most in the cybersecurity community. Despite NotPetya's initial disguise as a form of profit-focused ransomware, security companies like the Ukrainian firm ISSP and the Slovakian company ESET linked the malware early on to a group known as Sandworm or Telebots, believed to be the Russian team responsible for spearheading Russia's cyberwar attacks on Ukraine. In January, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had found Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, responsible for NotPetya.

But a more formal recognition of Russia's hand in that massively damaging attack nonetheless represents a landmark, says John Hultquist, who led the team at security firm FireEye that first identified Sandworm. "Without ever being formally attributed by governments naming them publicly, they enjoyed a certain amount of protection from any response," Hultquist says. "It appears the administration has drawn a line in the sand with an actor that's been extremely aggressive and enjoyed quite a bit of anonymity until now."

'This won't be the last we see of them.

John Hultquist, FireEye

Beyond a mere recognition of NotPetya's source and scope, the White House's statement represents a new turn in its relations with the Russian government. President Trump has, after all, stubbornly refused again and again to name the Russian government as the source of the hacker meddling in the 2016 US election, even after US intelligence agencies named the Kremlin as the culprit behind the breaches of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign. Just earlier this week, in fact, a panel of intelligence agency directors told Congress that the White House has essentially failed to take any steps to prevent future election interference by Russian hackers.

The attribution of NotPetya to Russia represents a far more proactive response to the threat of Russian hacking, says Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. "This is far easier for them to talk about. It's not a partisan issue. It's a safer attribution call for them to make," says Rid. "This is the first step in actually drawing a red line so that something like NotPetya isn't done again."

Just how the US government will inflict the "international consequences" that the White House's statement promises remains unclear. The Obama administration responded to various state-sponsored hacker attacks with, in some cases, indictments of hackers involved and sanctions. But the Trump administration has failed to even carry forward legally imposed sanctions on Russia imposed by Congress to punish the country for its role in meddling with the 2016 US election.

But FireEye's Hultquist says he's hopeful that the White House's statement is nonetheless a step towards real deterrence of the broader cybersecurity threat Russia represents. "There are diplomatic, economic and other military tools that can be brought to bear, but the first step is attributing the activity," he says.

Hultquist believes Sandworm's attacks aren't finished yet. But a recognition of the group at the highest level of the US government is perhaps a start towards reining them in. "This won't be the last time we see of them," he says. "But when the blame falls again on Russia, it's going to be a lot easier for the public to digest and for action to be taken."

Russian To Judgment

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The White House Blames Russia for NotPetya, the 'Most Costly Cyberattack In History'

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It's been nearly eight months since the malware known as NotPetya tore through the internet, rippling out from Ukraine to paralyze companies and government agencies around the world. On Thursday, the White House finally acknowledged that attack. And in a reversal of its often seemingly willful blindness to the threat of Russian hacking, it has called out the Kremlin as NotPetya's creator.

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Cyber activities could see a dramatic increase in funding. The line between espionage and attack is thin which makes cyber warfare dangerous. US government wants to make it clear that somethings are off limits to hack.
Greg Allen, "

America's plan for stopping cyberattacks is dangerously weak", Vox, 22 February 2018, [https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/3/27/15052422/cyber-war-diplomacy-russia-us-wikileaks]

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Artboard 1

Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture.

In 1899, diplomatic representatives from the world's leading nations, many in elegant suits adorned with gold pocket watches and sporting exquisite waxed mustaches, gathered in the Hague, Netherlands, for a grand conference. The diplomats set out to achieve nothing less than taming the destructive potential of a new military technology. The recent invention of motor-driven military aircraft had led all nations to fear man-made storms of balloons raining bombs on their cities.

After weeks of tense negotiations, the diplomats emerged to announce a stunning victory for world peace: a five-year ban on the offensive military use of any aircraft - which they hoped would soon be made permanent. Fifteen years later, in 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, the diplomats' soaring ambitions crashed into two stubborn facts: Airplanes are critical for winning a modern war, and losing a modern war is terrifying. The ban evaporated, and bombs fell on every European belligerent's capital save Rome.

