Category Archives: offensive capabilities

Ex-NSA chief welcomes more U.S. offensive operations in cyberspace

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Former National Security Agency director Michael Rogers has welcomed the Trump administration’s willingness to use cyber-operations to deter foreign adversaries, adding that the United States’ previous reluctance to do so was counterproductive. “My argument when I was [in government was]: “We want to keep the full range of options and capabilities available,” Rogers said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “One of the things that frustrated me at times was: Why are we taking one element just straight off the table?” said Rogers, who left the administration in May for the private sector. “I just thought, boy, if you’re in Moscow or Beijing, you are loving this approach to life because it doesn’t really change your risk calculus,” Rogers added. While NSA director from 2014 to 2018, he also led U.S. Cyber Command. Presidential Policy Directive 20, which then-President Barack Obama signed in 2012, had installed an intricate inter-agency legal […]

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McCaul: U.S. should go on the cyber offensive if Russia hacks midterms

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The United States should respond with offensive cyber operations if the Russian government tries to meddle in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections like it did in the 2016 presidential election, according to an influential Republican lawmaker. “Personally, if [the Russians] attempt to do that again in the 2018 midterms, I think there should be an offensive response to it,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters Wednesday. In January 2017, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian government-linked hackers meddled in the 2016 presidential election as part of a broad Kremlin-backed effort to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last several months, senior U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly warned of the possibility of renewed Russian information operations ahead of midterm elections this fall. While nothing on the scale of the 2016 meddling has been detected yet for the 2018 cycle, a public […]

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Diplomacy won’t stop North Korean hacking, South Korean officials say

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Top South Korean cybersecurity experts don’t expect Donald Trump’s diplomacy to slow down North Korean cyberattacks Speaking through interpreters at a Brookings event Thursday, two of South Korea’s leading cybersecurity experts said that they’re no longer able to cope with the sheer volume of attacks emanating from the North. In the past decade, every well-known South Korean organization has been hacked or targeted by North Korea, noted SangMyung Choi, chief of South Korea’s Computer Emergency Response Team. At the Washington, D.C., event, Choi showed off a slide deck that warned: “there is no place that is not hacked” and “we are in the real cyberwarfare.” “A lot of these attacks have not been [revealed] to the South Korean public, but today I confess to you that it’s been very prevalent,” Choi said. Since May 2018, he revealed, North Korean-backed hackers have launched spear phishing and watering hole attacks in forged documents […]

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NDAA pushes U.S. Cyber Command to be more aggressive

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By the Senate Armed Service Committee’s estimation, the United States has held back in cyberspace. The committee is angling to change that with the latest National Defense Authorization Act, proposing to free up the military on the front lines of cyber conflict, create a new strategic cyber entity and respond to Russian aggressions in-kind. The bill’s authors wrote that lawmakers have long-standing concerns about the lack of an effective U.S. strategy to deter and counter cyber threats. To counter foreign state actors bent on stealing, striking, spying or disrupting in cyberspace, the bill suggests boosting resilience, increasing attribution capabilities, emphasizing defense and enhancing the country’s ability to respond to attacks. “We’re letting episodes define strategy. It should be the other way around, where we clearly articulate our cyber deterrence strategy and rules of engagement,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. By offering […]

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The U.S. military combined cyber and kinetic operations to hunt down ISIS last year, general says

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The military used a combination of kinetic attacks, like missile strikes, with cyber operations, to fight ISIS in an important battle last year, a senior U.S. official revealed recently. U.S. Cyber Command, the country’s leading cyber warfare force, was involved in secretly launching a series of disruptive-style cyberattacks against the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2017 which knocked out their computer systems in Iraq. The tactic caused the terrorists to leave their heavy command posts, exposing them to a more conventional attack. Last week, for the first time, the former commander of the Army’s anti-ISIS coalition discussed a covert operation in detail where U.S. forces and allies successfully used offensive cyber measures to hunt down enemy forces. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who commanded Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in 2017, told an audience of Hawaii conference-goers via teleconference that the coalition cyberattacks leveled against ISIS were part of “a multi-domain operation […]

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Trump sends cyberwar strategy to Congress

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President Donald Trump has sent a cyberwarfare policy to Congress that should outline how the administration will tackle some of the field’s most vexing issues – including launching hacking operations and deterring adversaries. Trump enclosed the document, which was not made public, in a letter Thursday to the House and Senate committees that oversee the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State. The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act tasked the White House with developing a “multi-prong” cybersecurity policy covering defensive and offensive operations. The policy should include measures to defend against “cyber activities that are carried out against infrastructure critical to the political integrity, economic security, and national security of the United States,” the NDAA states. The White House policy is one of several new cybersecurity measures mandated by the NDAA, including a requirement that the Pentagon more closely communicate with Congress on sensitive, military-led cyber-operations. The new […]

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