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Browse a news Web site or open a newspaper and every day headlines proclaim the threat
of cyber attack on the United States:
• A single attack in the summer of 2007 disabled a reported 1,500 Pentagon computers.
• According to the Pentagon, the Defense Department detects 3 million unauthorized “scans”—or attempts by would-be intruders to access official networks—on its computers every day1.
• Experts claim China, North Korea and others are escalating their use of cyber warfare techniques and are actively training new hackers.
• A recent coordinated attack on Estonia’s cyber infrastructure was thought by some to be the result of a disagreement with Russia and was termed “Web War I” by Estonia’s Deputy Minister of Defense.
• A 2007 Defense Department report to Congress states that the Chinese Army sees computer network operations “as critical to achieving ‘electromagnetic dominance’.”
• Cleaning up cyber attacks on the National Defense University, Naval War College and
Fort Hood each cost $20 to $30 million.
• In 2007, reports confirmed that attacks emanating from the Chinese military had penetrated the Pentagon, the German Chancellery and England’s Whitehall.
The problem is only growing.
An increased reliance on computers for communication and management makes the U.S. government ever more vulnerable to cyber attacks.
What is the goal of these attacks? Any attack can have serious and expensive results, whether it be targeted toward individuals, small businesses or corporations. Intellectual property can be compromised, personal and business information can be stolen, normal business operations can be disrupted and major financial losses can occur.
More seriously, attacks on the U.S. Government carry the increased threat of the theft of government and military secrets. There’s also the real possibility that a cyber attack could disable defense command systems, bring down power grids, open dam floodgates, paralyze communications and transportation, create mass confusion and hysteria: Any or all of which could be the precursor to land, sea and air conventional and nuclear military attacks.
Whatever the origin or method of attack, the rate of attack is growing fast. The Department of Defense has seen a 46 percent increase in attacks on its Web site since 2005, and the Department of Homeland Security received 37,000 reports of attempted breaches on government and private systems in fiscal year 2007, up 54 percent from 24,000 in 2006.
The Danger of Unpreparedness and Complacency
Unfortunately, in both the private and public sectors, unpreparedness and naiveté have enabled cyber attackers to score major wins. Hundreds of millions of dollars to cleanup cyber attacks on American military bases and institutions already have cost the American taxpayer.
In other cases, the ultimate costs of the attacks are still to be discovered. In May 2005, the Air Force Assignment Management System (AMS) was hacked. AMS, an online program used for assignment preferences and career management, contains career information on officers and enlisted Airmen, as well as personal information, such as birth dates and Social Security numbers. In all, 33,000 personnel records were downloaded. This breach was made public, including coverage in many major news outlets such as the Washington Post.
A corollary of these Web attacks is that any all intrusion attempts must be taken seriously. Whatever the intent—vandalism, mischief or military intrusion, attacks can appear similar in method. Modern anonymizing techniques make source identification difficult. Even if an attack can be tracked to an IP address in a specific country, it’s extremely difficult to prove that a hacker or agency in that country was responsible.
The only answer is preparedness and vigilance. America can’t afford to be surprised by a major cyber attack that leaves it scrambling to create new systems and new defenses that are too little and too late.
Who Is Responsible for Defending Against Attacks?
In February 2003, the Department of Homeland Security released The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. This policy set a priority to secure the federal government’s cyberspace. Not long afterwards, the United States Air Force expanded its mission from protecting land, sea and air, to include cyberspace, and the Air Force has taken the lead in developing methods and tools to protect both Department of Defense (DoD) and non-DoD agencies.
Everyone agrees that all attacks must be taken seriously. The only effective defense against the increasing wave of cyber attacks is an active offense that uses a range of techniques to render the attacks ineffective.
In the recent past, it was sufficient to hire software security experts and leave the problem to them. Today, it has become apparent that cyberwarfare is here to stay and will become one of the major battlefields of the future. The job of preparing for these battles belongs not only to the troops in the field—CIO’s, CSO’s, QA testers and the like—but to the generals, admirals and secretaries of defense to make the policy and provide direction.
The Air Force has a tradition of engaging first in new arenas of warfare, and was itself created due to the Army’s growing need for air power. The Air Force has taken the federal government’s mandate to establish cyber security to the next level by expanding a tactical, perimeter-based approach to a strategy of building in security.
Organizationally, the Air Force is the only branch to have established a cyber command to prepare for the cyber battlefield. It will do this by defending national computer networks running critical operations as well as by offensively neutralizing adversaries’ hacking capabilities. The Air Force now operates a Provisional Cyberspace Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in northwest Louisiana.
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