By Jim Tiller, Vice President, Security Professional Services, North America, BT Global Services
There are a number of folks in the security industry who have downplayed the realities of cyberwar. In some circles, the conversation of cyberwar will elicit some interesting reactions and many tend to deny its potency relative to traditional warfare and traditional weapons.
Moreover, many begin to blur the lines between cyberwar, cyberterrorism and other cyberattack scenarios, confusing the topic. In virtually every conversation of this nature, I’m the one who stands out as the lone voice saying they’re not only wrong, but woefully underestimating the situation.
Throughout history, advances in weapon technology have dramatically changed the battlefield. Everything and anything that can be used as a weapon that offers even the slightest advantage over your enemy will be developed and deployed.
Folks… it is war. Therefore, within this context, cyberspace has evolved from “advantage acquisition” to weaponization because the battlefield now includes the virtual domain.
Early uses of cyber assets mostly took the form of intelligence gathering to establish situational awareness and, of course, counter intelligence. Moreover, technologies were employed to advance communications and support accurate mobilization of resources. For example, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), as part of the next generation strike fighter, multi-variation platform F-35, has highly sophisticated computers and communications to align multiple forces for effective, real-time battlefield management. Cyber has allowed for air, sea and ground assets to work together so there is a unified view of battlefield conditions and enemy activity.
The move to weaponization of cyber technologies is in full swing. Initially, weaponization in cyberspace involved taking hacker tools and tactics and refining them to be more effective, not unlike riffling of cannon barrels. It is converting something that is reasonably dangerous and can be generally targeted into a manageable device that can be consistently developed, effectively deployed, and accurately directed at the target. And it produces the intended results by effectively exploiting vulnerabilities in the enemy’s defenses.
A simple example is malware, which comes in multiple forms with a wide range of impact potential. However, much of what we experience today is indiscriminant because a common hacker’s mission is to infect any system and as many as possible to build a botnet for dishing out spam or causing havoc. Clearly, the concept is sound but is not conducive to the ultimate role of a weapon.
A meaningful aspect of weaponization is refinement so that it can be accurately targeted and its impact controlled. Even malware in the wild has been weaponized, retaining its viral, self-propagating features; but it includes highly sophisticated methods to operate in a predictable manner and submit to in-flight commands to adjust to changes in the environment.
However, today’s weaponization has moved well into the development of completely new forms of cyberweapons. Things that have been researched, developed, tested, and refined from scratch, creating completely new types of weapons – not unlike the hydrogen bombs of WWII – they are game changers. These new weapons employ comprehensive targeting capabilities, have the ability to effectively navigate cyberspace, comprise a wide spectrum of impact control, and have multipurpose functionality that can change on command or autonomously, based on interpreted conditions.
Fundamentally, cyberweapons are no different from a guided missile. But instead of traversing the physical domain, they travel across the virtual domain. In fact, as I write this, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is developing (and have likely completed) a cyber range – an environment for test firing cyberweapons.
Make no mistake — weaponization of cyberspace is a reality.
