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Body of murdered cyberwar expert found in landfill Military man dumped into three-ring whodunit Dan Goodin January 5, 2010 The body of a decorated US Army officer was found dumped in a Delaware landfill on New Years Eve day, a few days after he expressed concern that the nation wasn't adequately prepared for cyber warfare, according to news reports following the bizarre whodunit. Events surrounding the murder of John P. Wheeler III, who most recently worked part-time for defense contractor Mitre Corporation on cyber defense topics, read like a Tom Clancy novel. The 66-year-old worked for three Republican administrations, was...

      WASHINGTON — It's a tough time to be a member of the U.S. armed forces. Those serving in our all-volunteer military — and their families — are stretched and stressed by more than nine years of war. Unfortunately, our commander in chief — supposedly the champion of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines — isn't doing anything to make serving in uniform any easier. President Barack Obama — fresh from his 3 1/2-hour "visit" to Afghanistan — continues to insist that the U.S. Senate act immediately to allow active homosexuals to serve in the military....

War is transforming itself before our eyes, turning into something unfamiliar and strange. Information has taken a place as a major class of weaponry, with sabotage and subterfuge as preferred tactics. On the new battlefield, these weapons are available not only to nation-states, but to organizations and even individuals. The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is something that ought to be more widely known than it is.

The Wikileaks organization has morphed from a relatively harmless aid to government whistleblowers into a threat to U.S. national security. It should be treated accordingly. As with the July dump of Afghan war documents, the mainstream press has attempted to kindle story lines from the Iraq war data dump that imply scandal, particularly regarding civilian casualties. But once again, the information is underwhelming. There are no smoking guns except for some inconvenient truths about the actual existence of Saddam Hussein's weapons-of-mass-destruction program and Iranian involvement in Iraq's insurgency. For the most part, however, this type of information was well known...

A sophisticated worm designed to steal industrial secrets and disrupt operations has infected at least 14 plants, according to Siemens. Called Stuxnet, the worm was discovered in July when researchers at VirusBlokAda found it on computers in Iran. It is one of the most sophisticated and unusual pieces of malicious software ever created—the worm leveraged a previously unknown Windows vulnerability (now patched) that allowed it to spread from computer to computer, typically via USB sticks. The worm, designed to attack Siemens industrial control systems, has not spread widely. However, it has affected a number of Siemens plants, according to company...

SNIPPET: "Oops, Microsoft did it again. Part of the company’s Government Security Program (GSP), Microsoft has offered the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) a peek inside the source code of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server. This is the second time that the company has (publicly) shared source code with the FSB, following a similar deal which took place in 2002, this time involving source code for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2000. Microsoft has done similar deals with China in 2003, and most recently in 2010. However, in the light of...

The Pentagon would consider a military response in the case of a cyber attack against the United States, a US defense official said on Wednesday. Asked about the possibility of using military force after a cyber assault, James Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy, said: "Yes, we need to think about the potential for responses that are not limited to the cyber domain." But he said it remained unclear what constituted an act of war in cyberspace. "Those are legal questions that we are attempting to address," Miller said at a conference in Washington, adding that "there are certainly a...

In response to the continuous compromise of networks, multiple countries have begun developing secure platforms and operating systems. Computer companies, university researchers, defense R&D contractors and militaries around the world recognize the criticality of networks and embedded processors within their equipment. They also recognize how vulnerable they are and that’s why so much attention is being given to building in security at every level of the system including the operating system. As discussed here, China’s Trusted Computing Platform (TCP) program has been underway for some time now and can be traced back to the early 2000s. The Chinese TCP includes...

National Security: Aiming at a world where nuclear weapons are obsolete, the administration's nuclear posture review leaves a world without American nuclear weapons and the backbone to use them. After his stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that all that had been accomplished was to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. Under policies announced by the Obama administration, a devastating chemical or biological attack on this country might merely awaken our very own Hamlet and fill him with a terrible sense of angst. We have said before that rather...

BEIJING—China-based hackers stole Indian national-security information, 1,500 emails from the Dalai Lama's office and other sensitive documents, a new report said Tuesday. Researchers at the University of Toronto said they were able to observe the hacking and trace it to core servers located in China and to people based in the southwestern city of Chengdu. The researchers said they monitored the hacking for the past eight months. The report said it has no evidence of involvement by the Chinese government, but it again put Beijing on the defensive. Separate reports earlier this year said security investigators had traced attacks on...

