| | | Commentary: Don't be so sure Russia hacked the Clinton emails
reuters.com
A week later, Vice President Joe Biden said on NBC’s Meet the Press that "we're sending a message" to Putin and "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact." When asked if the American public would know a message was sent, Biden replied, "Hope not."
Remark - very smart
On Monday, the Shadow Brokers released more information, including what they claimed is a list of hundreds of organizations that the NSA has targeted over more than a decade, complete with technical details. This offers further evidence that their information comes from a leaker inside the NSA rather than the Kremlin.
The Shadow Brokers also discussed Obama’s threat of cyber retaliation against Russia. Yet they seemed most concerned that the CIA, rather than the NSA or Cyber Command, was given the assignment. This may be a possible indication of a connection to NSA’s elite group, Tailored Access Operations, considered by many the A-Team of hackers.
Remark - not at all idiots
That could then trigger a major retaliatory cyberattack against the U.S. cyber infrastructure, which would call for another reprisal attack ? potentially leading to Clarke’s fear of a cyberwar triggering a conventional war. President Barack Obama has also not taken a nuclear strike off the table as an appropriate response to a devastating cyberattack.
It was determined that the explosion was caused by computer code sent from hundreds of miles away. But how or why was the question. Even within U.S. Cyber Command, there were grave concerns about the blast. One Army study that discussed the explosion referred to Marine General Robert E. Schmidle, the deputy commander of Cyber Command, and suggested that he had “speculated this was a possible network attack.”
Shortly after the power-plant explosion, computers at the U.S. Department of the Interior were targeted and an unknown hacker stole a sensitive index of vulnerabilities at thousands of U.S. dams.
Remark - actual geniuses
Obama was told that the computer viruses would not escape the facility, would not affect any other computers if they did escape, and would never be traced back to the United States in any case.
All three claims turned out to be incorrect. The viruses did escape, they infected tens of thousands of computers in many countries and they were quickly traced back to the United States. The operation was also a bust: It destroyed a small fraction of the intended centrifuges and only slightly delayed Iran’s enrichment. It also caused Iran to create its own cyber command and retaliate by destroying 30,000 computers belonging to a U.S. oil supplier. U.S. banks were also attacked.
Rather than launch a dangerous covert cyberattack with unknown consequences ?as the administration did against Iran ? it would be far wiser for Obama to press for further economic sanctions, as the administration did with North Korea. At the same time, Washington could begin focusing on cyber defense, long neglected as billions go instead to cyber offense.
Remark - unbelieved wisdom
“I think the public believes that the U.S. government – Cyber Command, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security – has the capability to defend the electric power grid, pipelines, trains, banks that could be attacked by other nations through cyber,” Clarke told me. “The truth is the government doesn’t have the capability, doesn’t have the legal authority and doesn’t have a plan to do it.”
Washington could also begin exploring new Internet and cyber technologies that are not as easy to attack and destroy, as well as opening an international dialogue on ways to achieve cyberarms control.
“People say that’s going to be very, very difficult and verification will be very, very hard,” said Clarke. “I heard that a long time ago about nuclear arms control and then about chemical-arms control – about biological-arms control. But we achieved all of those . . . . Therefore, we should start talking about cyberarms control and cyber peace now.”
Starting with Vietnam, the list of wars the United States has entered with disastrous results continues to grow. Engaging Russia in a potentially endless cyberwar based on questionable evidence will only make it longer. It’s time to find better alternatives. |
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