http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/12/cyber-command-lawyer-praises-stuxnet-disses-chinese-cyber-stanc/
"The Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian nuclear facilities – widely suspected to be an Israeli or even U.S. covert action – was a model of a responsibly conducted cyber-attack, said the top lawyer for the U.S. military's Cyber Command, Air Force Col. Gary Brown. By contrast, the Chinese stance, which holds that the international law of armed conflict does not apply in cyberspace, opens the door for indiscriminate online actions launched with less concern for collateral damage than was evident in Stuxnet, he warned, while a joint Russo-Chinese proposal for international collaboration on cyber-security could potentially threaten free speech. Brown emphasized that his remarks represented his own opinion and that he was not speaking for the U.S. government, but they still open a window into the thinking of an influential official on the cutting edge of policymaking on cyber war.
At a small gathering of students and faculty at Georgetown University, hosted by former CIA lawyer Catherine Lotrionte, Col. Brown hastened to Stuxnet's defense when this reporter raised the possibility of the worm having damaged systems outside Iran. The way Stuxnet was designed, "it looked like lawyers had been involved, because it was set to do no damage until it saw a very precise set of circumstances that doesn't exist anywhere except in Iran," said Brown, who has written on the legal ramifications of Stuxnet. "Also," he added, "it was set to expire," erasing itself from every infected machine this coming June 24th. Both those attributes suggest a conscientious effort to limit the online equivalent of "collateral damage," a particularly crucial concern when releasing a worm or virus to replicate itself across the internet, whose omnipresent connectivity means an attack aimed at a legitimate military target in one country can easily spread out of control to innocent civilian systems around the world. "Your normal terrorist or criminal doesn't care about what collateral damage happens," Brown said.
None of this means Stuxnet didn't constitute a "cyber attack," Col. Brown said, although he noted as a lawyer that that's a notoriously ill-defined term. The worm "destroyed maybe a thousand pieces of pretty sophisticated equipment being used by the Iranian government," he noted. "That physical damage is something that most people who study international law would say rises to a 'use of force,'" he said. From a common-sense perspective, he added, "it's really hard for me to get my head around the idea that something that breaks things isn't 'an attack.'"
But, Brown hastened to add, "it might be justified," for example as an act of self-defense under international law. (Another government official at the event went even further, suggesting taking such action against the Iranian nuclear program is positively required under international law, since the United Nations has identified the program as a potential threat to peace). What is critical is to apply the same tests of just cause, proportional response, and so on to a cyber-attack as to a conventional military strike, emphasized Brown, who in 2008-2009 served as the chief lawyer for the Combined Air Operations Center that runs air operations over Afghanistan and Iraq. "Before we would take action in cyberspace we would look at everything that's connected to that system," he said, "I think the activities we contemplate taking on the internet are very thought out and very precise."
By contrast, when China and other countries argue that the "law of armed conflict" does not apply to cyberspace, they implicitly set aside the legal obligation to do due diligence on collateral damage – among many other restrictions. "They could be looking to insure that actions that are currently considered to be 'espionage' aren't pushed under the law of armed conflict," Brown speculated. "Espionage has no rules, so it's a lawless regime....That's not true under the law of armed conflict, although the enforcement mechanism is somewhat lacking."
Meanwhile, the rules that China and Russia have jointly proposed for cyberspace raise serious concerns for the United States, Brown said, echoing comments by other U.S. officials. The proposed "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," also sponsored by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was put before the United Nations last fall. "Mostly, when you read through it, you'll think it sounds pretty good," said Brown. "The thing that makes me uncomfortable with the proposal [is that] essentially they treat 'information' as a separate category, as an area of national sovereignty.... [For example,] if Google wanted to go to China and make ways for Chinese folks to get around the firewall, the 'Great Firewall,' so they could communicate freely with the rest of the world, they would consider this an aggressive action [under the proposed pact] because 'information' is part of national sovereignty."
That's not where the United States wants to go, Brown said. As much as America wants to build defenses against online threats, its priority has to be "first, do no harm" to freedom of speech."
______________________
^ Riiiight--as if he really believes that or if he does, how laughably ignorant he is to what his Club of Rome/Bilderberg masters are doing anyways.
But they're not "evil" like those fake 9/11 terrorists, because the New World Order terrorists use "precision strike terrorism" which is "perfectly fine and 100% legal", AND is "self defense", AND is "required" under International law.
This is their rationale with the 2012 NDAA, because it entails "precision strike assassination of American citizens at will, while "minimizing collateral damage" to other American citizens."
"The Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian nuclear facilities – widely suspected to be an Israeli or even U.S. covert action – was a model of a responsibly conducted cyber-attack, said the top lawyer for the U.S. military's Cyber Command, Air Force Col. Gary Brown. By contrast, the Chinese stance, which holds that the international law of armed conflict does not apply in cyberspace, opens the door for indiscriminate online actions launched with less concern for collateral damage than was evident in Stuxnet, he warned, while a joint Russo-Chinese proposal for international collaboration on cyber-security could potentially threaten free speech. Brown emphasized that his remarks represented his own opinion and that he was not speaking for the U.S. government, but they still open a window into the thinking of an influential official on the cutting edge of policymaking on cyber war.