The United States again confronts the grim challenge of managing technological advances and their implications for warfare (as it has several times since, from chemical weapons to missiles to drones). Today, cyberweapons are nearly as synonymous with military power as fighter jets. What's more, as demonstrated by the recent New York Times report on the cyberattacks used to disrupt North Korean ballistic missile tests and the latest WikiLeaks claims about a CIA hacking unit, cyber capabilities are too tempting for governments to refrain from using -even in peacetime.

Most of this activity is merely espionage, but cyber operations are unique in that espionage operations can easily transform into offensive attacks that deliver real-world destruction. Persuading the world's militaries and intelligence agencies to stop building ever more powerful cyber arsenals appears as impossible as convincing them to renounce the use of attack aircraft.

Nevertheless, the United States must find a way to reduce the threat from hostile state actions in cyberspace, or else risk cyber hostilities escalating into full-blown war. Doing so will require changes to US cyber diplomacy, the bolstering of cyber defenses, and the establishment of credible cyber deterrence.

Nations are already engaged in bold cyberattacks. How long before it escalates into real-world warfare?

It's true that small but talented teams of cybercriminals can execute impressive operations, and that cybercrime threatens individuals and companies as well as nations. Still, there is an immense difference between an everyday cybercriminal and the power wielded by a government like the United States.

America spends $6.7 billion annually on unclassified military cyber activities plus unknown billions more to develop and deploy the cyber capabilities of classified agencies. If President Donald Trump's planned $54 billion increase in defense spending becomes law, cyber funding will almost certainly see further dramatic increases.

Since digital weapons are often cheaper than physical ones, dollars spent on cyber capabilities buy serious bang for buck. Militaries and intelligence agencies from around the world have used cyberattacks to shut down an air defense radar network prior to bombing, knock out a power grid, steal billions of dollars' worth of jet fighter R&D, steal tens of millions of actual dollars, destroy nearly every computer in an oil company's network, disrupt elections, and cause nuclear weapons centrifuges to violently self-destruct.

And these are merely the cyberattacks that have filtered out into the media. Some, such as Stuxnet, are nearly a decade old. Cyber capabilities, which remain closely guarded secrets of major militaries, have only grown stronger since.

"Many countries fear the full brunt of US-UK cyber hostility could be regime-threatening," Sir John Sawers, who led the British Intelligence Agency MI6 from 2009 to 2014, told me in an interview. Sawers now serves as chair of Macro Advisory Partners.

Cyberwarfare appears to be distinctive in that, so far, deterrence appears to be less effective than in other arenas of armed conflict. America's formidable aircraft and nuclear weapons deter attacks by air and by missile, but its fearsome cyberweapons have not been enough to prevent cyberattacks.

Certainly, major states have cyber capabilities they fear to use because of potential consequences. But America's extraordinary spending and advanced weaponry weren't enough to stop Russia from interfering with the US election or China from stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of US military technology. Deterrence in cyberspace is only partial. It's like street fighting, in which antagonists generally refrain from deliberately gouging eyes or punching throats but will still beat the hell out of each other.

Any hostile military aircraft that strays into US airspace is likely to be detected and destroyed quickly, and the offending country would be subject to equally prompt retaliation. In contrast, a single slip in maintaining proper computer security procedures, or a single vulnerability in a system's code, can open the digital gates to hackers, who thereafter operate undetected in the targeted network for days or even years.

In 2014, the Pentagon conceded that nearly all of its weapons systems are vulnerable to hacking. A year later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ranked malicious cyber activities as the greatest threat to national security.

It's also going to be hard to maintain the advantage in cyber capabilities - and hard to keep US-built cyberweapons out of adversaries' hands. When China stole the blueprints and R&D data for America's F-35 fighter aircraft, for example, it likely shaved years off the development timeline for a Chinese F-35 competitor - but China didn't actually acquire a modern jet fighter or the immediate capability to make one. That's because aerospace manufacturing is incredibly difficult, and China can't yet match US competence in this area.

