Information and Cyber Warfare

Lesson 5

Governments at War

• The U.S. has been the target of widespread technological and industrial espionage – from our allies.

• In 1997, the American Society for Industrial Security identified several nations that routinely conduct industrial espionage against the U.S.• France• Germany• Israel• China• South Korea

• Four of these are considered Allies.

First real IW attack within 20 yrs

• From a 1996 GAO report to the DoD• “Defense officials and information systems security

experts believe that over 120 foreign countries are developing information warfare techniques. The techniques enable our enemies to seize control of or harm sensitive Defense information systems or public networks, which Defense relies upon for communications. Terrorists or other adversaries now have the United States to launch untraceable attacks from anywhere in the world.”

Information Warfare

• Information Warfare is about money. It’s about the acquisition of wealth and the denial of wealth to competitors.

• Information Warfare is about power. He who controls the information controls the money.

• Information Warfare is about fear. He who controls the information can instill fear in those who want to keep their secrets a secret.

• Information Warfare is about politics.• Information Warfare is about survival.

– Excerpts from Information Warfare by Winn Schwartau

Information Warfare

• “There’s a war out there, and it’s about who controls the information. It’s all about the information.”

– COSMO in “Sneakers”

• “Information is the currency of victory on the battlefield.”

– GEN Gordon Sullivan, CSA (1993)

Schwartau’s 3 classes of IW

• Class 1: Personal Information Warfare

• Class 2: Corporate Information Warfare

• Class 3: Global Information Warfare

What are some of the tools of IW?

• Traditional “hacker” tools such as sniffers and vulnerability scanners

• Van Eck devices• Malicious Software• Chipping• HERF guns and EMP bombs

• From Information Warfare by Winn Schwartau

Tool developmentFrom Corporate Espionage by Ira Winkler

Other

Hackers

Tool

Developers

Geniuses

Tools and Knowledge

Information about Targets

ForeignIntelligenceAgencies

Criminals

What is an act of war? • Article 51 of the UN Charter

• Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations

• Article 41• The Security Council may decide what measures not

involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal,telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

What is a valid target?

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuters) - U.S. President Bill Clinton has approved a top-secret plan to destabilize Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, using computer hackers to attack his foreign bank accounts and a sabotage campaign to erode his public support, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday. The magazine, in its May 23 edition, quoted sources as saying Clinton issued an intelligence "finding" allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to find "ways to get at Milosevic."

The finding would permit the CIA to train ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo in the art of sabotage, including such tricks as cutting telephone lines, fouling gasoline reserves and pilfering food supplies, the magazine said. The CIA also was instructed to wage a cyberwar against Milosevic, using computer hackers to tap into the Yugoslav president's foreign bank accounts, the magazine said.

Information Warfare

• Definition of Information Warfare:• 'Actions taken to achieve information

superiority by affecting an adversary information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks while defending one's own information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks.'

– Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction No. 3210.01

IW from “Cornerstones”

Information Warfare

• Michael Brown in “The Revolution in Military Affairs: The Information Dimension” described several aspects of IW.• May be aimed at the Nation or the military• Has three distinct phases

• Peace• Crisis• War

• Identified three types• Type I: Perception Management• Type II: Denial, Destruction, degradation, distortion• Type III: Exploiting enemy information flows

Recent IW

• 2013 Syrian Civil War: “Gassing Incident and Syrian Electronic Army Attacks”

• 2007 Estonia: Russian “patriots” wage campaign• 2009 DOS on Georgia:

In July 2009, it appeared to the Georgian government that it was being attacked by a presumed ally — the U.S., or at least from a civilian computer in U.S. territory. In August, cybersecurity experts observed a second, much larger wave of DDoS attacks against Georgian government Web sites. In response, the Georgian government took an unorthodox step and sought cyberrefuge in the U.S., Poland and Estonia. Within the U.S., Georgia located its cybercapabilities on servers at Tulip Systems (TSHost) in Atlanta, Ga., and at Google in California. When Estonia experienced a cyberattack in 2007, it essentially defended in place; Georgia, on the other hand, maneuvered. It elegantly relocated strategic IP-based cybercapabilities to other defensive points on the Internet, thereby ensuring continued war-time communications with Georgian citizens and forces. By doing so, the Georgian government partially defeated the botnet cyberattack by flowing a portion of its strategic C2 through the U.S. and other allies.

Ref: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/01/3801084

Protecting the National Infrastructures

• What are they?

• Systems so critical to the United States that their loss or damage would have serious impact on the functioning and operation of the nation.

Critical Infrastructures

• Information & Communication• Electrical Power Systems• Gas & Oil Production, Storage &

Transportation• Banking & Finance• Transportation• Water Supply Systems• Emergency Services• Government Services

Protecting the National Infrastructures

• What are they?• Who might attack?

