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Cyberwars Escalate With US NSA As "Crown Creators Of Cyberespionage"

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Those who follow the constant barrage of geopolitical headline hockey might have noticed that this has been the year of the cyberattack. 

As we’re fond of chronicling, what started with an alleged attempt on the part of Kim Jong Un to sabotage a James Franco and Seth Rogen premier and what took a turn for complete absurdity when Penn State claimed Chinese hacker spies had taken control of the engineering department, turned rather serious with the OPM breach, the scope of which is still not fully understood. 

The incessant cyber espionage talk along with the creation (by Washington) of a kind of cyber “axis of evil” that of course includes all of the usual suspects including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, has led directly to discussions of how to effectively conduct cyber warfare. The Pentagon laid out a somewhat vague strategy earlier this year and now WSJ has more on what’s being billed as a “digital arms race”: 

A series of successful computer attacks carried out by the U.S. and others has kicked off a frantic and destabilizing digital arms race, with dozens of countries amassing stockpiles of malicious code. The programs range from the most elementary, such as typo-ridden emails asking for a password, to software that takes orders from a rotating list of Twitterhandles.

 

The proliferation of these weapons has spread so widely that the U.S. and China—longtime cyber adversaries—brokered a limited agreement last month not to conduct certain types of cyberattacks against each other, such as intrusions that steal corporate information and then pass it along to domestic companies. Cyberattacks that steal government secrets, however, remain fair game.

 

In total, at least 29 countries have formal military or intelligence units dedicated to offensive hacking efforts, according to a Wall Street Journal compilation of government records and interviews with U.S. and foreign officials.

 

Some 50 countries have bought off-the-shelf hacking software that can be used for domestic and international surveillance. The U.S. has among the most-advanced operations.

 

In the nuclear arms race, “the acronym was MAD—mutually assured destruction—which kept everything nice and tidy,” said Matthijs Veenendaal, a researcher at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a research group in Estonia. “Here you have the same acronym, but it’s ‘mutually assured doubt,’ because you can never be sure what the attack will be.”

 

Governments have used computer attacks to mine and steal information, erase computers, disable bank networks and—in one extreme case—destroy nuclear centrifuges.

 

Nation states have also looked into using cyberweapons to knock out electrical grids, disable domestic airline networks, jam Internet connectivity, erase money from bank accounts and confuse radar systems, experts believe.

Amusingly, WSJ got a shot in at the Assad government because after all, now that anti-regime forces are on the run, it's all hands on deck with the Western media propaganda campaign:

“It’s not like developing an air force,” in terms of cost and expertise, said Michael Schmitt, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and part of an international group studying how international law relates to cyberwarfare. “You don’t need to have your own cyberforce to have a very robust and very scary offensive capability.”

 

For example, hackers aligned with the Syrian government have spied into the computers of rebel militias, stolen tactical information and then used the stolen intelligence in the ongoing and bloody battle, according to several researchers, including FireEye Inc.

Then there is the obligatory shot at the Russians:

Russian hackers have targeted diplomatic and political data, burrowing inside unclassified networks at the Pentagon, State Department and White House, also using emails laced with malware, according to security researchers and U.S. officials.

 

They have stolen President Barack Obama’s daily schedule and diplomatic correspondence sent across the State Department’s unclassified network, according to people briefed on the investigation. A Russian government spokesman in April denied Russia’s involvement.

 

“Russia has never waged cyberwarfare against anyone,” Andrey Akulchev, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said in a written statement Friday. “Russia believes that the cybersphere should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

And finally, there's a reference to the hilarious incident documented here earlier this year wherein Obama spied on Netanyahu only to discover that Netanyahu was spying on Obama:

Even Israel, a U.S. ally, was linked to hacking tools found on the computers of European hotels used for America’s diplomatic talks with Iran, according to the analysis of the spyware by a top cybersecurity firm. Israeli officials have denied spying on the U.S.

