33 Austin Long, A Cyber SIOP? That means a thorough strategy is needed to preserve U.S. cyberspace superiority and stop cyberattacks before they hit our networks. A new trend is to install a data DMZ between the corporate LAN and the control system LAN (see Figure 6). Joint Force Quarterly 102. Significant stakeholders within DOD include the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, the Cybersecurity Directorate within the National Security Agency, the DOD Cyber Crime Center, and the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity Program, among others. 52 Manual for the Operation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (Washington, DC: DOD, August 2018). Imagine you were to assess the risk associated with a cyber attack compromising a particular operating system. Multiplexers for microwave links and fiber runs are the most common items. John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, Pub. large versionFigure 1: Communications access to control systems. 37 DOD Office of Inspector General, Audit of the DoDs Management of the Cybersecurity Risks for Government Purchase Card Purchases of the Commercial Off-the-Shelf Items, Report No. The Cyber Services Line of Business (LOB), also known as SEL7 DISA Cyber Services LOB, oversees the development and maintenance of all information technology assets that receive, process, store, display, or transmit Department of Defense (DoD) information. None of the above 3 (January 2017), 45. , ed. This often includes maintenance planning, customer service center, inventory control, management and administration, and other units that rely on this data to make timely business decisions. KSAT ID. Most control systems come with a vendor support agreement. 22 Daniel R. Coats, Annual Threat Assessment Opening Statement, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, January 29, 2019, available at . However, there is no clear and consistent strategy to secure DODs supply chain and acquisitions process, an absence of a centralized entity responsible for implementation and compliance, and insufficient oversight to drive decisive action on these issues. 23 For some illustrative examples, see Robert Jervis, Some Thoughts on Deterrence in the Cyber Era, Journal of Information Warfare 15, no. The control system network is often connected to the business office network to provide real-time transfer of data from the control network to various elements of the corporate office. The HMI provides graphical displays for presentation of status of devices, alarms and events, system health, and other information relevant to the system. Control systems are vulnerable to cyber attack from inside and outside the control system network. MAD Security aims to assist DOD contractors in enhancing their cybersecurity efforts and avoiding popular vulnerabilities. As illustrated in Figure 1, there are many ways to communicate with a CS network and components using a variety of computing and communications equipment. The department is expanding its Vulnerability Disclosure Program to include all publicly accessible DOD information systems. 2 (2016), 6673; Nye, Deterrence and Dissuasion, 4471; Martin, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2016); Aaron F. Brantly, The Cyber Deterrence Problem, in, International Conference on Cyber Conflict. Prior to the 2018 strategy, defending its networks had been DODs primary focus; see, https://archive.defense.gov/home/features/2015/0415_cyber-strategy/final_2015_dod_cyber_strategy_for_web.pdf. This may allow an attacker who can sneak a payload onto any control system machine to call back out of the control system LAN to the business LAN or the Internet (see Figure 7). Choose which Defense.gov products you want delivered to your inbox. For additional definitions of deterrence, see Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Robert Jervis, Deterrence Theory Revisited, World Politics 31, no. False 3. Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 104. The DoD has further directed that cyber security technology must be integrated into systems because it is too expensive and impractical to secure a system after it has been designed The design of security for an embedded system is challenging because security requirements are rarely accurately identified at the start of the design process. . In addition to congressional action through the NDAA, DOD could take a number of steps to reinforce legislative efforts to improve the cybersecurity of key weapons systems and functions. However, the credibility conundrum manifests itself differently today. Conducts deep-dive investigations on computer-based crimes establishing documentary or physical evidence, to include digital media and logs associated with cyber intrusion incidents. Several threats are identified. The added strength of a data DMZ is dependent on the specifics of how it is implemented. All of the above 4. Risks stemming from nontechnical vulnerabilities are entirely overlooked in strategies and policies for identifying and remediating cyber vulnerabilities in DOD weapons systems. For a notable exception, see Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, eds., Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2020, The spread of advanced air defenses, antisatellite, and cyberwarfare capabilities has given weaker actors the ability to threaten the United States and its allies. The DoD Cyber Crime Center's DoD Vulnerability Disclosure Program discovered over 400 cybersecurity vulnerabilities to national security. Operational Considerations for Strategic Offensive Cyber Planning, Journal of Cybersecurity 3, no. 2 The United States has long maintained strategic ambiguity about how to define what constitutes a use of force in any domain, including cyberspace, and has taken a more flexible stance in terms of the difference between a use of force and armed attack as defined in the United Nations charter. and international terrorist True DoD personnel who suspect a coworker of possible espionage should report directly to your CI OR security Office The vulnerability is due to a lack of proper input validation of . Upgrading critical infrastructure networks and systems (meaning transportation channels, communication lines, etc.) This access can be directed from within an organization by trusted users or from remote locations by unknown persons using the Internet. An effective attack is to export the screen of the operator's HMI console back to the attacker (see Figure 14). 