Eric Martindale

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/

On the Ongoing Attacks between China, U.S., Russia, Israel, etc.…
The latest round of evidence of ongoing digital warfare between the superpowers is now being reported in the N.Y. Times [1] after an undeniably incriminating 60-page report on the Chinese attacks on the U.S. by security firm Mandiant [2].

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398, or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”
                                                    — Kevin Mandia

The report goes on to track individual participants in the attack, tracing them back to the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398.

Attacks from the Chinese have been ongoing for many years, notably back to Operation Titan Rain [3] in 2003, in which attackers gained access to military intelligence networks at organizations such as Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Laboratories, Redstone Arsenal, and NASA [4].  Direct military targets were also included in the assault, such as the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Virginia, the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, California, and the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Alabama [5]. 

These ongoing attacks are labeled "Advanced Persistent Threats" or "APT" by the American Military, are considered acts of war by both the White House [6] and the Department of Defense [7] as far back as 2011, and are not unique to the Chinese origins.  You may remember the 2007 attacks on Estonia [8], which has been attributed to entities within Russian territory operating with the assistance of the Russian government [9].  These attacks disabled a wide array of Estonian government sites, rendering services in the world's most digitally-connected country unusable.  The attacks also disabled ATM machines, effectively disabling some portion of the Estonian economy.

The United States [and arguably Israel, [10]] have also been actively participating in these attacks [11] with the deploying of FLAME and Stuxnet against Iran, which made international headlines this past year when the coordinated efforts of the tools were used to disable Iranian nuclear centrifuges in an attempt to slow their progress in their nuclear program [12].  These efforts are ongoing, with the latest addition of the Gauss and Duqu malwares [13] continuing to target middle-eastern countries.

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
                                                    — +The New York Times

Obama reportedly went on to sign a classified directive last year [14] enabling the government to seize control of private networks, and the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) includes terms [15, section 954] that authorize offensive attacks on foreign threats [16].  The official United States policy already is to deem any cyberattack on the U.S. as an "act of war" [17], and it looks like these types of actions and attacks have already been made legal.

While it may once have been a subject of fiction [18], it's now and has been a harsh reality that we're in the middle of a new era in warfare, and the battles are already well-underway as countries around the world are openly engaging in offensive attacks on one another that are impacting economies on a massive scale.  I don't know what else to call this other than a world war—even the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI) predicted this [19], as have many others even earlier [20].  

Here's a thought; if our constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and the government deems these types of attacks as acts of war, then isn't it our right to keep and bear these arms?  Yet another case for a mass-algorate society [21], which Mr. Obama appears to agree with me on [22], at the very least.

[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tied-to-hacking-against-us.html
[2]: http://intelreport.mandiant.com/
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
[4]: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1098371,00.html
[5]: http://www.zdnet.com/news/security-experts-lift-lid-on-chinese-hack-attacks/145763
[6]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
[7]: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576355623135782718.html
[8]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
[9]: http://www.vedomosti.ru/smartmoney/article/2007/05/28/3004
[10]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[11]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all
[12]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11388018
[13]: http://www.zdnet.com/meet-gauss-the-latest-cyber-espionage-tool-7000002405/
[14]: http://endthelie.com/2012/11/15/obama-reportedly-signs-classified-cyberwarfare-policy-directive-with-troubling-implications/#axzz2LMPlf8iA
[15]: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf
[16]: http://endthelie.com/2011/12/17/approval-of-covert-offensive-cyberwar-sneakily-inserted-into-ndaa/
[17]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/06/05/the-white-house-and-pentagon-deem-cyber-attacks-an-act-of-war/
[18]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
[19]: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/new_face_of_war.html
[20]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reprints/2007/RAND_RP223.pdf
[21]: https://plus.google.com/112353210404102902472/posts/MVQXyw9EJDE
[22]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57569503-1/obama-endorses-required-high-school-coding-classes/