• Criminals (drug cartels)• terrorists• crackers• governments

PSYOPS andPerception Management

• Perception Management:• information operations that aim to affect the

perceptions of others in order to influence their emotions, reasoning, decisions, and ultimately actions.

• PSYOPS (psychological operations)• aim to influence behavior by affecting the

human psyche through fear, desire, logic, and other mental factors.

Perception Management• Any medium can be exploited

• face-to-face communications, print, telecommunications, broadcast, and computer networks.

• PM often taken to mean media manipulation (for good or bad).

• NOT just a military function, also seen in• Politics• Advertising• everyday relationships

SOFTWAR (Chuck de Caro)

• “The hostile use of global television to shape another nation’s will by changing its vision of reality.”

• Global television offers parties a “cheap, accurate, real-time, politico-military intelligence service that simultaneously acts as an extremely potent instrument to affect adversely and directly the US domestic body politic.”

Softwar (example)• Haiti

• “A … Haitian dictator, using global TV as the ‘Poor Man’s I&W’ … judged the likely US reaction in the wake of revulsion at the video-tape of Rangers being killed and mutilated in Somalia. He optimized his political-military moves to forestall US intervention by having a handful of rabble assemble on a pier, mug angrily-on-cue for global TV while waving English-language placards. He thus turned away a US warship -- on a UN mission -- with nothing more than the video of an alleged mob that generated the perception of imminent bloodshed projected and amplified by TV. The perception was worsened by video coverage of the warship sailing away.”-- Chuck de Caro “Softwar”

• Somalia

Softwar (example)• L.A. rioting - skipping ignition pulse

• “In 1965, the Watts area of Los Angeles was a tinder-box, with an ‘ignition temperature’ set by local conditions of poverty, crime, racism and escalating tensions between the populace and the police. All that was needed was a localized ignition pulse; a spark that ironically came when the police arrested an intoxicated black motorist. Once ignited, the riot spread in the classic manner, outward from the center by word-of-mouth to the edges of Watts. By contrast, the 1992 Los Angeles upheaval, broadcast as-it-happened on global real-time TV sent an ignition pulse that set off simultaneous fires wherever the same ignition conditions existed, without a localized spark. The result was a ‘hopping phenomenon,’ generating riots in San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta and then even to Toronto, Canada.” -- Chuck de Caro, “Softwar”

The nature of TV• “Television, by its nature, is an effective, insidious and dangerous

medium for delivery of propaganda… television is a ‘cool’ medium that defines events by the viewer’s perception of images and sound, rather than of reality. “

• “Perception can be further distorted by various aspects of telegenics: lighting, sun angle, ‘star’ quality, voice quality, …”

• An example• “The Nixon-Kennedy debate during the 1960 Presidential election is one

example. The transcripts show a fairly even contest; those listening on radio felt strongly that Nixon had won. To the millions watching television, however, Kennedy’s natural camera appeal was enhanced by makeup and a dark suit and contrasted with a perspiring Nixon with a five-o’clock shadow, leaving the perception that Kennedy had won decisively.”

What can we trust on TV?

• 1st down line in football coverage

• Forrest Gump

• Wag the Dog

What’s in a name?

• Pro-choice -vs- Pro-life

• Florida Election• Fair -vs- Timely (or legal)

The incubator story

• During the invasion, Iraqi soldiers entered multiple Kuwaiti hospitals, removed babies from incubators, shipped the incubators back to Iraq, and left the babies on the floor.

• Story repeated often, several witnesses came forward.

The incubator story

• The players

Nayirah

The Testimony• Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi

reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait.

• "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

• -- John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War

Lying to Congress?• "The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of

congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied . . . Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations.

• -- John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War

The story continues• Hill & Knowlton had the baby incubator story repeated

before the United Nations Security Council chamber in an audiovisual presentation on November 27.

• The presentation was loaded with anonymous charges of Iraqi brutality and the reiteration of the baby incubator story. A Kuwaiti dentist, claiming to be a surgeon and using a false name, testified that under his supervision 120 newborn babies were buried in the second week of the invasion.

The incubator story

• The players

Nayirah

President Bush

President Bush• the baby incubator story was repeated six

times by George Bush in various political speeches, including a speech to the troops near Dhahran: • "It turns your stomach when you listen to the

tales of those that have escaped the brutality of Saddam the invader. Mass hangings. Babies pulled from incubators and scattered like firewood across the floor."

The incubator story

• The players

NayirahPresident BushCongressmenCitizens for a Free KuwaitCongressional Human Rights CaucusHill & Knowlton

Was it True?

• January 17, 1991 article by Alexander Cockburn in the Los Angeles Times openly challenged the incubator myth.

• According to London Amnesty International spokesman Sean Styles, "we spoke to well over a dozen doctors of different nationalities who had been in Kuwait at the time and they couldn't stand the story up, and it became quite clear to us that credible medical opinion was that this didn't happen."

