Category Archives: U.S. Cyber Command

Cyber Command lacks authorities, capabilities, Pentagon watchdog says

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U.S. Cyber Command lacks the authorities it needs to manage personnel, set standards for training and ensure its Cyber Mission Force teams are properly equipped for combat, according to a Department of Defense watchdog. A classified November 2015 report by the Pentagon inspector general assessed whether the CMF teams “had adequate facilities, equipment and capabilities to effectively perform missions.” A heavily redacted version was released to CyberScoop this week as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the report is almost two years old, many of the problems it describes persist, according to former military officials who spoke to CyberScoop on condition they not be identified or quoted, owing to the classified nature of the issues. The Trump administration’s plan to elevate U.S. Cyber Command to full-fledged Unified Combatant Command status — and other changes proposed and in some cases implemented since the report was issued — will help […]

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Elevation of Cyber Command will make it more like its elite brethren

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Buried deep in President Donald Trump’s decision to elevate U.S. Cyber Command to a full-fledged unified combatant command is a detail that will eventually herald important changes to the way its military cyber personnel are going to be trained — and one that helps illuminate how the U.S.’ understanding of cyber war is changing. The elevation announcement earlier this month was mandated by Congress was widely anticipated for months, if not years. According to current and former Pentagon officials, Adm. Michael Rogers, the four-star commander of Cyber Command, already has pretty much the same authorities the commanders of the other nine UCCs enjoy, including the highest profile ones — a direct line to the Secretary of Defense and a seat at the budget deliberations table. “On paper, the chain of command goes through U.S. Strategic Command,” the UCC to which Cyber Command is currently subordinate as it awaits elevation, explained former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense […]

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Trump orders that U.S. Cyber Command receive new authority to conduct cyberwarfare

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President Donald Trump announced Friday that U.S. Cyber Command will be elevated to a unified combatant command, making it the 10th such organization with the operational authority to conduct military operations abroad under the purview of the secretary of Defense and the White House. Trump’s decision to elevate Cyber Command now requires that Secretary of Defense James Mattis conduct a review to determine whether Cyber Command should be separated from its Fort Meade neighbor and partner organization, the National Security Agency. Cyber Command is currently led by NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers. While in that dual-hat role as the leader of both forces, he has consistently advocated for the elevation of Cyber Command. There’s bipartisan support on Capitol Hill to provide Cyber Command with greater operational authority and additional resources, but the question of whether the organization should be divided from NSA remains more difficult for Congress to answer. Until now, the […]

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GAO: Pentagon hasn’t met conditions for separating NSA and Cyber Command

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The Department of Defense has not finally decided whether to separate the leadership of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command and has not begun to meet the congressionally mandated conditions for doing so, the Government Accountability Office said in a report Tuesday. A provision in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act required the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to jointly certify that ending the so-called dual-hat arrangement — under which the same four-star general is both NSA director and in charge of U.S. Cyber Command — will not pose risks to the command’s military effectiveness. “As of April 2017, DOD’s senior leaders had not decided whether the dual-hat leadership should be ended,” states the GAO report, adding that department’s leaders were “reviewing the steps and funding necessary to meet the statutory requirements of Section 1642” but had not yet begun to do so. The NDAA […]

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70 percent of U.S. Cyber Command force teams now ‘fully operational’

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Eight months after all 133 of U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber Mission Force teams reached initial operating capability, 70 percent of the force’s teams are “fully operational capable,”Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford testified on Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. “They’ve had all the manning, they have all the training, they’re fully operational capable,” Dunford said. “But I think none of us are complacent with where we are in cyberspace given the number of threats we face every day. We need to defend the network, develop effective offensive tools and be in a position to grow the force.” The Cyber Mission Force teams are tasked with defending Defense Department networks (68 teams), supporting military objectives (27 teams), providing analytic support to combat missions (25 teams) and defending U.S. critical infrastructure (13 teams). Cyber command was first stood up in 2009, yet the mission force teams were first added in 2015. Dunford […]

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Why the U.S. is struggling with their digital war on ISIS

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The U.S. military’s reported inability to effectively “drop cyber bombs” on the Islamic State is raising new questions about the military’s existing “cyber weapons arsenal,” a loosely defined collage of digital warfare capabilities shrouded in secrecy. Computer network attacks have been conducted by operators within the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s top cyber warfare unit, under the order of Joint Task Force Ares. While the two organizations are inherently aligned, the NSA and Cyber Command follow different missions and employ different capabilities. Very little is publicly known about either the intelligence community or U.S. military’s ability to conduct offensive cyber operations; the subject matter is generally considered classified if not highly sensitive. A leaked CIA document published by WikiLeaks in March and identified by CyberScoop provides a rare window into how analysts conduct cyber warfare operations; describing one instance in which an operator worked to remotely disrupt a […]

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NSA’s Rogers asks for big budget bump to separate U.S. Cyber Command

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The nation’s top cyberwarrior bluntly told a House panel Tuesday that it would take a 16 percent increase in U.S. Cyber Command’s budget to separate it from the NSA and become a full-fledged combatant command, as lawmakers want. “To execute our mission I have asked for a budget of $647 million, which is a nearly 16 percent increase from 2017,” Adm. Michael Rogers told a hearing of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities convened by Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., to examine the fiscal 2018 request for Cyber Command. Rogers, who leads Cyber Command and is also NSA director, said the money would be spent “building out” the command’s cyber fighting units, called Cyber Mission Forces, and other cyber-specific capabilities. The 6,200-strong CMF is on track to be fully operational by Oct. 1 next year, he said. The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2017 mandated the elevation of Cyber Command — which […]

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NSA deputy says U.S. cyberattack responses must improve

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The way that U.S. government agencies respond to cyberattacks against the private sector from nation-state or other high-level adversaries is “fundamentally flawed” and needs to change, outgoing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said Tuesday. Ledgett, the latest addition to a growing list of cybersecurity officials and former officials who have called for the nation’s cyber responses to be overhauled, mocked existing response plans at an Aspen Institute luncheon roundtable hosted by former Justice Department senior official John Carlin. “The analogy a colleague of mine uses,” Ledgett explained, “is … if your house catches on fire, you have to call the mayor to see if he’ll let you call the water department to ask them to turn the water on. And then you call the city council to see if you can get funding for the fire department to send a truck. And by the time that’s all happened, your cyber house has burned to […]

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NSA deputy says U.S. cyberattack responses must improve

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The way that U.S. government agencies respond to cyberattacks against the private sector from nation-state or other high-level adversaries is “fundamentally flawed” and needs to change, outgoing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett said Tuesday. Ledgett, the latest addition to a growing list of cybersecurity officials and former officials who have called for the nation’s cyber responses to be overhauled, mocked existing response plans at an Aspen Institute luncheon roundtable hosted by former Justice Department senior official John Carlin. “The analogy a colleague of mine uses,” Ledgett explained, “is … if your house catches on fire, you have to call the mayor to see if he’ll let you call the water department to ask them to turn the water on. And then you call the city council to see if you can get funding for the fire department to send a truck. And by the time that’s all happened, your cyber house has burned to […]

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Islamic State supporters hit by Android malware on Telegram

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Islamic State supporters are warning one another of malware targeting the militant group through the chat app Telegram. One member on a popular ISIS forum alerted users to plus_gram.apk, a trojanized RAT (a remote access tool disguised as harmless software) that allows an attacker to spy on and take full control of the target’s Android device. […]

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