47 Ibid., 25. However, adversaries could compromise the integrity of command and control systemsmost concerningly for nuclear weaponswithout exploiting technical vulnerabilities in the digital infrastructure on which these systems rely. A person who is knowledgeable in process equipment, networks, operating systems and software applications can use these and other electronic means to gain access to the CS. MAD Security recently collaborated with Design Interactive, a cutting-edge research and software development company trying to enhance cybersecurity to prevent cyber attacks. This means that a singular static assessment is unlikely to capture how vulnerabilities may evolve and change over time.43 Relatedly, a 2018 Government Accountability Office report found pervasive and significant mission-critical vulnerabilities across most weapons systems already under development.44 Between 2012 and 2017, DOD penetration testersindividuals who evaluate the cybersecurity of computer systems and uncover vulnerabilitiesdiscovered mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities in nearly all weapon systems under development.45 Penetration testing teams were able to overcome weapons systems cybersecurity controls designed to prevent determined adversaries from gaining access to these platforms and to maneuver within compromised systems while successfully evading detection. 61 HASC, William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021: Conference Report to Accompany H.R. For example, as a complement to institutionalizing a continuous process for DOD to assess the cyber vulnerabilities of weapons systems, the department could formalize a capacity for continuously seeking out and remediating cyber threats across the entire enterprise. Prior to the 2018 strategy, defending its networks had been DODs primary focus; see The DOD Cyber Strategy (Washington, DC: DOD, April 2015), available at . Control is generally, but not always, limited to a single substation. Strengthening the cybersecurity of systems and networks that support DOD missions, including those in the private sector and our foreign allies and partners. But the second potential impact of a network penetration - the physical effects - are far more worrisome. Once inside, the intruder could steal data or alter the network. Cyber vulnerabilities to DOD Systems may include many risks that CMMC compliance addresses. This paper presents a high-level, unclassified overview of threats and vulnerabilities surrounding the U.S. Navy's network systems and operations in cyberspace. Also, , improvements in Russias military over the past decade have reduced the qualitative and technological gaps between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The increasingly computerized and networked nature of the U.S. military's weapons contributes to their vulnerability. Additionally, cyber-enabled espionage conducted against these systems could allow adversaries to replicate cutting-edge U.S. defense technology without comparable investments in research and development and could inform the development of adversary offset capabilities. An attacker who wishes to assume control of a control system is faced with three challenges: The first thing an attacker needs to accomplish is to bypass the perimeter defenses and gain access to the control system LAN. The program grew out of the success of the "Hack the Pentagon". CISA and its partners, through the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, are responding to active, widespread exploitation of a critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability ( CVE-2021-44228) in Apache's Log4j software library, versions 2.0-beta9 to 2.14.1, known as "Log4Shell." Each control system vendor calls the database something different, but nearly every control system assigns each sensor, pump, breaker, etc., a unique number. This is, of course, an important question and one that has been tackled by a number of researchers. several county departments and government offices taken offline, 4 companies fall prey to malware attempts every minute. malware implantation) to permit remote access. A potential impediment to implementing this recommendation is the fact that many cyber threats will traverse the boundaries of combatant commands, including U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Strategic Command, and the geographic combatant commands. Every business has its own minor variations dictated by their environment. Nikto also contains a database with more than 6400 different types of threats. The easiest way to control the process is to send commands directly to the data acquisition equipment (see Figure 13). While cyberspace affords opportunities for a diversity of threat actors to operate in the domain, including nonstate actors and regional state powers, in addition to Great Powers, the challenges of developing and implementing sophisticated cyber campaigns that target critical defense infrastructure typically remain in the realm of more capable nation-state actors and their proxies. Vulnerabilities such as these have important implications for deterrence and warfighting. Progress and Challenges in Securing the Nations Cyberspace, (Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security, July 2004), 136, available at <, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-019.pdf, Manual for the Operation of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1987); (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Schelling. 10 Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2004), 26. 29 Borghard and Lonergan, The Logic of Coercion; Brandon Valeriano, Benjamin Jensen, and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber Strategy: The Evolving Character of Power and Coercion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); An Interview with Paul M. Nakasone, 4. Each control system vendor is unique in where it stores the operator HMI screens and the points database. large versionFigure 13: Sending commands directly to the data acquisition equipment. . Most of these events are not reported to the public, and the threats and incidents to ICS are not as well-known as enterprise cyber threats and incidents. All three are securable if the proper firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and application level privileges are in place. Bernalillo County had its security cameras and automatic doors taken offline in the Metropolitan Detention Center, creating a state of emergency inside the jail as the prisoners movement needed to be restricted. (Sood A.K. , ed. 3 John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, Pub. See