But when a country steals the code for a cyberweapons, it has stolen not only the blueprints, but also the tool itself - and it can reproduce that tool at near zero-marginal cost.

Just last year, a group of hackers believed to have ties to Russia tried to auction off stolen NSA cyberweapons on the black market. WikiLeaks, which has a source that apparently compromised the CIA's cyber unit, plans to release the cyber tools it acquired, purportedly so that tech companies can update their software to repair the vulnerability.

Fortunately, the vulnerabilities that these tools exploit appear to be old, and therefore many have already been patched by affected companies such as Apple. Still, no one knows what WikiLeaks' source did with the stolen tools before giving them to Julian Assange.

In the cybersphere, the line between espionage and attack is thin - which heightens the danger of escalation

The stolen CIA tools appear have been created to exploit vulnerabilities in targeted systems to secure access and establish surveillance, not to wreak physical destruction. But just as a sniper's telescope can be used to either spy on a target or aim a shot, cyber tools for securing surveillance access are often identical to the tools used to deliver a destructive payload.

In the cyber domain, the line between espionage, which countries typically do not find sufficient to justify retaliation, and attack, which they do think warrants an armed response, is often blurred.

That leads to heightened tensions and adds to the risk of a miscalculation. When a country determines that someone has secured cyber access to its nuclear arsenal, for instance, it is unclear if the intention is spying, sabotage, or a preparation for all-out war. It's hard to be calm when you are constantly discovering sniper rifles aimed at your chest.

So far, no hostile uses of cyber have directly led to war between nation-states, but it would be foolhardy to count on that trend continuing forever. Not all deadly air-to-air dogfights or missile attacks result in wars either, but with air combat, most states try to avoid rolling the dice unless they are prepared for war.

In contrast, because cyber operations for espionage and attack are cheap and might go undetected, states find them irresistible - they roll the dice again and again. States think they know what they can get away with, but, in truth, each side can at best make an educated guess at where their adversary will draw the line, and respond with force. Meanwhile, the potential fruits to be gained using the latest and greatest cyber tools grow ever more tempting.

The goal in cyberwar, or cyber diplomacy, is to get states to roll the dice less often, and to clarify the chances they take on each roll. For the United States, achieving this will sometimes require strategic restraint, sometimes demonstration of resolve - and sometimes retaliation. Addressing the threat of cyberwar and hostile escalation will require an improved US cyber policy across three areas: diplomacy, deterrence, and defense.

The US State Department has been trying for nearly a decade to establish behavioral norms in cyberspace, while the US defense and intelligence communities have been working to establish credible cyber deterrence. Toward the end of the Obama Administration, there were some signs of progress, such as Obama's threat of economic sanctions on China. These helped reduce (but did not eliminate) China's state-sponsored cybertheft of US intellectual property. The Department of Justice (DOJ), for its part, recently released indictments full of damning evidence of the Russian government's collaboration with cyber criminals.

Unfortunately, the leaked draft of President Trump's executive order on cyberthreats and efforts to combat them did not mention the DOJ or the State Department's work on cyber norms. Both omissions are significant errors, as is the administration's budget request, which plans to cut State Department funding by 31 percent just as the agency's diplomatic efforts on cyber are gaining momentum. A military-first approach to cyber fails to recognize the important role that law-enforcement and diplomatic organizations have in achieving US goals in this domain.

What follows are moves the Trump administration could make to demonstrate that it is taking this fast-developing threat seriously:

The US needs to make clear what kinds of cyber intrusions will not be tolerated

First, the United States needs to clarify to other countries through diplomatic channels which actions in cyberspace the US is likely to interpret as escalatory - and seek those countries' views on the same questions. Given cultural gaps and divergent national interests, this is nowhere near as straightforward as one might assume.

For instance, strategists writing for Chinese military journals have argued that in the event of a hostile maritime incident with the United States, shooting down US early-warning satellites could be a de-escalatory measure - a response signaling a desire for no further fighting. The truth, of course, is that such an action might spark a full-blown war.

