Syria

ADVANTAGES OF CYBER WAR.
As the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continues to suffer defeats on the

battlefield, it may be moving into terrain that is relatively nascent and
somewhat unfamiliar to Western counterinsurgents—cyberspace.
Analysts have expressed concern that ISIS may turn to virtual currencies to

fund future attacks. These currencies can be used as part of an effort to
mask the organization's illicit transactions while enabling it to support
attacks in areas outside of its control. And the organization has a history of
broadly using cyberspace and technology in innovative ways.
ISIS is attempting to develop its own social-media architecture to help its

members avoid security crackdowns on communications exchanged and
content posted by the group, according to Europol, Europe's police agency.
An expanded social-media presence would also enable ISIS to continue
to encourage attacks abroad as the group retrenches, but perhaps with
greater frequency.
Therefore, cyber warfare and hacking techniques should be used against the threats of the frequent
terrorist groups like isis and those in Pakistan.
USA’S STAND IN COMBATING CYBER WAR.
In the U.S., they have presented as security issues for critical infrastructure,
such as industrial sites, and cast doubt on the integrity of crucial information
technology systems used for elections — including many vulnerable voting
machines (PDF) themselves that are employed and managed at the state
level.
Technological approaches to curbing or countering these cyber threats are

proliferating, but they alone cannot offer adequate protection. What is
needed is manpower: hundreds of thousands of information security
professionals working in the private and public sectors to actively defend the
cyber terrain on which America's national security, prosperity, and
democracy depend.
Like many private companies and public agencies in the U.S., the
Department of Defense struggles with a shortage of information security
professionals. But RAND research suggests that the armed forces, and the
nation more broadly, might already have some of the personnel resources it
needs — in the ranks of its Reserves and National Guard.
RAND researchers studying the skills of personnel in the Army National
Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve in 2015 estimated, conservatively, that
more than 100,000 of these men and women have some degree of cyber
competence, including thousands with deep or mid-level cyber expertise.
Many of these soldiers, like their counterparts in the reserve components of

other military services, perform information security functions in their
civilian careers, often in high-tech sectors. Some are serving in newly
created reserve component cyber formations.
A growing proportion of reservists are “digital natives” who want to leverage their tech skills as
part of their military duties.
A growing proportion of service members in the reserve components are also

“digital natives” — part of the younger generations who grew up using a
wide variety of technologies. Many want to leverage their tech skills as part
of their military duties.
The Department of Defense — and individual states across the country —

would do well to tap into this pool of trained, vetted, and often combat-
experienced men and women available to extend the labor pool of
information security professionals — personnel who could provide support to
federal and state civilian authorities during times of crisis.
For example, the reserve component could be mobilized to help the

Department of Homeland Security defend the industrial control systems of
critical infrastructure experiencing an attack, especially the newest addition
to the DHS list of critical infrastructure, the election system itself.
Other countries have begun to leverage civilian-acquired skills in their

defense against cyber threats. In the wake of cyber attacks against its public
and private Internet infrastructure in 2007, Estonia announced plans to
develop the Estonian Defence League, a collection of volunteers — now
numbering in the hundreds — who are prepared to help the country respond
to emerging cyber crises and attacks.
The U.S. has different options for filling shortfalls in its arsenal of
information security professionals. In March, for example, Rep. Ruben
Gallego (D-AZ) proposed the creation of a “cyber national guard” to attract
talented civilians who do not want to serve in the military, but are willing to
contribute to the nation's cyber defense.
The reserve components of the U.S. military are uniquely positioned to

attract, train, and manage a cadre of information security professionals who
are able to operate both with the active components of the U.S. armed
forces and with civilian authorities. Innovative approaches to recruiting,
tracking readiness, and career planning of these professionals will be
required, and new models of reserve component participation and training
might prove necessary.
There is every reason to believe that nefarious actors, including powerful

nation-states, will continue to target critical infrastructure, the U.S. election
system as a whole and information technology systems in general.
This threat to American democracy and cyber way of life demands hands-on
attention to the underlying machines and devices. Mitigating this threat with
human resources will require the cyber equivalent of boots on the
ground. The state of Ohio has already tapped its National Guard to defend its
election system from hackers.
Time is running out to build an adequate nationwide defense for the next
presidential election cycle, but many of the necessary personnel resources
are right here — in the form of the Guard and the Reserves that are ready
and willing to be called up to perform the mission.
RUSSIA’S STAND IN CYBER WAR.
Americans became acutely aware of Russian information warfare after the

