FEATURE: Fighting a cyberwar

The ways of waging war in cyberspace are outstripping existing laws, treaties and running ahead of even the most sophisticated military machines in the world.

Thom Cookes, Newsline

Last Updated: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:59:00 +1100

Attacks on computer systems and communications links, known as cyberwar, are the newest global battlefield as strikes are cheap and frighteningly effective.

As the largest, most powerful military machine in the world, the US military is also one of the biggest computer networks.

According to General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, the US has more than seven million machines to protect, linked in 15,000 networks, with 21 satellite gateways and 20,000 commercial circuits composed of countless devices and components.

And the biggest threat to the superpower may not be another army but a few clever people armed with cheap laptop computers.

US President Barack Obama says the United States' defence and military networks are under terrorist threat.

"Al Qaeda and other terrorist have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country, attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against," he said.

"Indeed in today's world, acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists in suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer."

The new battlefield of cyberwar is now a central area of planning for many of the world's military forces.

Paul Twomey, an online security consultant, says over 100 countries have a cyberwarfare doctrine

"Some [doctrines] are written out quite specifically in military journals," he said.

"So I think you have to say the cyber arena has become 'the fifth space' in which people plan for and react in warfare - air, land, sea, space and now cyber.

"And ironically it's the first of the man-made environments in which people are planning for warfare."

Weak links

The United States military operates a vast supply and logistics chain stretching around the world. Much of this is run by civilian contractors and it is a tempting target for countries that can not match the US on the traditional battlefield.

Paul Twomey says there has been a lot of discussion in China over how to use cyber tools to intervene in the American logistics system.

"The scenario is always about the control of the Taiwan Strait or control of Taiwan. And the analysis I think is if you cannot guarantee that you'll defeat the Americans in actual combat, can you delay their arrival sufficiently such that you can achieve dominance in the space that you want?," he said.

"And there's a lot of work publicly written in China, in Chinese military circles, about attacking the American logistics infrastructure, particularly at the stage when it's still very much the open internet, when they interact with hundreds of companies to bring together logistic support."

But cyberwar is not just a hypothetical threat.

In 2007 Estonian government, banking and media websites were systematically attacked during a diplomatic row with Russia.

There is no definitive proof that the Russian government itself was involved, but the attacks were widely studied by the world's militaries and they are now referred to as Web War I.

As a result, NATO has set up its new research centre in cyber defence in the Estonian capital. And in May this year the United States set up its own cyber command based in the super secretive National Security Agency, the NSA.

But exactly how it plans to wage cyberwar remains classified.

General Keith Alexander is the director of the NSA and became commander of United States Cyber Command in May.

In an address to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies he made it clear that nations, like his own, possess the capabilities to wage effective cyberwar.

"We should assume that foreign government actors in cyberspace have both considerably more resources and even more worrisome motivations than cyber criminals," he said.

"In short we face a dangerous combination of known and unknown vulnerabilities, strong adversary capabilities and weak situational awareness."

The tangled web we weave

For most of its short life the internet has been seen as a kind of Wild West where individual freedom reigns supreme.

And some are concerned that if it becomes a declared battlefield these freedoms will be under threat.

In a debate for Intelligence Squared US in June, Marc Rotengberg from the Electronic Privacy Information Centre said the simple threat of cyberwarfare is enough for governments to attempt to control the internet.

"In fact what you are hearing now about the threat of cyberwar is part of a long-running campaign here in Washington to move control of the internet, the technical standards and the openness that we have enjoyed, away from its current model to one that would give the intelligence community and the National Security Agency much greater authority to decide what people may or may not do on the internet," he said.

One of the main problems with cyber attacks is that it is notoriously hard to prove who is behind them, and so trying to apply the rules that govern traditional warfare - or even build an arms control treaty - is extraordinarily difficult.

Online security consultant Paul Twomey says controls along the lines of "a multi-party Geneva Convention type approach" are in the works.

"We should be thinking more about behavioural limitations. It would apply both on nation states but also, potentially, on corporates and individuals," he said.

When the most powerful man in the world has personal experience of the problem you can guarantee that it is receiving attention.

"I know how it feels to have privacy violated because it has happened to me and the people around me," said US President Barack Obama at press conference in May 2009.

"It's no secret that my presidential campaign harnessed the internet and technology to transform our politics. What isn't widely known is that during the general election hackers managed to penetrate our computer systems.

"It was a powerful reminder in this information age one of your greatest strengths - in our case our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the internet - could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities."