Security /

Other countries developing cyber attack capability, CIA says

By Jack McCarthy
IDG News Service, 02/24/00

The United States could become a target of cyber attacks from a growing list of terrorists and foreign countries, including Russia and China, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official told a congressional committee Wednesday.

"We are detecting, with increasing frequency, the appearance of doctrine and dedicated offensive cyber warfare programs in other countries," John Serabian, the CIA's information operations issue manager, said in written testimony presented to the Joint Economic Committee yesterday. "We have identified several (countries), based on all-source intelligence information, that are pursuing government-sponsored offensive cyber programs."

"Information warfare" is becoming a possible strategic alternative for countries "that realize that, in conventional military confrontation with the United States, they will not prevail," Serabian said in his written testimony.

He cited instances of unnamed Russian and Chinese officials discussing the viability of cyber warfare.

A senior Russian official has commented that a cyber attack against a national target such as a transportation center or electrical power distribution center would, "by virtue of its catastrophic consequences, completely overlap with the use of (weapons) of mass destruction," Serabian wrote, quoting the Russian official.

Serabian also quoted from remarks of an unidentified Chinese general: "We can make the enemy's command centers not work by changing their data system. We can cause the enemy's headquarters to make incorrect judgment(s) by sending disinformation. We can dominate the enemy's banking system and even its entire social order."

Cyber warfare represents a viable strategy for countries that are outmanned in conventional warfare, Serabian wrote in his testimony.

"These countries perceive that cyber attacks, launched from within or outside the U.S., represent the kind of asymmetric option they will need to level the playing field during an armed crisis against the U.S.," Serabian wrote. "With the advent of the cyber threat, we are faced with the need to function in the medium of 'cyberspace' where we will conduct our business in new and challenging ways."

The technology to launch cyber attacks is already well-known, Daniel Kuehl, a military strategy and national security professor at the Information Resources Management College of the Pentagon's National Defense University, said yesterday in testimony before the congressional committee.

"The very same means that the cyber vandals used a few weeks ago (in a much-publicized denial of service cyber attack that temporarily shut down several large Web sites) could also be used on a much more massive scale at the nation-state level to generate truly damaging interruptions to the national economy and infrastructure," Kuehl said.

Kuehl also referred to several written comments by Russian and Chinese officials on the development of cyber warfare techniques.

However, both countries have also sought an international forum to discuss the subject, he said.

"Interestingly, both the Chinese and Russians have expressed interest in some form of international effort to place curbs on such attacks," Kuehl said. "The Russians have gone so far as to formally propose via the Secretary General of the United Nations the development of 'an international legal regime' to combat information crime and terrorism."