2016 presidential election, but Russia's actions are anything but new. For
more than a century, Russia has relied on disinformation, propaganda and
other similar measures to achieve its objectives. For the last three decades,
it has exploited its growing capabilities in cyberspace to spy on, influence
and punish others.
In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin practically boasted that his

country's “patriots” may have led the efforts that upset the U.S. political
process, and last week President Donald Trump and Putin spoke
of establishing a joint cybersecurity unit — an idea the U.S. president quickly
backed away from.
As Russian aggression in the cyberworld expands, the West will continue to

struggle to hold Moscow accountable, in part because international law falls
far short of fully defining the rules or resolving conflicts. There is much that
Western nations can do to address the challenge of modern information
warfare, but there is little question that Russia, by virtue of its long
engagement in this arena, currently has the advantage.
Early Russian information warfare focused on traditional espionage —
stealing information from adversaries. One of the first documented cases of
Russian government hacking of U.S. sites to collect intelligence occurred in
1998. Putin, who took office the next year, prioritized broader information
operations and institutionalized those operations within Russian policy,
government organizational structure and doctrine. For instance, he approved
a national security policy that explicitly described “information warfare” and
the potential disruptive threat to information, telecommunications and data-
storage systems.
The Russian information operations system, combined with the Russian form
of centralized government control, allows it to launch cyber-operations with
greater speed, agility and brazenness than most analysts believe is possible
in the West. The unprecedented 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia illustrate the
growing sophistication of Russia's unrelenting focus on cyber-operations. In
an attempt to prevent Estonia's removal of a Soviet-era war memorial in the
capital of Tallinn, Russia unleashed a digital firestorm that crippled essential
computer networks across the tiny Baltic nation.
Now the United States finds itself in Russia's crosshairs and needs to develop
a strategy to respond — and a universal cyberwarfare lexicon.
Develop a Mutual Understanding of the

Problem
Without clear consensus on what constitutes a cyber violation, Russia will likely continue to
maneuver unfettered in the vast gray area of international law.
As NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, formally

established in Tallinn in 2008, noted: “There are no common definitions for
cyber terms — they are understood to mean different things by different
nations/organizations, despite prevalence in mainstream media and in
national and international organizational statements.” For example, there
are almost 20 different definitionsof “cyberattack,” with the meaning varying
from country to country. Within the United States and internationally, the
lack of clarity has impeded progress on the creation of national policies and
international standards that deal with cyber warfare. In fact, the
international community spent nearly 20 years debating if existing
international law even applies to cyberspace. Without clear consensus on
what constitutes a cyber violation, Russia will likely continue to maneuver
unfettered in the vast gray area of international law.
In February, the NATO research center took a step toward clarity when it
published the “Tallinn Manual 2.0 (PDF),” a second-edition guide to
international laws that apply to cyber operations. Although a useful resource,
it is mainly an expression of the views of 19 international law experts,
mostly from NATO countries, and does not represent the position of NATO or
any other entity. Another shortcoming: The authors were not able to agree
on how international law applies in specific situations, such as to the hack of
the 2016 Democratic National Committee and the subsequent release of the
stolen information.
The United States is capable of advancing the debate on state behavior in

cyberspace by more clearly establishing its own national definitions and
interpretations for information and cyber warfare. Agreeing on uniform
definitions and standards would help the West take the next necessary step:
deciding how existing international law applies.
Define How Existing Law Applies to