Here's an inforgraphic that shows which countries employ which specific types of cyber sabotage:

But the good news, as WSJ cheerfully reminds us, is that "many cybersecurity experts consider the U.S. government to have the most advanced operations [and the NSA to be] the crown creator of cyberespionage."

Which is great. Unless it's you they're spying on...

 

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Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:27 | 6660474 JustObserving
JustObserving's picture

The NSA was collecting 97 billion pieces of intelligence a month a few years ago per Snowden.  People had more privacy in Orwell's 1984.

The US maintains its empire with infinite spying on both its enemies and friends.  

27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine

http://www.globalresearch.ca/27-edward-snowden-quotes-about-u-s-governme...

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:32 | 6660505 ThirdWorldDude
ThirdWorldDude's picture

Funny how our old friend Israhell is mysteriously left out from the list...

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:38 | 6660541 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

Zuckerboig wants internet connectivity to be considered a human right and farsebook service provision to be provided by the EU in every refugee camp for the ME 'refugees'.

https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/mikle1.livejournal.com/5629738.html

 

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:57 | 6660598 knukles
knukles's picture

Zuckerberg's an asshole.

Tue, 10/13/2015 - 02:14 | 6661805 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

and facts are anti-semitic. The same old song.

 

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:47 | 6660559 spekulatn
spekulatn's picture

NSA patents filed

 

https://medium.com/silk-stories/behind-the-nsa-e0bf2c3a40c0

 

**the source is owned by twitter**

 

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 18:51 | 6660577 SMC
SMC's picture

…"the US has the most advanced operations"…

ROFL!!!   Funniest statement I have read all day.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 19:07 | 6660623 Demdere
Demdere's picture

I think that NSA is very good for its executive's investment potfolios.

Otherwise, they predict nothing because they can't, the future isn't predictable for anything important :

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/important-things-are-not-f...

NSA made a bad mistake with offensive cyber, our government is no longer even nominally under citizen's control :

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/us-federal-government-is-f...

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/08/02/the-tactics-of-the-defense...

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/cant-protect-it-dont-colle...

NSA will soon collect nothing

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/nsas-dilemma-and-mistake/

https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/peak-information/

Tue, 10/13/2015 - 02:17 | 6661809 HowdyDoody
HowdyDoody's picture

NSA collects info purely for retrospective use e.g. when some politico goes off message or some foreign ruler doesn't play ball with the US. It cares not one thing for actual terrorism acts, as such 'failures' would also serve to justify more power/money. In that sense, failure is built-in to the process.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 19:36 | 6660701 Chupacabra-322
Chupacabra-322's picture

The Criminal Fraud UNITED STATES ,CORP .INC. Economy can be summed up in a few parts.

1. QE, money printing & Ponzi
2. Exporting undeclared Wars.
3. Espionage.
4. Arming, funding & training terror organizations

That's it.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 19:39 | 6660714 Blue Horshoe Lo...
Blue Horshoe Loves Annacott Steel's picture

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 19:57 | 6660783 kaboomnomic
kaboomnomic's picture

US the most sophisticated cyberwarfare?
Haha.. Hahaha.. Hahahahahahahahaha...

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/top-official-admits-f-35-stealth-figh...

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2180366/malware-cybercrime/rsa-s-sec...

Dude ZH. That secureID? Used to guard banks data, money Transactions, DoD defense contractors database, FBI, Govt computers, and God knows what else.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_SecurID

My company use one. And RSA send the replacements.

US excels in cybersecurity?
WAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 20:00 | 6660795 Platinum
Platinum's picture

North Korea didn't hack Sony - It was an inside job. Also, that list is missing Israel for some reason, just like mentions of nukes.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 20:13 | 6660826 Recognizer
Recognizer's picture

Goes to show the power of loud accusations early on.  Doesn't even matter who did it, the headline at the time was that it was North Korea (despite the protests of every IT security firm under the sun.)  By the time it was shown to be a Sony employee most people had already lost interest.

Mon, 10/12/2015 - 21:06 | 6660972 yellowsub
yellowsub's picture

Considering the reach NSA has, no way it wouldn't know about those purported hacks from NK.

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