Dave Farber
2018-06-24 01:06:44 UTC
Keio University Distinguished Professor
Tokyo Japan Cell +81 ââ70 4490 7275â¬â¬
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Tokyo Japan Cell +81 ââ70 4490 7275â¬â¬
Date: June 24, 2018 at 04:29:47 GMT+9
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why Hackers Aren't Afraid of Us
Why Hackers Arenât Afraid of Us
The United States has the most fearsome cyberweaponry on the planet, but we wonât use it for fear of what will come next
By David E. Sanger
Jun 16 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/sunday-review/why-hackers-arent-afraid-of-us.html>
WASHINGTON â Ask finance ministers and central bankers around the world about their worst nightmare and the answer is almost always the same: Sometime soon the North Koreans or the Russians will improve on the two huge cyberattacks they pulled off last year. One temporarily crippled the British health care system and the other devastated Ukraine before rippling across the world, disrupting shipping and shutting factories â a billion-dollar cyberattack the White House called âthe most destructive and costly in history.â
The fact that no intelligence agency saw either attack coming â and that countries were so fumbling in their responses â led a group of finance ministers to simulate a similar attack that shut down financial markets and froze global transactions. By several accounts, it quickly spun into farce: No one wanted to admit how much damage could be done or how helpless they would be to deter it.
Cyberattacks have been around for two decades, appearing in plotlines from âDie Hardâ movies to the new novel by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. But in the real world, something has changed since 2008, when the United States and Israel mounted the most sophisticated cyberattack in history on Iranâs nuclear program, temporarily crippling it in hopes of forcing Iran to the bargaining table. (The two countries never acknowledged responsibility for the attack.)
As President Barack Obama once feared, a cyberarms race of historic but hidden proportions has taken off. In less than a decade, the sophistication of cyberweapons has so improved that many of the attacks that once shocked us â like the denial-of-service attacks Iran mounted against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other banks in 2012, or North Koreaâs hacking of Sony in 2014 â look like tiny skirmishes compared with the daily cybercombat of today.
Yet in this arms race, the United States has often been its own worst enemy. Because our government has been so incompetent at protecting its highly sophisticated cyberweapons, those weapons have been stolen out of the electronic vaults of the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. and shot right back at us. Thatâs what happened with the WannaCry ransomware attack by North Korea last year, which used some of the sophisticated tools the N.S.A. had developed. No wonder the agency has refused to admit that the weapons were made in America: It raised the game of its attackers.
Nuclear weapons are still the ultimate currency of national power, as the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore last week showed. But they cannot be used without causing the end of human civilization â or at least of a regime. So itâs no surprise that hackers working for North Korea, Iranâs mullahs, Vladimir V. Putin in Russia and the Peopleâs Liberation Army of China have all learned that the great advantage of cyberweapons is that they are the opposite of a nuke: hard to detect, easy to deny and increasingly finely targeted. And therefore, extraordinarily hard to deter.
That is why cyberweapons have emerged as such effective tools for states of all sizes: a way to disrupt and exercise power or influence without starting a shooting war. Cyberattacks have long been hard to stop because determining where they come from takes time â and sometimes the mystery is never solved. But even as the United States has gotten better at attributing attacks, its responses have failed to keep pace.
Today cyberattackers believe there is almost no risk that the United States or any other power would retaliate with significant sanctions, much less bombs, troops or even a counter cyberattack. And though Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has said the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons to deter a huge non-nuclear attack, including using cyberweapons, against its electric grid and other infrastructure, most experts consider the threat hollow.
At his confirmation hearings in March to become director of the N.S.A. and commander of the United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone was asked whether our adversaries think they will suffer if they strike us with cyberweapons. âThey donât fear us,â General Nakasone replied.\\
[snip]
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-------------------------------------------Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why Hackers Aren't Afraid of Us
Why Hackers Arenât Afraid of Us
The United States has the most fearsome cyberweaponry on the planet, but we wonât use it for fear of what will come next
By David E. Sanger
Jun 16 2018
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/sunday-review/why-hackers-arent-afraid-of-us.html>
WASHINGTON â Ask finance ministers and central bankers around the world about their worst nightmare and the answer is almost always the same: Sometime soon the North Koreans or the Russians will improve on the two huge cyberattacks they pulled off last year. One temporarily crippled the British health care system and the other devastated Ukraine before rippling across the world, disrupting shipping and shutting factories â a billion-dollar cyberattack the White House called âthe most destructive and costly in history.â
The fact that no intelligence agency saw either attack coming â and that countries were so fumbling in their responses â led a group of finance ministers to simulate a similar attack that shut down financial markets and froze global transactions. By several accounts, it quickly spun into farce: No one wanted to admit how much damage could be done or how helpless they would be to deter it.
Cyberattacks have been around for two decades, appearing in plotlines from âDie Hardâ movies to the new novel by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. But in the real world, something has changed since 2008, when the United States and Israel mounted the most sophisticated cyberattack in history on Iranâs nuclear program, temporarily crippling it in hopes of forcing Iran to the bargaining table. (The two countries never acknowledged responsibility for the attack.)
As President Barack Obama once feared, a cyberarms race of historic but hidden proportions has taken off. In less than a decade, the sophistication of cyberweapons has so improved that many of the attacks that once shocked us â like the denial-of-service attacks Iran mounted against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other banks in 2012, or North Koreaâs hacking of Sony in 2014 â look like tiny skirmishes compared with the daily cybercombat of today.
Yet in this arms race, the United States has often been its own worst enemy. Because our government has been so incompetent at protecting its highly sophisticated cyberweapons, those weapons have been stolen out of the electronic vaults of the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. and shot right back at us. Thatâs what happened with the WannaCry ransomware attack by North Korea last year, which used some of the sophisticated tools the N.S.A. had developed. No wonder the agency has refused to admit that the weapons were made in America: It raised the game of its attackers.
Nuclear weapons are still the ultimate currency of national power, as the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Singapore last week showed. But they cannot be used without causing the end of human civilization â or at least of a regime. So itâs no surprise that hackers working for North Korea, Iranâs mullahs, Vladimir V. Putin in Russia and the Peopleâs Liberation Army of China have all learned that the great advantage of cyberweapons is that they are the opposite of a nuke: hard to detect, easy to deny and increasingly finely targeted. And therefore, extraordinarily hard to deter.
That is why cyberweapons have emerged as such effective tools for states of all sizes: a way to disrupt and exercise power or influence without starting a shooting war. Cyberattacks have long been hard to stop because determining where they come from takes time â and sometimes the mystery is never solved. But even as the United States has gotten better at attributing attacks, its responses have failed to keep pace.
Today cyberattackers believe there is almost no risk that the United States or any other power would retaliate with significant sanctions, much less bombs, troops or even a counter cyberattack. And though Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has said the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons to deter a huge non-nuclear attack, including using cyberweapons, against its electric grid and other infrastructure, most experts consider the threat hollow.
At his confirmation hearings in March to become director of the N.S.A. and commander of the United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul Nakasone was asked whether our adversaries think they will suffer if they strike us with cyberweapons. âThey donât fear us,â General Nakasone replied.\\
[snip]
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