Cyberspace
The United Nations Group of Governmental Experts declared in 2013 that
existing international law applies to cyberspace. Two years later it followed
up with a consensus report on norms, rules or principles of the responsible
behavior of states in the cyberspace that includes a commitment to “non-
intervention in the internal affairs of other States.” These agreements ended
a nearly two-decade debate by deciding that existing obligations under
international law are applicable to state use of cyberspace. There is still a
need to define how existing international law applies to cyberspace — how
should Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election be legally dealt with?
After that, the international community should work to make binding the
recently agreed-upon norms.
Only when norms and laws are binding will there be legal and tangible
consequences for cyber actions against others. Tangible costs, such
as sanctions, are important because without them history has shown that
malicious actors will continue or intensify their behaviors in pursuit of their
objectives. The editor of the “Tallinn Manual 2.0” may have said it best: “The
Russians are masters at playing the 'gray area' in the law, as they know that
this will make it difficult to claim they are violating international law and
justifying responses such as countermeasures.”
While the international community continues to make progress on binding

standards and norms, countries can, and should, choose to do the right
thing by demonstrating responsible behavior in cyberspace.
CHINA’S HACKING IN USA
U.S. authorities on Thursday accused a Chinese national visiting the United States of

providing malware that has been linked to the theft of security clearance records of
millions of American government employees.
Yu Pingan of Shanghai was arrested on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport

after a federal criminal complaint accused him of conspiring with others wielding
malicious software known as Sakula, a Justice Department spokesman said on
Thursday.
The complaint said the group attacked a seried of unnamed U.S. companies using
Sakula, the same rare program involved in U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
hacks detected in 2014 and 2015. The filing did not mention the OPM hacks.
The arrest could provide information on the OPM hacks which U.S. officials have
blamed on the Chinese government.
In an FBI affidavit linked to the complaint, an FBI agent said he believed Yu provided
versions of Sakula to two unnamed men that he knew would be used to carry out
attacks on the firms.
Yu's court-appointed attorney, Michael Berg, said Yu was a teacher with no affiliation
with China's government.
"He says he has no involvement in this whatsoever," Berg said, adding that Yu came to
Los Angeles for a conference.
The Justice Department and San Diego FBI declined to comment further.
The court filings said Sakula had rarely been seen before the attacks on U.S.
companies and Yu knew the software he was providing would be used in the hacks
carried out between 2010 and 2015.
Though the victims are not named, some companies appeared to be in the aerospace
and energy industries.
Adam Meyers, vice president at U.S. security firm CrowdStrike, said software flaws and
one of the internet protocol addresses cited in the complaint matched up with attacks on
a U.S. turbine manufacturer, Capstone Turbine, and a French aircraft supplier.
Meyers said Sakula could be used by multiple groups, but that all of the known targets
would be of interest to the Chinese government.
The OPM breach was a subject of U.S.-China talks, and the Chinese government
previously told American diplomats it had arrested some criminals in the case.
Yu remains in jail pending a court hearing on his detention next week.
CHINA’S HACKING-2
In January of 2010, Google made a shocking announcement: The Chinese government

had broken into its systems to steal sensitive data.
This was the first time an American company had the guts to publicly stand up and
point the finger at the government of China.
"We detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate

infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual
property from Google," the company wrote in a boringly titled blog post.
Those were different times. Six years later, a mantra among cybersecurity experts is
that there's only two types of companies: those that have been hacked by China, and
those that don't know they've been hacked yet.
Countless companies have accused China of hacking them. A whole industry has
benefitted from this, offering defensive tools and forensics investigations to potential
and actual victims. The reason why China has become such a superpower when it
comes about hacking is because it wants to be the world's biggest superpower, and
the fastest way to get to the top is steal secrets from the current leader.
But the current leader, the United States, has also decided to stand up. In 2014, the
Department of Justice announced the indictment of five hackers who work for the
country's military. The officers have practically no chance of ever seeing an American
courthouse, but it was a way to make what's still the loudest stand against Chinese
corporate espionage. Then, a year later, US and China announced a ceasefire of
hacking operations, at least those against corporations. It was the beginning of a new
era.
But that didn't stop all Chinese hacks. The worst one to date, perhaps, was that on
the Office of Personnel Management or OPM, which resulted in the loss of more than
21 million personal records of government workers. The US government never
publicly blamed China, but many anonymous US officials did in interviews with
journalists.
This week, as part of VICELAND documentary series CYBERWAR, VICE Canada reporter
Ben Makuch talks to the US government and the world's foremost experts on Chinese
hacking, trying to trace the rise of the hacking giant.
You can watch CYBERWAR's episode on Chinese hacking on VICELAND on Tuesday, at