also Alexander L. George, William E. Simons, and David I. Networks can be used as a pathway from one accessed weapon to attack other systems. Recognizing the interdependence among cyber, conventional, and nuclear domains, U.S. policymakers must prioritize efforts to reduce the cyber vulnerabilities of conventional and nuclear capabilities and ensure they are resilient to adversary action in cyberspace. "In operational testing, DoD routinely found mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities in systems that were under development, yet program officials GAO met with believed their systems were secure and discounted some test results as unrealistic," GAO said. 6395, December 2020, 1796. Hackers are becoming more and more daring in their tactics and leveraging cutting-edge technologies to remain at least one step ahead at all times. On the communications protocol level, the devices are simply referred to by number. Work remains to be done. 1 Summary: Department of Defense Cyber Strategy 2018 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense [DOD], 2018), available at ; Achieve and Maintain Cyberspace Superiority: Command Vision for U.S. Cyber Command (Washington, DC: U.S. Cyber Command, 2018), available at ; An Interview with Paul M. Nakasone, Joint Force Quarterly 92 (1st Quarter 2019), 67. 7 The spread of advanced air defenses, antisatellite, and cyberwarfare capabilities has given weaker actors the ability to threaten the United States and its allies. 1 (February 1997), 6890; Robert Jervis, Signaling and Perception: Drawing Inferences and Projecting Images, in Political Psychology, ed. , ed. 1 Build a more lethal. Communications between the data acquisition server and the controller units in a system may be provided locally using high speed wire, fiber-optic cables, or remotely-located controller units via wireless, dial-up, Ethernet, or a combination of communications methods. large versionFigure 5: Business LAN as backbone. Heartbleed came from community-sourced code. Additionally, an attacker will dial every extension in the company looking for modems hung off the corporate phone system. , Version 2.0 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Navy, November 6, 2006), 3. They generally accept any properly formatted command. , Adelphi Papers 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies. 48 Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, Chief Systems Engineer, Naval Systems of Systems Systems Engineering Guidebook, Volume II, Version 2.0 (Washington, DC: Headquarters Department of the Navy, November 6, 2006), 3. Therefore, while technologically advanced U.S. military capabilities form the bedrock of its military advantage, they also create cyber vulnerabilities that adversaries can and will undoubtedly use to their strategic advantage. Tomas Minarik, Raik Jakschis, and Lauri Lindstrom (Tallinn: NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2018/10/Art-02-The-Cyber-Deterrence-Problem.pdf, Michael P. Fischerkeller and Richard J. Harknett, Deterrence Is Not a Credible Strategy for Cyberspace,, , 4142; Jon R. Lindsay, Tipping the Scales: The Attribution Problem and the Feasibility of Deterrence Against Cyberattack,. Designs, develops, tests, and evaluates information system security throughout the systems development lifecycle. DODIG-2019-106 (Washington, DC: DOD, July 26, 2019), 2, available at . Mark Montgomery is Executive Director of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission and SeniorDirector of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation. Dr. Erica Borghard is a Resident Senior Fellow in the New American Engagement Initiative, ScowcroftCenter for Strategy and Security, at the Atlantic Council. He reiterated . To support a strategy of full-spectrum deterrence, the United States must maintain credible and capable conventional and nuclear capabilities. Holding DOD personnel and third-party contractors more accountable for slip-ups. Chinese Malicious Cyber Activity. An attacker that just wants to shut down a process needs very little discovery. In 1996, a GAO audit first warned that hackers could take total control of entire defense systems. We cant do this mission alone, so the DOD must expand its cyber-cooperation by: Personnel must increase their cyber awareness. However, one notable distinction is Arts focus on the military instrument of power (chiefly nuclear weapons) as a tool of deterrence, whereas Nyes concept of deterrence implies a broader set of capabilities that could be marshalled to prevent unwanted behavior. See also Martin C. Libicki, David Senty, and Julia Pollak, Hackers Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2014), x; Julian Jang-Jaccard and Surya Nepal, A Survey of Emerging Threats in Cybersecurity, Journal of Computer and System Sciences 80, no. 2 (January 1979), 289324; Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); and Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). By inserting commands into the command stream the attacker can issue arbitrary or targeted commands. Incentivizing computer science-related jobs in the department to make them more attractive to skilled candidates who might consider the private sector instead. The Department of Defense (DOD) strategic concept of defend forward and U.S. Cyber Commands concept of persistent engagement are largely directed toward this latter challenge. Often firewalls are poorly configured due to historical or political reasons. The target must believe that the deterring state has both the capabilities to inflict the threatening costs and the resolve to carry out a threat.14 A deterring state must therefore develop mechanisms for signaling credibility to the target.15 Much of the Cold War deterrence literature focused on the question of how to convey resolve, primarily because the threat to use nuclear weaponsparticularly in support of extended deterrence guarantees to allieslacks inherent credibility given the extraordinarily high consequences of nuclear weapons employment in comparison to any political objective.16 This raises questions about decisionmakers willingness to follow through on a nuclear threat. This data is retained for trending, archival, regulatory, and external access needs of the business. It is now mandatory for companies to enhance their ransomware detection capabilities, as well as carry ransomware insurance. 