Identifying and resolving whatever similarly disastrous misconceptions might exist on cyber issues will require continued diplomatic and military-to-military engagement. All countries are still learning to communicate their preferences, intentions, and levels of resolve in the new language of cyber espionage and cyberwar.

The 2015 Department of Defense Cyber Strategy states that the United States may respond to - and escalate to armed conflict in the case of - any cyberattack on US "critical infrastructure," singling out 16 areas that would be protected (the "Chemical Sector," "Critical Manufacturing Sector," "Transportation Sector," and so on). But the list of no-go zones, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, isn't comprehensive enough.

After Russia's interference with the 2016 election, for instance President Barack Obama felt the need to reclassify American elections as critical infrastructure to fall under the policy's protective umbrella. Many other gaps remain. For example, government weather forecasting and GPS satellites, crucial for protecting and enabling America's critical infrastructure, currently fall outside the definition. Poorly crafted statements on what targets will prompt countermeasures raise the risk of warfare.

Second, the United States must back up its words about what count as "unacceptable" threats with action. After China made off with millions of government personnel records by hacking the Office of Personnel Management, the United States declined to retaliate since the attack was "fair game" under international norms of espionage.

Perhaps that strategic restraint was the right response, but the United States has not clearly defined what falls outside bounds of fair game, a problem made worse by the insufficient response to Russia's cyber meddling. Both enemies and allies alike have reason to doubt the United States' resolve.

To reestablish credible deterrence, the United States must be willing to act but find a way to do so that limits the risk of escalation. As President Obama said in December, "Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you." In fact, that is not a warning that we've delivered convincingly - at least not in public.

We now have the ability to figure out where attacks came from

Strong deterrence also requires dispelling the misconception that the source of cyberattacks cannot be reliably identified. In 2010, then Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn wrote, "Whereas a missile comes with a return address, a computer virus generally does not." Lynn's argument becomes less true by the day.

As the latest DOJ indictment of Russian state-sponsored hackers should make clear, attribution is no longer a routine problem for the US government, thanks to improvements in cyber forensics, cyber espionage, and noncyber sources of intelligence. But to achieve the desired improvements in deterrence, senior US officials must effectively communicate the nation's new capabilities in cyber attribution.

Improved communication is critical, but it's not enough. The United States must also deliver a proportional response that will make Russia and others think twice before using cyber capabilities to attack the United States in the future. The Obama administration focused on economic sanctions and criminal indictments, a reasonable first step.

However, Russia's ongoing meddling in European elections suggests that Obama's message was not received. The United States could redouble its financial and criminal sanctions but it should at least consider a proportional response in the cyber domain. The US might:

Take an eye for an eye, with document leaks: Proportional responses in warfare follow the logic that anything your adversary illegitimately does to you, you are legitimately justified in doing to it. Since Russia hacked into the email of US politicians and strategically leaked the documents, the United States could respond in kind.

Rather than imposing sanctions on members of Putin's inner circle, the United States could leak embarrassing emails from within it. The leaks won't make it onto Russia's government-controlled nightly news, but Russia's oligarchs have business partners and rivals both at home and abroad that could make good use of revelations of corruption, fraud, and backstabbing.

Weaponize Russia's social media: Russia used strategically leaked stolen information and Twitter bot networks to take advantage of the United States' freedom of the press. The United States could likewise develop a network of Russian social media accounts and use them to spread embarrassing documents and information.

If the United States sought to be especially aggressive, they could even take control of major Russian news and media websites in order to disseminate the information.

Punish Russian cyber units: In noncyber warfare, retaliatory attacks are traditionally considered less escalatory when targeting the specific military unit that attacked you. The United States should therefore consider imposing costs upon the Russian cyber units involved in hacking US elections. The bank accounts of the units' leaders might suddenly empty - or, again, embarrassing personal information about them might begin to circulate.

Though these retaliatory attacks are designed to be proportional and nonescalatory, there is no guarantee that the Russians would perceive them that way, so they must be backed up by effective communication and public diplomacy.