10:30 PM ET. Meanwhile, read some of Motherboard's best articles about the Chinese
hacking:
 The "Great Cannon" is China's Powerful New Hacking Weapon

 FBI Says a Mysterious Hacking Group Has Had Access to US Govt Files for Years
 Did China Order Hackers to Cripple the Hong Kong Protest?
 Hackers Are Helping China Build Cheap Clones of America's Drones
 How Tibetans Are Fighting Back Against Chinese Hackers
CHINA’S HACKING-3
Chinese intelligence repeatedly targeted US national
security agencies and email accounts of US officials, a
soon-to-be-released report says, adding that Beijing spies
targeted info on nuclear weapons, FBI investigations and
war plans.
“Chinese intelligence has repeatedly infiltrated US national
security entities and extracted information with serious
consequences for US national security, including
information on the plans and operations of US military
forces and the designs of US weapons and weapons
systems,” a draft annual report for 2016 said, as cited by the
Washington Free Beacon.
The final version of the report of the US-China Economic
and Security Review Commission is to be released
November 16.
The hacks allowed Beijing to gain “insight into the
operation of US platforms and the operational approaches
of US forces to potential contingencies in the region,” it
goes on.
According to the document, China applied efforts at “cyber
and human infiltration” of national security sectors,
including the FBI and the US Pacific Command. The
report says that Washington “faces a large and growing
threat to its national security from Chinese intelligence
collection operations
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Chinese spies reportedly hacked into secret US war plans,
gaining information about nuclear weapons, and snooping
into electrical power grids and financial networks. US
Diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial sectors have
also been the targets of China.
“US critical infrastructure entities are a major target of
Chinese cyber operations, and China is capable of
significantly disrupting or damaging these entities,” the
report said.
The Chinese allegedly hacked into secret data of the MQ-
9 Reaper drone, which has been a staple of US airstrikes
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past 9 years.
Cyber sanctions: US threatens China over hack attacks

ahead of Xi Jinping talks with Obama
US academics who work for the groups involved in China
studies have also been reportedly targeted by Beijing. The
document names an American student in China, Glenn
Duffie Shriver, as a target. Shriver was convicted of
conspiracy to spy for China in 2010. He was released in
2013.
Obama administration officials have not escaped China’s
alleged digital predation.
“Among the information extracted were 5.6 million
fingerprints, some of which could be used to identify
undercover US government agents or to create duplicates
of biometric data to obtain access to classified areas,” the
report said.
Several organizations allegedly contribute to China’s
intelligence operations, including the Ministry of State
Security (MSS), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and
Communist Party military, as well as the PLA General
Political Department and the Party’s United Front Work
Department.

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ADVANTAGES OF CYBER WAR.

As the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria continues to suffer defeats on the

Analysts have expressed concern that ISIS may turn to virtual currencies to

ISIS is attempting to develop its own social-media architecture to help its

USA’S STAND IN COMBATING CYBER WAR.

Technological approaches to curbing or countering these cyber threats are

Many of these soldiers, like their counterparts in the reserve components of

A growing proportion of service members in the reserve components are also

The Department of Defense — and individual states across the country —

For example, the reserve component could be mobilized to help the

Other countries have begun to leverage civilian-acquired skills in their

The reserve components of the U.S. military are uniquely positioned to

There is every reason to believe that nefarious actors, including powerful

RUSSIA’S STAND IN CYBER WAR.

Americans became acutely aware of Russian information warfare after the

In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin practically boasted that his

As Russian aggression in the cyberworld expands, the West will continue to

Develop a Mutual Understanding of the

As NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, formally

The United States is capable of advancing the debate on state behavior in

Define How Existing Law Applies to

While the international community continues to make progress on binding

U.S. authorities on Thursday accused a Chinese national visiting the United States of

Yu Pingan of Shanghai was arrested on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport

Yu remains in jail pending a court hearing on his detention next week.

In January of 2010, Google made a shocking announcement: The Chinese government

"We detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate

You can watch CYBERWAR's episode on Chinese hacking on VICELAND on Tuesday, at

 The "Great Cannon" is China's Powerful New Hacking Weapon

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Cyber sanctions: US threatens China over hack attacks

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