3 (2017), 454455. If cybersecurity requirements are tacked on late in the process, or after a weapons system has already been deployed, the requirements are far more difficult and costly to address and much less likely to succeed.53 In 2016, DOD updated the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS), establishing cybersecurity requirements for defense contractors based on standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. MAD Security approaches DOD systems security from the angle of cyber compliance. cyber vulnerabilities to dod systems may include On May 20, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) posted a request for information (RFI) for cyber vulnerability services. As stated in the, , The Department must defend its own networks, systems, and information from, malicious cyber activity and be prepared to defend, when directed, those networks and systems operated by non-DOD-owned Defense Critical Infrastructure (DCI) and Defense Industrial Base (DIB) entities. Ensuring the Cyber Mission Force has the right size for the mission is important. large versionFigure 14: Exporting the HMI screen. It is common to find RTUs with the default passwords still enabled in the field. U.S. strategy focuses on the credible employment of conventional and nuclear weapons capabilities, and the relative sophistication, lethality, and precision of these capabilities over adversaries, as an essential element of prevailing in what is now commonly described as Great Power competition (GPC).18 Setting aside important debates about the merits and limitations of the term itself, and with the important caveat that GPC is not a strategy but rather describes a strategic context, it is more than apparent that the United States faces emerging peer competitors.19 This may be due to changes in the military balance of power that have resulted in a relative decline in Americas position, or China and Russia reasserting their influence regionally and globallyor a combination of these factors.20 While the current strategic landscape is distinct from both the Cold War and the period immediately following, deterrence as a strategic concept is again at the crux of U.S. strategy but with new applications and challenges. 57 National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Supply Chain Risk Management: Reducing Threats to Key U.S. Supply Chains (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2020), available at . With over 1 billion malware programs currently out on the web, DOD systems are facing an increasing cyber threat of this nature. Nearly all modern databases allow this type of attack if not configured properly to block it. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); and Thomas C. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Cyber threat activity recommended to be submitted as a voluntary report includes but is not limited to: Suspected Advance Persistent Threat (APT) activity; Compromise not impacting DoD information Borghard and Lonergan, The Logic of Coercion; Brandon Valeriano, Benjamin Jensen, and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber Strategy: The Evolving Character of Power and Coercion. Indeed, Congress chartered the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act to develop a consensus on a strategic approach to defending the United States in cyberspace against cyberattacks of significant consequences.3 There is also a general acknowledgment of the link between U.S. cyber strategy below and above the threshold of armed conflict in cyberspace. On January 5, 2022, the largest county in New Mexico had several county departments and government offices taken offline during a ransomware attack. This graphic describes the four pillars of the U.S. National Cyber Strategy. For example, Erik Gartzke and Jon Lindsay explore how offensive cyber operations that target a states nuclear command, control, and communications could undermine strategic deterrence and increase the risk of war.32 Similarly, Austin Long notes potential pathways from offensive cyber operations to inadvertent escalation (which is by definition a failure of deterrence) if attacks on even nonmilitary critical systems (for example, power supplies) could impact military capabilities or stoke fears that military networks had likewise been compromised.33. See also Martin C. Libicki, David Senty, and Julia Pollak, Hackers Wanted: An Examination of the Cybersecurity Labor Market, Julian Jang-Jaccard and Surya Nepal, A Survey of Emerging Threats in Cybersecurity,. For instance, the typical feared scenario is the equivalent of a cyber Pearl Harbor or a cyber 9/11 eventa large-scale cyberattack against critical U.S. infrastructure that causes significant harm to life or property.34 This line of thinking, however, risks missing the ostensibly more significant threat posed by stealthy cyberspace activities that could undermine the stability of conventional or nuclear deterrence. Wireless access points that allow unauthorized connection to system components and networks present vulnerabilities. In recent years, that has transitioned to VPN access to the control system LAN. If you feel you are being solicited for information, which of the following should you do? Note that in the case above, Cyber vulnerabilities to dod systems may include All of the above Options. These applications can result in real-time operational control adjustments, reports, alarms and events, calculated data source for the master database server archival, or support of real-time analysis work being performed from the engineering workstation or other interface computers. JFQ. Users are shown instructions for how to pay a fee to get the decryption key. 16 The literature on nuclear deterrence theory is extensive. Prioritizing Weapon System Cybersecurity in a Post-Pandemic Defense Department May 13, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the extraordinary impact that invisible vulnerabilitiesif unmitigated and exploitedcan have on both the Department of Defense (DOD) and on national security more broadly. An attacker that gains a foothold on the control system LAN must discover the details of how the process is implemented to surgically attack it. DOD must additionally consider incorporating these considerations into preexisting table-top exercises and scenarios around nuclear force employment while incorporating lessons learned into future training.67 Implementing these recommendations would enhance existing DOD efforts and have a decisive impact on enhancing the security and resilience of the entire DOD enterprise and the critical weapons systems and functions that buttress U.S. deterrence and warfighting capabilities. The operator will see a "voodoo mouse" clicking around on the screen unless the attacker blanks the screen. U.S. strategy has simultaneously focused on the longstanding challenge of deterring significant cyberattacks that would cause loss of life, sustained disruption of essential functions and services, or critical economic impactsthose activities that may cross the threshold constituting a use of force or armed attack. 6. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Supply Chain Risk Management: Reducing Threats to Key U.S. Supply Chains, (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 2020), available at <, https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/supplychain/20200925-NCSC-Supply-Chain-Risk-Management-tri-fold.pdf, For a strategy addressing supply chain security at the national level, beyond DOD and defense institution building. (London: Macmillan, 1989); Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility. This is, of course, an important question and one that has been tackled by a number of researchers. Cyber criminals consistently target businesses in an attempt to weaken our nation's supply chain, threaten our national security, and endanger the American way of life. Adversaries studied the American way of war and began investing in capabilities that targeted our strengths and sought to exploit perceived weaknesses.21 In this new environment, cyberspace is a decisive arena in broader GPC, with significant implications for cross-domain deterrence.22, The literature on the feasibility of deterrence in cyberspace largely focuses on within-domain deterrencein other words, the utility and feasibility of using (or threatening) cyber means to deter cyber behavior.23 Scholars have identified a number of important impediments to this form of cyber deterrence.24 For instance, the challenges of discerning timely and accurate attribution could weaken cyber deterrence through generating doubt about the identity of the perpetrator of a cyberattack, which undermines the credibility of response options.25 Uncertainty about the effects of cyber capabilitiesboth anticipating them ex ante and measuring them ex postmay impede battle damage assessments that are essential for any deterrence calculus.26 This uncertainty is further complicated by limitations in the ability to hold targets at risk or deliver effects repeatedly over time.27 A deterring state may avoid revealing capabilities (which enhances the credibility of deterrence) because the act of revealing them renders the capabilities impotent.28 Finally, the target may simply not perceive the threatened cyber costs to be sufficiently high to affect its calculus, or the target may be willing to gamble that a threatened action may not produce the effect intended by the deterring state due to the often unpredictable and fleeting nature of cyber operations and effects.29 Others offer a more sanguine take. Poor or nonexistent cybersecurity practices in legacy weapons systems may jeopardize the new systems they connect to, and the broader system itself, because adversaries can exploit vulnerabilities in legacy systems (the weakest link in the chain) to gain access to multiple systems.50 Without a systematic process to map dependencies across complex networked systems, anticipating the cascading implications of adversary intrusion into any given component of a system is a challenge. to reduce the risk of major cyberattacks on them. See National Science Board, Overview of the State of the U.S. S&E Enterprise in a Global Context, in Science and Engineering Indicators 2018 (Alexandria, VA: National Science Foundation, 2018), O-1; Scott Boston et al., Assessing the Conventional Force Imbalance in Europe: Implications for Countering Russian Local Superiority (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2018). Overall, its estimated that 675,000 residents in the county were impacted. Often administrators go to great lengths to configure firewall rules, but spend no time securing the database environment. To understand the vulnerabilities associated with control systems you must know the types of communications and operations associated with the control system as well as have an understanding of the how attackers are using the system vulnerabilities to their advantage. In cybersecurity, a vulnerability is known to be any kind of weakness exist with the aim to be exploited by cybercriminals to be able to have unauthorized access to a computer system. Vulnerabilities simply refer to weaknesses in a system. Most RTUs require no authentication or a password for authentication. In that case, it is common to find one or more pieces of the communications pathways controlled and administered from the business LAN. The challenge of securing these complex systems is compounded by the interaction of legacy and newer weapons systemsand most DOD weapons platforms are legacy platforms. To effectively improve DOD cybersecurity, the MAD Security team recommends the following steps: Companies should first determine where they are most vulnerable. (2015), 5367; Nye, Deterrence and Dissuasion, 4952. Specifically, the potential for cyber operations to distort or degrade the ability of conventional or even nuclear capabilities to work as intended could undermine the credibility of deterrence due to a reduced capability rather than political will.17 Moreover, given the secret nature of cyber operations, there is likely to be information asymmetry between the deterring state and the ostensible target of deterrence if that target has undermined or holds at risk the deterring states capabilities without its knowledge. It can help the company effectively navigate this situation and minimize damage. An attacker could also chain several exploits together . A skilled attacker can reconfigure or compromise those pieces of communications gear to control field communications (see Figure 9). Nevertheless, policymakers attention to cyber threats to conventional and nuclear deterrence has been drowned out by other concernssome of which are inflatedin the cyber domain. By far the most common architecture is the two-firewall architecture (see Figure 3). 30 Dorothy E. Denning, Rethinking the Cyber Domain and Deterrence, Joint Force Quarterly 77 (2nd Quarter 2015). large versionFigure 15: Changing the database. Figure 1. 17 This articles discussion of credibility focuses on how cyber operations could undermine the credibility of conventional and nuclear deterrence, rather than the challenge of how to establish credible deterrence using cyber capabilities. 