[iwar] [fc:Wired.warfare:.How.government.hackers.are.transforming.the.Internet.into.a.tool.for.spying]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-16 15:30:12
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 15:30:12 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Wired.warfare:.How.government.hackers.are.transforming.the.Internet.into.a.tool.for.spying]
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Wired warfare: How government hackers are transforming the Internet into a tool for spying on terrorists and hostile states 
By Alex Roslin, The Montreal Gazette, 10/16/2001
No URL available. 
A s U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld unleashes a "shadow war" of
covert special-forces operations against terrorist Osama bin Laden, he
is sending into action many high-tech warriors who have neither guns nor
grenades, and whose combat missions won't take them anywhere near
Afghanistan. 
Their brand of fighting goes by the innocent-sounding term of "computer
network exploitation." Most people would simply call them computer
hackers. 
But unlike rebellious teenagers sitting at their bedroom computers,
these hackers work for intelligence agencies and have advanced training
in computer science, math and cryptology. 
No government agency in Canada or the U.S. has acknowledged that it
employs hackers to break into computers. That information is secret
because the targets of "computer exploitation" are not just terrorists
like bin Laden and hostile states. The targets can just as easily be
citizens at home, trade negotiators and diplomats from friendly
countries, or foreign businessmen bidding against a domestic company. 
In this exclusive Montreal Gazette report, some of North America's top
intelligence, military and computer experts talk about how government
hackers are transforming the Internet into a tool for spying and
warfare. 
They say U.S. spy agencies, and very likely Canadian ones too, have been
hacking into computers for years. Right now, they say, hacking plays an
important role in U.S. President George W. Bush's war against bin Laden
and his supporters. 
While there are few computers in Afghanistan, where bin Laden is said to
be hiding, government hackers may prove critical in tracking down his
bank accounts and business fronts around the world, said intelligence
expert Jon Concheff, who spent 21 years in the U.S. Special Forces. 
Hacking, he said, "is a logical and critical adjunct to the revivified
campaign against terrorism." 
Canada's military says it wants to engage in hacking, too. In June, one
of Canada's top commanders in "computer operations," Col. Randy Alward,
announced that the Canadian Forces want to include hacking in their
military arsenal. Under the policy, military hackers would be trained to
disable communication systems, destroy electronic information and plant
destructive computer viruses. 
But experts caution that hacking is a dangerous and unpredictable new
tool. 
"I think this is perilous. I'm more worried about what states are doing
than Mafiaboy," said Ron Deibert, a University of Toronto professor who
studies the Internet and has been an external examiner on computer
warfare at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. (Mafiaboy is a
Montreal teen who pleaded guilty this year to hacking into U.S. Web
sites.) 
A leading Canadian military expert in computer warfare said government
hacking could come back to haunt ordinary citizens. 
"When we talk about information warfare, people don't see it applies to
them. But it does. We've created this social space (on the Internet),
and conflict is moving into it," said Robert Garigue, a retired Canadian
Forces lieutenant-commander, now the Bank of Montreal's vice-president
for information security. "Every decision you make is mediated by
computer. In that sense, the computer layer becomes very powerful when
you can manipulate it." 
Impressing the Top Brass 
Computer spying couldn't have been born in a prettier place. Nestled
into the side of Colorado's majestic 4,300-metre Pikes Peak, Schriever
Air Force Base lies where the rolling plains meet the eastern wall of
the Rockies. 
The facility controls all of the U.S. Defence Department's classified
satellites, and is home to President Bush's National Missile Defence
project. 
In July 1994, the base saw a history-making demonstration by Kevin
Ziese, a computer scientist in the newly created U.S. Air Force
Information Warfare Center. The top brass was out in force as Ziese
showed how to hack into a computer system. 
He refused to say what he broke into ("I don't feel comfortable going
into details"), but it is clear the exercise impressed the generals.
"Once you see a demonstration of how to break into a computer system, it
doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize it has an offensive
capability," he said. 