The United States can risk escalation by responding appropriately or it can risk future attacks by failing to demonstrate resolve. This is an admittedly difficult needle to thread, but the Trump administration's lack of a response to Russia's election meddling is setting the message that this behavior will be tolerated. Indeed, prior to Michael Flynn's dismissal, he suggested that the United States would lift Russian sanctions. The consequence of this deterrence failure will be seen in Russian cyber aggression throughout Europe and the world.

Finally, while cyber offense is probably a sexier activity for US hackers, defense is more important. While it's true that the United States is unlikely to ever achieve the near-absolute security it enjoys over its physical airspace, there is dramatic room for improvement in protecting its virtual territory. Most cyberattacks on the United States are enabled by human error and failures of management, so proper training will be part of the solution.

But so will technology, including cyber defenses enhanced by artificial intelligence and machine learning applications - methods already under study at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. With proper focus and investment, a world is not far off where many software vulnerabilities are identified and patched by AI before a system is ever deployed.

In 2015, diplomats from around the world gathered again in The Hague for a grand conference, this time on cyberspace. No grand bargain was struck. The conference's goals were more modest than those of the 1899 meeting - participants sought to establish norms of state behavior in cyberspace and promoting practical cooperation. But we must hope that the progress from this and other diplomatic negotiations on cyber is more enduring than that of The Hague conference on aircraft.

If global cyber conflict continues to escalate at its current pace, the world risks the cyber equivalent of the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - a seemingly trivial spark that ignited the flames of war.
Greg Allen is a George Leadership f ellow at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. He previously worked at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone. Find him on Twitter .
The Big Idea is Vox's home for smart, often scholarly discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture - typically written by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

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America's plan for stopping cyberattacks is dangerously weak

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Artboard 1 Outside contributors' opinions and analysis of the most important issues in politics, science, and culture. In 1899, diplomatic representatives from the world's leading nations, many in elegant suits adorned with gold pocket watches and sporting exquisite waxed mustaches, gathered in the Hague, Netherlands, for a grand conference.

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We will continue to lose this war if we don't match Russia's and China's techniques

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We will continue to lose this war if we don't match Russia's and China's techniques

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Russia and China have the upperhand because they hire criminal hackers unlike the U.S. who makes hackers the enemy. They are much smarter than us and could do serious damage because the U.S. doesn't have the same type of people fighting back. The government relies to heavy on being successful in the past with wars against countries and being a world power that it has limited itself with this mindset.
Business Insider, "

JOHN MCAFEE: This is why the US is losing the ‘cyber war’ to China and Russia" Youtube Video, 1:37, 10 June 2016 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfeYmdOSpo]

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JOHN MCAFEE: This is why the US is losing the ‘cyber war’ to China and Russia

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A regular person in their basement can be in this battle. It is hard to understand this threat correctly because it is constantly changing. We should keep a defensive stance but it has to keep changing so we can continuously be protected. What needs to happen in the U.S. government is that we need to always be connected with learning and information. The agencies do not like to share information so it makes our defense weak.
Big Think, "

Cyberwarfare isn’t Game of Thrones. A Wall Won't Work. With General Stanley McChrystal" YouTube video, 4:15, 14 June 2015 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCoQvL61FT0]

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Cyberwarfare isn’t Game of Thrones. A Wall Won't Work. With General Stanley McChrystal

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Russia has showed the U.S its cyber capabilities. Trump's administration accused the country that Russia tried to interfere with the U.S. power grid and water system. Russia has been continuously aggressive showing their dominance. The worry is how far they will go in showing that they can control our infrastructure.
PBS Newshour, "Flexing cyberwarfare muscle, Russia shows it can cause major disruptions" YouTube video, 5:47. 16 March 2018 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjFrhpItcL8]

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Flexing cyberwarfare muscle, Russia shows it can cause major disruptions

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Cyber warfare happens with regular people help

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Cyber warfare happens with regular people help

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Individuals who are recruited and have a social media presence can contribute to the cyber attacks just by a picture. Governments do not understand that this new war can't be won by playing defense but by offense. These hackers are anonymous and the government can't fight them the same as being on the front lines.