58 For a strategy addressing supply chain security at the national level, beyond DOD and defense institution building, see Angus King and Mike Gallagher, co-chairs, Building a Trusted ICT Supply Chain: CSC White Paper 4 (Washington, DC: U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, October 2020), available at . Information gathered and activities conducted to identify, deceive, exploit, disrupt, or protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons or their agents or international terrorist organizations. Most PLCs, protocol converters, or data acquisition servers lack even basic authentication. Throughout successive Presidential administrations, even as the particular details or parameters of its implementation varied, deterrence has remained an anchoring concept for U.S. strategy.9 Deterrence is a coercive strategy that seeks to prevent an actor from taking an unacceptable action.10 Robert Art, for example, defines deterrence as the deployment of military power so as to be able to prevent an adversary from doing something that one does not want him to do and that he otherwise might be tempted to do by threatening him with unacceptable punishment if he does it.11 Joseph Nye defines deterrence as dissuading someone from doing something by making them believe the costs to them will exceed their expected benefit.12 These definitions of deterrence share a core logic: namely, to prevent an adversary from taking undesired action through the credible threat to create costs for doing so that exceed the potential benefits. See the Cyberspace Solarium Commissions recent report, available at <, Cong., Pub. 4 As defined in Joint Publication 3-12, Cyberspace Operations (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, June 8, 2018), The term blue cyberspace denotes areas in cyberspace protected by [the United States], its mission partners, and other areas DOD may be ordered to protect, while red cyberspace refers to those portions of cyberspace owned or controlled by an adversary or enemy. Finally, all cyberspace that does not meet the description of either blue or red is referred to as gray cyberspace (I-4, I-5). Information shared in this channel may include cyber threat activity, cyber incident details, vulnerability information, mitigation strategies, and more. 114-92, 20152016, available at <, https://www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ92/PLAW-114publ92.pdf, William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 202. 28 Brantly, The Cyber Deterrence Problem; Borghard and Lonergan, The Logic of Coercion.. As businesses become increasingly dependent on technology, they also reach out to new service providers that can help them handle their security needs better. Foreign Intelligence Entities seldom use the Internet or other communications including social networking services as a collection method a. All of the above a. 39 Robert Koch and Mario Golling, Weapons Systems and Cyber SecurityA Challenging Union, in 2016 8th International Conference on Cyber Conflict, ed. Looking for crowdsourcing opportunities such as hack-a-thons and bug bounties to identify and fix our own vulnerabilities. Special vulnerabilities of AI systems. A common misconception is that patch management equates to vulnerability management. However, GAO reported in 2018 that DOD was routinely finding cyber vulnerabilities late in its development process. (DOD) The Army, Navy and Missile Defense Agency are failing to take basic cybersecurity steps to ensure that information on America's ballistic missile defense system won't fall into. 1 The DoD has elevated many cyber defense functions from the unit level to Service and DoD Agency Computer . On December 3, Senate and House conferees issued their report on the FY21 NDAA . For additional definitions of deterrence, see Glenn H. Snyder, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Robert Jervis, Deterrence Theory Revisited,. A Cyber Economic Vulnerability Assessment (CEVA) shall include the development . This provides an added layer of protection because no communications take place directly from the control system LAN to the business LAN. Security vulnerabilities refer to flaws that make software act in ways that designers and developers did not intend it to, or even expect. Indeed, Nyes extension of deterrence to cyberspace incorporates four deterrence mechanisms: threat of punishment, denial by defense, entanglement, and normative taboos.13 This is precisely because of the challenges associated with relying solely on military power and punishment logics to achieve cyber deterrence. The DOD published the report in support of its plan to spend $1.66 trillion to further develop their major weapon systems. Below are some of my job titles and accomplishments. Over the past year, a number of seriously consequential cyber attacks against the United States have come to light. Publicly Released: February 12, 2021. Part of this is about conducting campaigns to address IP theft from the DIB. Much of the focus within academic and practitioner communities in the area of cyber deterrence has been on within-domain deterrence, and even studies of cross-domain deterrence have been largely concerned with the employment of noncyber instruments of power to deter cyberattacks. 35 it is likely that these risks will only grow as the united states continues to pursue defense modernization programs that rely on vulnerable digital infrastructure. Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, Chief Systems Engineer, Naval Systems of Systems Systems Engineering Guidebook, Volume II. For instance, former Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer described naval and industry partner systems as being under cyber siege by Chinese hackers.42 Yet of most concern is that the integrity and credibility of deterrence will be compromised by the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of weapons systems. Encuentro Cuerpo Consular de Latinoamerica - Mesa de Concertacin MHLA , see Angus King and Mike Gallagher, co-chairs, Building a Trusted ICT Supply Chain: CSC White Paper 4, (Washington, DC: U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission, October 2020), available at <, https://www.solarium.gov/public-communications/supply-chain-white-paper, These include implementing defend forward, which plays an important role in addressing one aspect of this challenge. Enhancing endpoint security (meaning on devices such as desktops, laptops, mobile devices, etc), is another top priority when enhancing DOD cybersecurity. The hacker group looked into 41 companies, currently part of the DoDs contractor network. The operator HMI screens generally provide the easiest method for understanding the process and assignment of meaning to each of the point reference numbers. Unfortunately, in many cases when contractors try to enhance their security, they face a lot of obstacles that prevent them from effectively keeping their data and infrastructure protected. 