Shortly after, the U.S. military created its first organized information
warfare program to train super-hackers. One of their jobs would be
computer exploitation, stealing sensitive information and leaving enough
secret backdoors so they can sneak back into a computer. 
Ziese refused to provide details of U.S. government hacking operations,
but likened them to clandestine special-forces missions now employed in
Afghanistan. "I would draw an analogy between computer exploitation and
special-forces exploitation. There are clearly cases where (sending in)
the special forces makes good sense, but they would be relatively few.
This would be equally true for computer exploitation," he said. 
"Their job is to dig in what's in computers that hold views that may be
harmful to the U.S.," said Hal Gershanoff, editor of the Journal of
Electronic Defense, a Norwood, Mass.-based monthly published by the
Association of Old Crows, which groups experts in computer warfare. 
In bin Laden's case, U.S. government hackers don't have many targets in
Afghanistan, but they could break into computers of his businesses,
wealthy associates and followers elsewhere, said Winn Schwartau, an
information-warfare expert who advises the U.S. Defence Department. As
well, they could target banks that don't collaborate with the U.S. to
freeze terrorist-linked accounts. 
"It would be really stupid of us not to do a computer network attack
into their systems," he said. 
Government hackers can also have a more destructive mission -- attacking
or manipulating sensitive computer networks. This quickly becomes
computer warfare - what the media sometimes calls cyber-warfare. Most
experts are loath to discuss such operations, but some suggest that
hackers can bring a country to its knees and cause as much damage as
nuclear weapons -- shutting down power grids, air-traffic control,
emergency services and telecommunications. 
Ironically, this means hacking is a double-edged sword for countries
like Canada and the U.S., which are far more vulnerable to being
attacked themselves than low-tech opponents like bin Laden. The Canadian
Security Intelligence Service has reported that Russia, China, India and
Cuba are busy trying to catch up to the West in computer warfare,
developing expertise that could one day threaten our computer-dependent
societies. 
Shrouded in Secrecy 
The U.S. Special Forces soldiers sent into Afghanistan to hunt down bin
Laden are packing more than rifles and survival gear. They went armed
with high-tech communications links that would feed them the latest
intelligence from the U.S. National Security Agency. The NSA is so
secret, its existence wasn't even acknowledged until the 1970s. Yet,
it's thought to have a budget of over $11 billion a year and more
employees than the CIA and FBI combined. 
The NSA's job -- like that of its Canadian sister agency, the
Communications Security Establishment -- is to collect signals
intelligence (SIGINT in spy lingo) by filtering through rivers of local
and international phone calls, faxes, satellite transmissions and
e-mail. 
Their role has been redefined by the digital age. Now, instead of
passively waiting around to catch messages in the sky - known as
midpoint collection -- they can reach through the airwaves right into a
computer -- endpoint collection. Some dub it HACKINT. Intelligence
historian James Bamford calls it the "the most profound change in the
history of signals intelligence." 
"Throughout most of its history, the NSA has been considered as a
support organization to war fighters. But what the NSA is saying now is
they won't play the support role. They will play an active role," said
Bamford, author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National
Security Agency. 
"They will be on the front line in taking offensive actions." 
Bamford said much of the NSA's "endpoint collection" is being done
through a hyper-secretive agency called the Special Collection Service,
based in Beltsville, Md. The U.S. government has never officially
acknowledged its existence. 
The service was set up in the late 1970s to combine the physical
penetration skills of the CIA with the technical expertise of the NSA,
and is jointly run by both agencies, said Washington, D.C., intelligence
analyst John Pike. "It's the black-bag, breaking-and-entering, Mission
Impossible-type agency." 
The only inside account of this agency comes from a Canadian, Mike
Frost, a retired veteran of the Communications Security Establishment.
In his 1994 book Spyworld, Frost said the mysterious U.S. service, known
to insiders as College Park, specializes in secret missions from U.S.
embassies abroad.

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