Many nations are taking advantage of the Internet to encourage, or even organize, patriotic Internet users to obtain hacking skills. This enables the government to use (often informally) these thousands of hackers to attack enemies (foreign or domestic.) These organizations arrange training and mentoring to improve the skills of group members. Turkey has over 44,000 of these hackers, Saudi Arabia has over 100,000, Iraq has over 40,000, Russia over 100,000 and China, over 400,000. While many of these Cyber Warriors are rank amateurs, even the least skilled can be given simple tasks. And out of their ranks will emerge more...

In 2018, the U.S. Navy hopes to take a major step toward fielding a cyber-attack system on a tactically survivable, fighter-size aircraft. Although researchers are cautious about discussing their cyberwarfare and electronic attack projects, one company states that it is "developing a weapon system that can deliver cyber-effects through free space into an aperture." That opaque explanation refers to a cyber-weapon, sized for a tactical aircraft or UAV, that can create a long-range data stream -- most likely from an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) emitter. The emitter will function both as radar and the source of these uniquely tailored...

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress. Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

The United States is building an elite cyber defence team to guard the nation's public and private computer systems, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday. "We need the best brains we can bring to bear on meeting the challenge," Napolitano told computer security specialists at a premier RSA Conference. "We are building one of the best teams anywhere, but our success depends in no small part on our ability to collaborate with the private sector." She challenged those at the conference to join forces with the department and help teach people the importance of protecting themselves from online crooks...

US national security leaders and top cyber warriors from around the world are gathering here to plot defenses against criminals and spies that increasingly plague the Internet. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House Cyber Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt will take part in this week's RSA conference along with computer defense companies and technology icons such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Craigslist creator Craig Newmark. "We have before us more data moving into the cloud and more sophisticated cyber criminals," said Qualys chief executive Philippe Courtot, who is among the keynote speakers at the premier event that kicks...

Citing the need to take stronger measures against cyber warfare, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, demanded that access to the Internet be restricted to “licensed drivers.” “We wouldn’t let a person get behind the wheel of a car without a license, so why should we allow just anyone with a computer to cruise the web?” Mundie asked. Mundie contended that by screening those who want to use the Internet, “governments could dramatically reduce the incidence of hostile actions against them. Making those who want to use the web prove they are no threat to the government...

In the last few months, major Russian newspapers, that have been critical of the government, have been attacked by hackers. Currently, Novaya Gazeta, highly respected for its investigative reporting, has had its web site shut down by hackers for a week (via a powerful DDOS attack). Novaya Gazeta publishes three issues a week, and its reporting is picked up globally via its web site. Novaya Gazeta's reporting has certainly upset some people, as four of their reporters have been murdered in the past nine years. Last November, hackers broke into the web site of mass audience (circulation of a million)...

Less than two years after the U.S. Air Force officially dumped its planned Cyber Command, it's scaled-back replacement, the 24th Air Force, recently officially opened for business. Over the past five years, the air force has been trying to establish a new Cyber War operation and use it to gain overall control for all Department of Defense Cyber War activities. The other services were not keen on this. That resistance, plus internal problems (losing track of nuclear weapons, cost overruns on new aircraft, inability to perform on the battlefield) led to the Cyber Command operation being scaled back to being...

In a paper published by the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Major General Amos Yadlin of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), in the Intelligence Research Center Journal, described the development of cyberwarfare, computer attacks in the 21st century, and the capabilities required from armies to fight this medium successfully. According to Maj. Gen. Yadlin, cyberwarfare is divided into three areas: intelligence gathering, defense and attack. "Anyone who is able to hack (personal computers, cell phones and internet) ends up knowing quite a lot. If you catch my drift," warned the Military Intelligence chief in the article. "Just imagine the...

The United States faces an evolving list of potential adversaries in the 21st century that not only continue to seek weapons of mass destruction, but are honing the skills necessary to wage battle in cyberspace as well as outer space, a panel of national security experts said Jan. 20. The nature of warfare has changed significantly since the end of the 20th century, with new technologies and threats emerging faster than ever, U.S. Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, said during a panel discussion at the Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy here. The...