6 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the Peoples Republic of China 2020 (Washington, DC: DOD, 2020). The business firewall is administered by the corporate IT staff and the control system firewall is administered by the control system staff. There are a number of common ways an attacker can gain access, but the miscellaneous pathways outnumber the common pathways. Our risk assessment gives organizations a better view of how effective their current efforts are and helps them identify better solutions to keep their data safe. These cyber vulnerabilities to the Department of Defenses systems may include: Companies like American Express and Snapchat have had their vulnerabilities leveraged in the past to send phishing emails to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 users. There is instead decentralized responsibility across DOD, coupled with a number of reactive and ad hoc measures that leave DOD without a complete picture of its supply chain, dynamic understanding of the scope and scale of its vulnerabilities, and consistent mechanisms to rapidly remediate these vulnerabilities. There are three common architectures found in most control systems. Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, Thermonuclear Cyberwar,, Austin Long, A Cyber SIOP? An attacker will attempt to gain access to internal vendor resources or field laptops and piggyback on the connection into the control system LAN. This could take place in positive or negative formsin other words, perpetrating information as a means to induce operations to erroneously make a decision to employ a capability or to refrain from carrying out a lawful order. The Pentagon's concerns are not limited to DoD systems. To strengthen congressional oversight and drive continued progress and attention toward these issues, the requirement to conduct periodic vulnerability assessments should also include an after-action report that includes current and planned efforts to address cyber vulnerabilities of interdependent and networked weapons systems in broader mission areas, with an intent to gain mission assurance of these platforms. hile cyberspace affords opportunities for a diversity of threat actors to operate in the domain, including nonstate actors and regional state powers, in addition to Great Powers, the challenges of developing and implementing sophisticated cyber campaigns that target critical defense infrastructure typically remain in the realm of more capable nation-state actors and their proxies. The objective of this audit was to determine whether DoD Components took action to update cybersecurity requirements for weapon systems in the Operations and Support (O&S) phase of the acquisition life cycle, based on publicly acknowledged or known cybersecurity threats and intelligence-based cybersecurity threats. 2 (Summer 1995), 157181. April 29, 2019. - Cyber Security Lead: After becoming qualified by the Defense Information Systems Agency in the field of vulnerability reviewer utilizing . The types of data include data from the following sources: the data acquisition server, operator control interactions, alarms and events, and calculated and generated from other sources. In terms of legislative remedies, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission report recommends Congress update its recent legislative measures to assess the cyber vulnerabilities of weapons systems to account for a number of important gaps. 115232August 13, 2018, 132 Stat. 24 Michael P. Fischerkeller and Richard J. Harknett, Deterrence Is Not a Credible Strategy for Cyberspace, Orbis 61, no. Cyber Defense Infrastructure Support. Cyber Vulnerabilities to DoD Systems may include: All of the above DoD personnel who suspect a coworker of possible espionage should: Report directly to your CI or Security Office Under DoDD 5240.06 Reportable Foreign Intelligence Contacts, Activities, Indicators and Behaviors; which of the following is not reportable? Often it is the responsibility of the corporate IT department to negotiate and maintain long-distance communication lines. The Government Accountability Office warned in a report issued today that the Defense Department "faces mounting challenges in protecting its weapons systems from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats," and, because of its "late start" in prioritizing weapons systems cybersecurity, needs to "sustain its momentum" in developing and implementing key weapon systems security . System data is collected, processed and stored in a master database server. This discussion provides a high level overview of these topics but does not discuss detailed exploits used by attackers to accomplish intrusion. With cybersecurity threats on the rise, this report showcases the constantly growing need for DOD systems to improve. . 41 Weapon Systems Cybersecurity: DOD Just Beginning to Grapple with Scale of Vulnerabilities, GAO-19-128 (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2018), available at . "These weapons are essential to maintaining our nation . 38 Valerie Insinna, Inside Americas Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program, The New York Times Magazine, August 21, 2019, available at . To understand the vulnerabilities associated with control systems (CS), you must first know all of the possible communications paths into and out of the CS. warnings were so common that operators were desensitized to them.46 Existing testing programs are simply too limited to enable DOD to have a complete understanding of weapons system vulnerabilities, which is compounded by a shortage of skilled penetration testers.47. . Speeding up the process to procure services such as cloud storage to keep pace with commercial IT and being flexible as requirements and technology continue to change. See James D. Fearon, Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs,, 41, no. 1 (2017), 20. Optimizing the mix of service members, civilians and contractors who can best support the mission. See National Science Board, Overview of the State of the U.S. S&E Enterprise in a Global Context, in. This page contains a web-friendly version of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Binding Operational Directive 19-02, "Vulnerability Remediation Requirements for Internet-Accessible Systems". Cybersecurity Personnel who secure, defend, and preserve data, networks, net-centric capabilities, and other designated systems by ensuring appropriate security controls and measures are in place, and taking internal defense actions. With attention focused on developing and integrating AI capabilities into applications and workflows, the security of AI systems themselves is often . Figure 1 presents various devices, communications paths, and methods that can be used for communicating with typical process system components. In recent years, while DOD has undertaken efforts to assess the cyber vulnerabilities of individual weapons platforms, critical gaps in the infrastructure remain. Subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest news and updates. . 