Ted Talk, "Governments don't understand cyber warfare. We need hackers | Rodrigo Bijou" YouTube video, 9:28. 21 January 2016 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nSHsb5xKPo]

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Governments don't understand cyber warfare. We need hackers | Rodrigo Bijou

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We are in a cyber war with other countries already 

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We are in a cyber war with other countries already 

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We have been in a tit for tat cyber war already. There is a pain game going on between the countries to see who will go the distance. With this form of war there isn't a clear line on what will cause an act of war.
Chris Synder, "

'We already are in a cyber war' with Russia — a former Marine cyber warrior explains" Business Insider, 09 April 2018 [http://www.businessinsider.com/cyber-warfare-expert-outlines-what-us-russia-cyber-war-looks-like-2017-3]

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While accusations of Russian hacking have dominated the news ever since the election, we have been involved in a strategic game of cyber warfare with the country for quite a while, according to David Kennedy, a former cyber security expert with the US Marine Corps. Here's a quick explanation of what's really going on and what Russia ultimately wants to gain from all of this.
Follow Tech Insider: On Facebook

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'We already are in a cyber war' with Russia - a former Marine cyber warrior explains

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While accusations of Russian hacking have dominated the news ever since the election, we have been involved in a strategic game of cyber warfare with the country for quite a while, according to David Kennedy, a former cyber security expert with the US Marine Corps.

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America and Russia are vastly different in how much they are spending on their military. Russia knows that they can't compete with the U.S. military wise but they are capable of hurting us to the extreme cyber wise. Our government is fighting this war in the mindset of the 20th century.
Daniel Terdiman "Senator: On Cyberwarfare, Russia has the U.S. "Behind the Eight Ball", Fast Company, 09 April 2018 [https://www.fastcompany.com/40542710/senator-on-cyberwarfare-russia-has-the-u-s-behind-the-eight-ball]

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The Russians have punched far beyond their weight when it comes to cyberwarfare, a prominent U.S. Senator said Saturday, and America isn't keeping up.

Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, noted that Vladimir Putin's government got "great bang for their dollars, or bang for their rubles" by exploiting vulnerabilities on social media during the 2016 presidential elections, and that it may be time for the U.S. to rethink its military budget.

"I come from one of the most pro-defense states," Warner said, "but if you look at what we're spending [on the military], $700 billion, the Russians are spending $68 billion."

Warner said that Putin's government has acknowledged that it can't keep up with us militarily. But he added that it has managed to use cyberwarfare to sow divisiveness in the U.S. by using sophisticated techniques to spread disinformation. It uses small, targeted election advertising buys, and leaves the kind of obvious fingerprints on state election systems that could have been used to defend President Trump's original claims that the 2016 election was "rigged."

"If You Leave It To Washington, We'll Probably Mess It Up"

Warner began his talk by stating forcefully that Russia had intervened in America's 2016 elections; that the country had tried to "rattle the doors" of 21 states' election systems; and that the way Russia exploited platforms like Facebook and Twitter showed "the dark underbelly of social media."

As giant tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google become more mature, Warner argued, they may someday need to face legal liability for the kind of content that crosses their platforms-much like automakers were eventually held responsible for their products. "I think we're going to have to have that kind of debate," Warner said. "What responsibility do the content companies have for the content that passes over them?"

He noted that although federal law generally protects content companies from liability for what their customers do, it has changed over the years to force those firms to take action against things like child pornography or terrorism. Perhaps it's time to hold them to account for enabling political meddling, he suggested.

But even without changing those rules, he acknowledged that the government has to have the help of tech companies in trying to keep bad actors from leveraging their platforms. "We're going to need their cooperation," he said, "because if not, if you leave it to Washington, we'll probably mess it up. It needs to be a collaborative process."

Stuck in the 20th Century

Warner veered between being critical of the tech companies, to acknowledging the U.S. government being stuck in a 20th-century mentality about possible threats to our democracy from Russia before the last elections. He also alleged that while many on both sides of the aisle in Washington are ready to take firm steps to address potential future election meddling, President Trump's apparent lack of interest in doing so is holding the government back from taking any meaningful action to prevent a repeat this fall of what happened in 2016.