• Amnesty International backed down from their original story in the seventh paragraph of a press release, stating that they had found • "no reliable evidence that Iraqi forces had caused the deaths of babies by removing

them or ordering their removal from incubators."

Was it True?• After the war, Middle East Watch was shown death certificates for 30

Kuwaiti babies who were all buried on August 24, 1990. Of those 30 babies, 19 had died before the Iraqi invasion began, and 11 died during the occupation. None of the 30 were ever shown to have been removed from incubators. All of the witnesses backed off from their original claims of having supervised or participated in the burial of babies.

• Andrew Whitley, executive director of Middle East Watch, and part of a two-man investigation in Kuwait, was quoted as having said:• "Soon after we arrived in Kuwait, two weeks after the liberation it became

apparent that the story was a complete hoax. We were able to go 'round the hospitals to count the incubators and find that - possibly with one or two that had been misplaced - that none were missing. So none of the incubators were removed in the first place. Moreover, it seemed quite clear that there weren't any deaths which had been deliberately the cause of the Iraqis having gone in and stolen equipment."

What was the effect?

• The final decision to go to war was made on January 12, 1991 in a Senate vote of 52 to 47 (a margin of 3). Before passing this resolution, six pro-war senators specifically brought forth the baby incubator allegations in their speeches supporting the resolution.• OPERATION DESERT STORM:OUTRIGHT DISINFORMATION SCHEME by David Fingrut

• Without this story, would there have been a war?

Hill & Knowlton

• 100+ individuals worked on the campaign• $11M in fees• They present themselves as an international

PR firm• Interesting background considering their

Integrity statement

Hill & Knowlton

Washington State suit against tobacco industry

• The defendants are American Tobacco; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co., Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., United State Tobacco Co., B.A.T. Industries P.L.C. and related organizations, including Hill & Knowlton, The Council for Tobacco Research-USA Inc., Smokeless Tobacco Council and the Tobacco Institute.

Tobacco PR• Legendary PR figures John Hill, Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays

(now revered within the industry as the "father of public relations") all worked on PR for tobacco, pioneering techniques that today remain the PR industry's stock in trade: third-party advocacy, subliminal message reinforcement, junk science, phony front groups, advocacy advertising, and buying favorable news reporting with advertising dollars.

• To persuade women cigarette smoking could help them stay beautiful, Bernays developed a campaign based on the slogan, "Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet." The campaign played on women's worries about their weight and increased Lucky sales threefold in just 12 months. (The message, "cigarettes keep you thin," reverberates today in the brand name Virginia Slims.)

Tobacco and PR Crisis

• IN 1952, READER'S Digest ran an influential article titled "Cancer by the Carton." A 1953 report by Dr. Ernst L. Wynder heralded to the scientific community a definitive link between cigarette smoking and cancer.

• For help, the tobacco industry turned to John Hill, the founder of the PR megafirm, Hill & Knowlton. Hill designed a brilliant and expensive campaign the tobacco industry is still using today in its fight to save itself from public rejection and governmental action.

Hill’s campaign• At Hill’s suggestion, the industry created a group called the Tobacco Institute

Research Committee (TIRC), and ran a full-page ad, titled "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers," in more than 400 newspapers. The ad acknowledged tobacco companies had a "special responsibility" to the public, and promised to sponsor "independent research" aimed at "learning the facts about smoking and health.”

• The TIRC maintained a library with cross-indexed medical and scientific papers from 2,500 medical journals, as well as press clippings, government reports and other documents. TIRC employees culled this library for scientific data with inconclusive or contrary results regarding tobacco and the harm to human health. These were compiled into a carefully selected 18-page booklet, titled "A Scientific Perspective on the Cigarette Controversy," which was mailed to over 200,000 people, including doctors, members of Congress and the news media.

Tobacco PR (cont.)• In 1963 the TIRC changed its name to the Council for Tobacco Research. In

addition to this "scientific" council, Hill & Knowlton helped set up a separate PR and lobbying organization, the Tobacco Institute.

• Philip Morris is fighting back through a California PR firm called the Dolphin Group. Dolphin CEO Lee Stitzenberger used a half-million dollars from Philip Morris to set up a front group called "Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions." Using this deceptive name, NSA members gathered signatures to put a referendum on the California ballot in November 1994, which the Dolphin Group promoted with billboards reading, "Yes on 188--Tough Statewide Smoking Restrictions--The Right Choice." In reality, Proposition 188 was a pro-tobacco referendum which, if passed, would have undermined 270 existing local anti-smoking ordinances in California cities, as well as the state's new statewide smoke-free workplace law.

Tobacco Advertising

Tobacco Advertising

Tobacco Advertising

The Marlboro Man

Image is important...

To sum it all up...

-- http://www.desert.net/tw/11-22-95/cover.htm