Tag Archives: cyber bomb

“Russian Hackers” brand

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The media constantly speculate about what “Russian hackers” are doing against Western targets. Publications such as The New York Times are increasingly concerned about “Russian hackers” in the energy and financial sectors in particular:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/technology/energy-sector-faces-attacks-from-hackers-in-russia.html?nlid=58721173&src=recpb

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/07/russian-arrested-in-guam-on-array-of-u-s-hacking-charges/

The term “Russian hackers” needs some clarification. Cyber operations in Russia are conducted by numerous entities with vastly different objectives, resources,  and constraints.

At least one distinct Russian military entity is tasked with infiltrating the critical infrastructure of potential adversaries, planting electronic/cyber bombs that can be activated when ordered, with a devastating result that would only be surpassed by a massive nuclear strike. This activity has been successfully carried out against the US for decades, and several generations of this malware are now sitting all over our critical infrastructure. Top American experts have deemed it practically impossible to detect and eliminate this malware. Welcome to the real world.

Totally different tasks are assigned to other Russian government entities. Acquiring technical/technological intelligence has been a traditional Russian favorite, and has become significantly more aggressive with the opportunities presented by cyberspace. This kind of  intelligence can save a lot of research money, effort and time while providing solutions with minimal delays. In the energy sector this is particularly significant for gaining competitive advantage  in world energy markets. The results are easy to coordinate since most of the Russian energy companies are government-controlled, which gives a great advantage to companies like Gasprom.

The financial sector offers a different kind of target. It attracts the concentrated attention of a wide variety of Russian hacking entities. This sector is simultaneously a part of our critical infrastructure, a vital resource for successful financial investment strategies for the vast amounts of various types of Russian money in the West (and East), and also a practically unlimited source of money to steal with little chance of being caught. Consequently, this industry is under attack from  all sorts of hackers: government, corporate, and private entrepreneurial.

This brief breakdown shows why so-called “Russian hackers” should be differentiated, and as a phenomenon it is certainly not unique to Russia. The players involved differ vastly in size, resources, sophistication and risk tolerance. Taking these differences into account enable us to better understand the nature, origin, and objective of Russian cyber attacks.

Utilities Hacking Paradigm Shift

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With the pleasant long weekend over, now is a good time to check up on recent cyber history. It’s a common Government practice to release potential “hot potatoes” just before a holiday in the hope that they will pass generally unnoticed. So it’s useful to review the pre-holiday week’s releases right after the holiday. There is something there that caught my eye that I would like to address.

Interesting questions were raised by the following article, oddly published by an Australian publication on May 22: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/05/hackers-broke-into-a-public-utility-control-room-by-guessing-a-password   (“Hackers Broke Into A Public Utility Control Room By Guessing A Password.”) In short, the story is commenting on the DHS announcement of the discovery and fixing of a hackers’ break-in into an unspecified public utility’s controls. This raises at least two questions.The first question is why the announcement was made at all. Everybody who is anybody in cybersecurity knows that within the US-Russia-China triangle practically all internet-connected utilities have been penetrated for decades. Malware representing electronic bombs have been mutually installed by these countries and have gone through several generations of upgrades; they are ready to use, and extremely difficult to detect. Obviously, the most vulnerable side of the triangle is the US, since it has the most advanced and most connected network of utilities. The existing status quo in the triangle is somewhat similar to the famous MAD – Mutually Assure Destruction– of the Cold War, and the situation is pretty stable. So, if it’s not news, why announce it? This question can probably be answered by the second question.

The second question is: what has been left unsaid in the announcement? This is probably the key to the whole thing. The announcement mentioned “hackers,” with no hints as to their identity. But the interesting detail is that the attack was performed by a very unsophisticated “brute force” approach, which any hacker with a  modern computer can do that easily. So, the only plausible explanation for the whole announcement is to tacitly acknowledge that some rogue hackers were able to penetrate a public utility, and to suggest that more such attacks may be coming. Obviously, rogue hackers of many denominations do not have the mutual restraints of the US-Russia-China triangle, and without such restraints they can do real damage.

Overall, it looks like the DHS is laying down the proposition that when some real damage is done, they can say that now anybody can take control of our utilities, as we warned you.

Cyber Bombs

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Victor Sheymov’s Blog on Cyber Security and Intelligence

An important and often overlooked aspect is that many computers are infected by malware well before this malware is triggered. It means that many of our critical infrastructure computers already contain “cyber bombs” that are waiting to be triggered at the time chosen by the attacker to maximize the damage. This malware is extremely difficult to detect, and on a large scale such detection is a practical impossibility. Furthermore, disconnecting computers from the Internet in most cases would be ineffective, since malware can easily reconnect the computer to the Internet if a proper hardware and a wireless access are present, and they usually are. So we are sitting on multiple bombs embedded in our critical infrastructure at the mercy of multiple unknown attackers.

Thus we are facing a grim reality that we do not fully comprehend, and not much has been done about it so far. Our vulnerability has not improved over the years; indeed, it has deteriorated. The technology of cyber attacks has advanced more than technology of computer security. Let us review how we got into this situation and, more importantly, how to get out of it.