Analyst's note: Absolutely must read. Yes, this is real. Are you ready? Let me count how many years that I've been warning (in writing and briefings) about this vulnerability... it has now been over 31 years ....
“U.S. National Sanctuary’ is Lost to Information Warfare,” provided to NSA and National Defense University, Nov 1995
Documented discussions on the subject of “True Islam & Terrorism” with an Arab working at Westinghouse Facility in Linthicum, MD., provided to NSA, June 1995
“C3CM – A Deadly Art,” Journal of Electronic Defense Review, Apr 1982
“None So Deaf As Those Who Will Not Hear,” Officer Review, Jan 1982
“C3CM – Lessons from the Past,” Islamic Defense Review Vol 6/No. 2 1981
“Winning the Victory Before the Battle,” Signal May/June 1980
“Doctrinal Generalizations for C2 Warfare,” Journal of Electronic Defense, Jan/Feb 1980
Please read the entire original article for case examples.
The general in charge of U.S. cyberwarfare forces said Tuesday that future computer-based combat likely will involve electronic strikes that cause widespread power outages and even physical destruction of thousand-ton machines.
Army Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command, also said that massive losses of private and public data in recent years to computer criminals and spies represent the largest theft in history.
Threats posed by cyber-attacks on computer networks and the Internet are escalating from large-scale theft of data and strikes designed to disrupt computer operations to more lethal attacks that destroy entire systems and physical equipment.
“That’s our concern about what’s coming in cyberspace - a destructive element,” Gen. Alexander, who is also the director of the National Security Agency, the electronic spying agency, said in a speech at a conference on cyberwarfare.
Gen. Alexander said two cases illustrate what could happen in an attack.
[....]In developing cyberwarfare strategies, Gen. Alexander said, the U.S. will respond to computer-based attacks as it will to other attacks. The government is adopting what he termed an “active defense” strategy aimed at bolstering the readiness of computer networks to respond.
[....]“In cyber, we have not solved the defensive portion,” he said. “From my perspective, there is a lot that we can do to fix that before we take offensive actions.”
Response actions to cyber-attacks need to be carefully measured to avoid escalating from a conflict in the cyber-arena to full-scale conventional warfare, he said.
[....]On information theft, Gen. Alexander said the problem is so pervasive that there are two categories for major companies: firms that are aware they have been hacked and the rest who remain unaware of the problem.
“What’s been going on over the last few years in the networks … is the greatest theft that we’ve seen in history,” he said. “What we’re losing in intellectual property is astounding.”
The four-star general said estimates of the value of lost corporate and government information range as high as $1 trillion. In one recent case, a U.S. corporation that he did not identify by name lost $1 billion worth of proprietary technology that was “stolen by the adversaries.” The technology took the company more than 20 years to develop.
The problem is “on a massive scale that affects every industry and every sector of the economy and government, and it’s one that we have to get out in front of,” he said.
[....]Confronting foreign government complicates efforts to track cyber-activity, he said.
“Candidly, if every time we say, ‘We know you’re doing A,’ they say, ‘Oh, you can see that?’ We don’t see it anymore. We don’t see them for a while.” [....]