As one of the sponsors of the Honest Ads Act, which would force online tech companies to disclose the source of all political advertising, Warner is hopeful that transparency in such areas will help. But he also knows full well that Russian-purchased election ads in 2016 amounted to a pittance when it came to that country's overall use of social media to impact American voters. Russia's ability to organically use Facebook and Twitter was a much bigger issue, he said.

Warner also worries that while some are trying to avoid a repeat of 2016 in this fall's Congressional elections, Russia and others who might want to interfere may have already moved on to other methods. For example, he said he's concerned about "Deep Faking," a method of morphing someone's face onto someone else's body in photos or video. Plus, he said, he'd read a study that concluded that, "If you have more than 40 hours of recorded video" of someone, "you could have any words come out of my mouth, regardless" of the original sequence.

"We are behind the eight ball," he said.

And it's not just Russia. If the United States doesn't take the lead on technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, there are plenty of companies in China that will build systems that are fully capable of exploiting our vulnerabilities. "I assure you," he said, "China has a plan, and they are executing on the plan, and we fail to do [the same] at our peril," Warner said.

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Senator: On Cyberwarfare, Russia Has The U.S. "Behind The Eight Ball"

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The Russians have punched far beyond their weight when it comes to cyberwarfare, a prominent U.S. Senator said Saturday, and America isn't keeping up. Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, noted that Vladimir Putin's government got "great bang for their dollars, or bang for their rubles" by exploiting vulnerabilities on social media during the 2016 presidential elections, and that it may be time for the U.S.

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The U.S. not capable of Defending Itself

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The U.S. not capable of Defending Itself

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Cyber wars are becoming the new face of warfare. America isn't as prepared for it like the hacker countries are. The U.S. military is looking to start training people to be cyber operators.
Paul D Shinkman, "America Is Losing The Cyberwar", U.S. News 22 Febrruary 2018 [https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/cyber-wars-how-the-us-stacks-up-against-its-digital-adversaries]

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US Must Fight Back Against Cyber Attacks

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US Must Fight Back Against Cyber Attacks

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The U.S. is lacking in showing that they will be fighting back against these attacks. Fighting back will show that we will continue to be a national power. There is very little cyber policy regarding these attacks which is bad because if the hackers were able to do massive damage there wouldn't be a solid plan on what to do next.
Alex Horton, "

Experts: US Must Project Cyber Warfare Capabilities to Deter Attacks" , Military.Com, 22 February 2018, [https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/05/12/experts-us-must-project-cyber-warfare-capabilities-deter-attacks.html]

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The United States must demonstrate its cyber warfare capabilities to help deter sophisticated attacks from Russia and other adversaries while building strategies on a battlefield still misunderstood by commanders and senior officials, a panel of defense experts told lawmakers Thursday.

"Cyber operations are a legitimate means of projecting national power, especially when proportionately supplemented by kinetic force, and we should advertise them accordingly," retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, the former leader of European Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in prepared remarks.

Russia, North Korea, China and other nations launch sophisticated attacks against the United States, including attempts to destroy infrastructure and undermine credibility of elections in America and France, Stavridis said. And the United States is often sheepish to strike back in shows of force, he added.

"Unwillingness to operate offensively in cyberspace is driven less by a fear of retaliation and more by a fear of compromising our intelligence community's sensitive tradecraft," he said.

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, said there is still a lack of consensus in the United States and the international community about what kinds of attacks warrant a response, and outdated thinking still suggests cyber assaults require an in-kind digital response, when other measures, such as conventional military strikes or sanctions, might be more appropriate.

"One way to recognize practice is to practice," Hayden said.

In response to Russian election interference for example, the United States could have disrupted bank accounts linked to Russian oligarchs and revealed the extent of President Vladimir Putin's finances and property, Stavridis said.

Recent protests have rocked Russia following allegations of embezzlement by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and overt jabs over the wealth of Russian leaders would undermine the government there, he said.