At a small gathering of students and faculty at Georgetown University, hosted by former CIA lawyer Catherine Lotrionte, Col. Brown hastened to Stuxnet's defense when this reporter raised the possibility of the worm having damaged systems outside Iran. The way Stuxnet was designed, "it looked like lawyers had been involved, because it was set to do no damage until it saw a very precise set of circumstances that doesn't exist anywhere except in Iran," said Brown, who has written on the legal ramifications of Stuxnet. "Also," he added, "it was set to expire," erasing itself from every infected machine this coming June 24th. Both those attributes suggest a conscientious effort to limit the online equivalent of "collateral damage," a particularly crucial concern when releasing a worm or virus to replicate itself across the internet, whose omnipresent connectivity means an attack aimed at a legitimate military target in one country can easily spread out of control to innocent civilian systems around the world. "Your normal terrorist or criminal doesn't care about what collateral damage happens," Brown said.
None of this means Stuxnet didn't constitute a "cyber attack," Col. Brown said, although he noted as a lawyer that that's a notoriously ill-defined term. The worm "destroyed maybe a thousand pieces of pretty sophisticated equipment being used by the Iranian government," he noted. "That physical damage is something that most people who study international law would say rises to a 'use of force,'" he said. From a common-sense perspective, he added, "it's really hard for me to get my head around the idea that something that breaks things isn't 'an attack.'"
But, Brown hastened to add, "it might be justified," for example as an act of self-defense under international law. (Another government official at the event went even further, suggesting taking such action against the Iranian nuclear program is positively required under international law, since the United Nations has identified the program as a potential threat to peace). What is critical is to apply the same tests of just cause, proportional response, and so on to a cyber-attack as to a conventional military strike, emphasized Brown, who in 2008-2009 served as the chief lawyer for the Combined Air Operations Center that runs air operations over Afghanistan and Iraq. "Before we would take action in cyberspace we would look at everything that's connected to that system," he said, "I think the activities we contemplate taking on the internet are very thought out and very precise."
By contrast, when China and other countries argue that the "law of armed conflict" does not apply to cyberspace, they implicitly set aside the legal obligation to do due diligence on collateral damage – among many other restrictions. "They could be looking to insure that actions that are currently considered to be 'espionage' aren't pushed under the law of armed conflict," Brown speculated. "Espionage has no rules, so it's a lawless regime....That's not true under the law of armed conflict, although the enforcement mechanism is somewhat lacking."
Meanwhile, the rules that China and Russia have jointly proposed for cyberspace raise serious concerns for the United States, Brown said, echoing comments by other U.S. officials. The proposed "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," also sponsored by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was put before the United Nations last fall. "Mostly, when you read through it, you'll think it sounds pretty good," said Brown. "The thing that makes me uncomfortable with the proposal [is that] essentially they treat 'information' as a separate category, as an area of national sovereignty.... [For example,] if Google wanted to go to China and make ways for Chinese folks to get around the firewall, the 'Great Firewall,' so they could communicate freely with the rest of the world, they would consider this an aggressive action [under the proposed pact] because 'information' is part of national sovereignty."
That's not where the United States wants to go, Brown said. As much as America wants to build defenses against online threats, its priority has to be "first, do no harm" to freedom of speech."
______________________
^ Riiiight--as if he really believes that or if he does, how laughably ignorant he is to what his Club of Rome/Bilderberg masters are doing anyways.
But they're not "evil" like those fake 9/11 terrorists, because the New World Order terrorists use "precision strike terrorism" which is "perfectly fine and 100% legal", AND is "self defense", AND is "required" under International law.
This is their rationale with the 2012 NDAA, because it entails "precision strike assassination of American citizens at will, while "minimizing collateral damage" to other American citizens."
|
DARPA switches to cyber offense
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/241/2789660/DARPA-switches-to-cyber-offense Friday - 3/16/2012, 4:31pm ET The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is switching to offense on the cyber field. DARPA Director Regina Dugan said new research will address military-specific ways to actually create cyber threats, not just develop ways to defend against them. An Infosecurity magazine report said DARPA considers a good offense one of the best ways to handle an evolving cybersecurity challenge. The cutting-edge agency has seen is cyber budget increasing of late — from $120 million in fiscal-year 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. _________________ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/24507/best-defense-is-a-good-offense-darpa-expands-offensive-cyber-research/ Best defense is a good offense: DARPA expands offensive cyber research 13 March 2012 The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is expanding its research into offensive cyber capabilities, DARPA Director Regina Dugan told a conference this week. DARPA is expanding its cyber research budget by $88 million, from $120 million in FY 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. Over the next five years, DARPA plans to increase its cyber research investment from 8% to 12% of its topline budget. Much of that expansion will focus on developing offensive cyber capabilities. “Malicious cyber attacks are not merely an existential threat to our bits and bytes. They are a real threat to our physical systems, including our military systems. To this end, in the coming years we will focus an increasing portion of our cyber research on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs”, Dugan told the DARPA Cyber Colloquium. Dugan explained that her agency has developed a cyber analytical framework intended to quantify the cyber threat and to explain why the US appears to be losing ground in the cybersecurity arena. “This analysis, completed over months through original research and detailed investigation, concluded that the US approach to cyber security is dominated by a strategy that layers security on to a uniform architecture. We do this to create tactical breathing space, but it is not convergent with an evolving threat. We discovered that we are losing ground because we are inherently divergent with the threat. Importantly, such divergences are the seeds of strategic surprise”, she said. “Our assessment argues that we are capability limited, both offensively and defensively. We need to fix that”, she concluded.
| |||||
No comments:
Post a Comment
Don't Troll, if you can't add anything helpful, don't post.