65 Nuclear Posture Review (Washington, DC: DOD, February 2018), available at ; Jon Lindsay, Digital Strangelove: The Cyber Dangers of Nuclear Weapons, Lawfare, March 12, 2020, available at ; Paul Bracken, The Cyber Threat to Nuclear Stability, Orbis 60, no. The Defense Department is in the stages of improving the cyber security of the weapon systems it develops and the vulnerabilities of these systems are made worse due to their complexity, warns a new report by congressional auditors. National Defense University The potential risks from these vulnerabilities are huge. The point of contact information will be stored in the defense industrial base cybersecurity system of records. Even more concerning, in some instances, testing teams did not attempt to evade detection and operated openly but still went undetected. A surgical attacker needs a list of the point reference numbers in use and the information required to assign meaning to each of those numbers. The two most valuable items to an attacker are the points in the data acquisition server database and the HMI display screens. As the 2017 National Security Strategy notes, deterrence today is significantly more complex to achieve than during the Cold War. The attacker must know how to speak the RTU protocol to control the RTU. One of the most common routes of entry is directly dialing modems attached to the field equipment (see Figure 7). . Cyber vulnerabilities in the private sector pose a serious threat to national security, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Defense Acquisition Regulations System, Attn: Ms. Kimberly Ziegler, OUSD(A&S)DPC(DARS), 3060 . The Department of Energy also plays a critical role in the nuclear security aspects of this procurement challenge.57 Absent a clearly defined leadership strategy over these issues, and one that clarifies roles and responsibilities across this vast set of stakeholders, a systemic and comprehensive effort to secure DODs supply chain is unlikely to occur.58. 2 (February 2016). There is a need for support during upgrades or when a system is malfunctioning. Contact us today to set up your cyber protection. 25 Libicki, Cyberspace in Peace and War, 4142; Jon R. Lindsay, Tipping the Scales: The Attribution Problem and the Feasibility of Deterrence Against Cyberattack, Journal of Cybersecurity 1, no. Cyberspace is critical to the way the entire U.S. functions. 5 For a notable exception, see Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay, eds., Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Instead, malicious actors could conduct cyber-enabled information operations with the aim of manipulating or distorting the perceived integrity of command and control. Koch and Golling, Weapons Systems and Cyber Security, 191. . This not only helps keep hackers out, it isolates the control system network from outages, worms, and other afflictions that occur on the business LAN. 5 Keys to Success: Here's the DOD Cybersecurity Strategy The DOD released its own strategy outlining five lines of effort that help to execute the national strategy. Finally, DoD is still determining how best to address weapon systems cybersecurity," GAO said. Encuentro Cuerpo Consular de Latinoamerica - Mesa de Concertacin MHLA . 54 For gaps in and industry reaction to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, see, for example, National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), Implementing Cybersecurity in DOD Supply Chains White Paper: Manufacturing Division Survey Results (Arlington, VA: NDIA, July 2018), available at . A skilled attacker can gain access to the database on the business LAN and use specially crafted SQL statements to take over the database server on the control system LAN (see Figure 11). A telematics system is tightly integrated with other systems in a vehicle and provides a number of functions for the user. True Cyber Vulnerabilities to DoD Systems may include: All of the above DoD personnel who suspect a coworker of possible espionage should: Report directly to your CI or Security Office Under DoDD 5240.06 Reportable Foreign Intelligence Contacts, Activities, Indicators and Behaviors; which of the following is not reportable? The attacker is also limited to the commands allowed for the currently logged-in operator. Because many application security tools require manual configuration, this process can be rife with errors and take considerable . Hall, eds.. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), for a more extensive list of success criteria. 9 Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, Deterrence and the Cold War, Political Science Quarterly 110, no. Early this year, a criminal ring dubbed Carbanak cyber gang was discovered by the experts at Kaspersky Lab, the hackers have swiped over $1 Billion from banks worldwide The financial damage to the world economy due to cybercrime exceed 575 billion dollars, the figures are disconcerting if we consider that are greater than the GDP of many countries. For instance, deterrence may have more favorable prospects when it focuses on deterring specific types of behavior or specific adversaries rather than general cyber deterrence.30, Notably, there has been some important work on the feasibility of cross-domain deterrence as it pertains to the threat of employing noncyber kinetic capabilities to deter unwanted behavior in cyberspace. 15 See James D. Fearon, Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, no. Vulnerability management is the consistent practice of identifying, classifying, remediating, and mitigating security vulnerabilities within an organization system like endpoints, workloads, and systems.
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