Crippling intelligence-gathering networks would also restrict Putin's ability to surveil his own people, Hayden said, at a crucial time when he seeks to squash dissent.

James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, stressed throughout the hearing about shortfalls within the government to anticipate the response of adversaries once cyber operations are launched.

"We can't count on equal or symmetrical retaliation," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee's chairman, opened his remarks for the hearing with a quip signaling his frustration with a lack of vision and cohesion in cyber operations in the military and intelligence communities.

"The committee meets today to receive testimony on cyber policy, strategy and organization, of which there is very little," McCain said.

His remarks are an echo of a hearing held Tuesday, when McCain said: "Our nation remains woefully unprepared to address these threats."

The panel offered various reasons why the United States appears unprepared to strike and vulnerable to attack in the cyber domain, chief among them is a lack of coherent guidance and command that is spread throughout the military branches and intelligence agencies, which results in redundancies and overlap.

Clapper and other officials have urged the separation of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, the so-called "dual hat" organization led by Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, that has become too big for one commander, Clapper said.

Those organizations have different missions -- Cyber Command focuses on offensive and defensive strikes while NSA's main efforts are in spying and intelligence-gathering, Stavridis said. Elevating the cyber mission to full combatant command would crystalize doctrine and send a message to adversaries on the seriousness of the United States to execute missions, he said.

The experts and members of the committee voiced the need for President Donald Trump to provide guidance in cyber operations after he missed a self-imposed deadline to deliver a strategy within 90 days of his inauguration. Shortly after the hearing concluded, Trump signed an executive order "aimed at strengthening the federal government's cyber security and protecting the nation's critical infrastructure from cyberattacks," Reuters reported Thursday.

McCain reiterated concerns recently voiced by service chiefs that a disparate focus and investment in cyber warriors in the military leaves talent untapped and later poached by the private sector.

"I don't see a clear career path for cyber warriors," he said.

Stavridis said none of the 126 airmen who recently completed their first tour with the Pentagon's cyber mission force were retained for a second tour.

The Defense Department launched the initiative last year to consolidate forces in order to defend its networks, support commanders and protect U.S. infrastructure. It staffs 5,000 troops across 133 teams as of October, according to a Pentagon news release.

All 126 of those airmen were reassigned to Air Force missions "with no cyber nexus whatsoever," Stavridis said in written testimony.

Recent attacks have converged across the public and private sectors, targeting U.S. power companies and corporations such as Sony, for instance, which became a victim of North Korean hacking.

The blurring of lines could lead to a Coast Guard-like cyber operations entity in the future, Clapper and the other experts suggested, which would blend military and law enforcement capabilities with an arm that occasionally responds to attacks affecting private citizens and businesses.

"We're kind of on the beach at Kitty Hawk," Stavridis said. "We have some work ahead."

Show Full Article

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Experts: US Must Project Cyber Warfare Capabilities to Deter Attacks

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The United States must demonstrate its cyber warfare capabilities to help deter sophisticated attacks from Russia and other adversaries while building strategies on a battlefield still misunderstood by commanders and senior officials, a panel of defense experts told lawmakers Thursday.

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North Korea has attacked aerospace and networks. During the  Olympics it confirmed an attack during the opening ceremonies. These attacks has caused the U.S. billions of dollar.
Rob LeFebvre, "Cyber attacks reportedly cost the US as much as $109 billion in 2016",  engadget, 09 April 2018 [https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/16/cyber-attacks-cost-up-to-109-billion-2016/]

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The report stated that while the main actors are foreign governments like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, corporate competitors, activists looking to advance their agendas and organized crime are also responsible for the staggeringly large cost. Effective efforts to combat all the malicious activity, said the report's authors, will likely add to the growth of our country's gross domestic product.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cyber attacks reportedly cost the US as much as $109 billion in 2016

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The report stated that while the main actors are foreign governments like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, corporate competitors, activists looking to advance their agendas and organized crime are also responsible for the staggeringly large cost. Effective efforts to combat all the malicious activity, said the report's authors, will likely add to the growth of our country's gross domestic product.