As usual, I greatly enjoyed your blog from 17 June, A Short History of Cyberwar Look-alikes, Rybolov. Moreover I really appreciated your historical examples. It warms my heart whenever an American uses the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/5 as a historic example of anything. Most Americans have never even heard of it. Yet, it is important event today if for no other reason than it established the tradition of having the US President intercede as a peace negotiator and win the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts. Because of this, some historians mark it as the historic point at which the US entered the world stage as a great power. By the way the President involved was Teddy Roosevelt.

Concerning the state and nature of Cyberwar today, I’ve seen Rybolov’s models and I think they make sense. Cyberwar as an extension of electronic warfare makes some sense. The analogy does break down at some point because of the peculiarity of the medium. For example, when considering exploitation of SCADA systems as we have seen in the Baltic States and in a less focused manner here in North America, it is hard to see a clear analogy in electronic warfare. The consequences look more like old-fashion kinetic warfare. Likewise, there are aspects of Cyberwarfare that look like good old-fashion human intelligence and espionage. Of course I also have reservations with the electronic warfare model based on government politics. Our friends at NSA have been suggesting that Cyberwarfare is an extension of signals intelligence for years, with the accompanying claim that they (NSA) should have the technical, legal, and of course budgetary resources that go along with it.

I’ve also have seen other writers propose other models of Cyberwarfare and they tend to be a mixed bag at best. At worst, many of the models proposed appear to be the laughable writings of individuals with no more insight to or knowledge of intelligence operations beyond the latest James Bond movie. My own opinion is that two models or driving forces behind international Cyberwarfare activity. The first is pure opportunism. Governments and criminal organizations alike, even authoritarian governments have seen the Hollywood myths and the media hysteria about hacker exploits. Over time, criminal gangs have created and expanded on their cyber capabilities driven by a calculation of profits and risks much like conventional businesses. Combine an international banking environment that allows funds to be transferred across borders with little effort and less time and an international legal environment that is largely out of touch with the Internet and international telecommunications, and we have a breeding ground for Cyber criminals in which the risks of cross-border criminal activity is often much less risky than domestic criminal activity.

As successful Cyber criminal gangs have emerged in totalitarian regimes, it shouldn’t be a surprise that eventually the governments involved would eventually take an interest in both their activities and techniques. There are several reasons that totalitarian government might want to do this. Perhaps the simplest motivation is that the corrupt officials would be drawn to share in the profits in exchange for protection. In addition, the intelligence arms of these nations could also leverage their services and techniques at a fraction of the cost of developing similar capabilities themselves. Additionally, using these capabilities would also provide the intelligence agencies and even the host government with an element of deniability if operations assigned to the criminal gangs were detected.

Monument to the International Brigade photo by Secret Pilgrim.  For more information, read the history of the International Brigade.

Perhaps the most interesting model of development and Cyberwarfare activity today would be based on the pre-WW II example of the Spanish Civil War. After World War I, a period of mental and societal exhaustion followed on the part of all participating nations. This was quickly follow by a period of self-assessment and rebuilding. In the case of the defeated Germany the reconstruction period protracted due to difficult economic conditions, in part created by the harsh conditions of surrender imposed by the winning European governments.

It was also important to remember that these same victorious European governments undermined many of social and moral underpinnings of German society by systematically all the basis of traditional German government and governmental legitimacy without regard for what should replace it. The assessments of most historians is that these factors combined to sow the seed of hatred against the victorious powers and created a social climate in which a return to open warfare at some time in the future was seen as unavoidable and perhaps desirable. The result was that Germany actively prepared and planned for what was seen as the commonly inevitable war in the future. New systems and technologies were considered, tested. However, treaty limitations also hampered some of these efforts.

In the Soviet Union a similar set of conclusions developed during this period of history within the ruling elite, specifically that renewed war with Germany was inevitable in the near term. Like Germany, the Soviet Union also actively prepared for this war. Likewise they considered and studied new technologies and approaches to war. Somewhat surprisingly, they also secretly conspired with the Germans to provide them with secret proving grounds and test facilities to study some to the new technologies and approaches to war that would otherwise have been banned under provisions of the peace treaties of World War I.

So, when Civil War broke out in Spain in the summer of 1936, both Germany and the Soviet Union were positively delirious at the prospects of testing their new military equipment and theories out under battlefield conditions but, without the risks of participating in a real shooting war as an active belligerent. So, both governments sent every military technology possible to their proxies in Spain under the auspices of “aid”. In some cases they even sent “advisors” who were nothing less than active soldiers and pilots in the conflict. At first, this activity took place under a shroud of secrecy. But, when you send military equipment and people to fight in foreign lands it usually takes no time at all for someone to notice that, “those guys aren’t from here”.

Bomber During the Spanish Civil War photo by -Merce-.  Military aviation, bombing in particular, was one of the new technologies that was tested during the Spanish Civil War.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, I think the world has looked at the United States as the world’s sole superpower. Many, view this situation with fear and suspicion. Even some of our former Cold War allies have taken this view. Certainly our primary Cold War adversaries have adopted this stance. If you look at contemporary Chinese and Russian military writing it is clear that they have adopted a position similar to the pre- World War II notion that war between the US and Russia or war between the US and China is inevitable. To make matters worse, during much of the Cold War the US never seemed to pull it together militarily long enough to actually win a war. Toward the end of the Cold War we started smacking smaller allies of the Soviet Union like Grenada and succeeded.

We then moved on to give Iraq a real drubbing after the Cold War. The so-call “Hyperwar” in Iraq terrified the Russians and Chinese alike. The more they studied what we did in Iraq the more terrified they became. On of the many counters they have written about is posing asymmetric threats to the US, that is to say threatening the US in a way in which it is uniquely, or unusually vulnerable. One of these areas of vulnerability is Cyberspace. All sorts of press reporting indicate that the Russians and Chinese have made significant investments in this area. The Russians and Chinese deny these reports as quickly as they emerge. So, it is difficult to determine what the truth is. The fact that the Russians and Chinese are so sensitive to these claims may be a clear indication that they have active programs – the guilty men in these cases have a clear record of protesting to much when they are most guilty.

Assuming that all of this post-Cold War activity is true, I believe this puts us in much the same situation that existed in the pre-World War II Spanish Civil War era. I think the Russian and Chinese governments are just itching to test and refine their Cyberwarfare capabilities. But, at the same time I think they want to operate in a manner similar to how the Germans and the Soviet Union operated in that conflict. I think they want and are testing their capabilities but in a limited way that provides them with some deniability and diplomatic cover. This is important to them because the last thing they want now is to create a Cyber-incident that will precipitate a general conflict or even a major shift in diplomatic or trade relationships.

One of the major differences between the Spanish Civil War example and our current situation of course is that there is no need for a physical battlefield to exist to provide as a live testing environment for Cyber weapons and techniques. However, at least in the case of Russia with respect to Georgia, they are exploiting open military conflicts to use Cyberwar techniques when those conflicts do arise. We have seen similar, but much smaller efforts on the part of Iran, and the Palestinian Authority as embrace what is seen as a cheap and low risk weapon. However, their efforts seem to be more reactionary and rudimentary. The point is, the longer this game goes on without serious consequence the more it will escalate both vertically (in sophistication) and horizontally (be embraced by more countries). Where all of this will lead is anyone guess. But, I think the safe money is betting that the concept of Cyberwar is here to stay and eventually the tools and techniques and full potential of Cyberwar will eventually be used as part of as part of a strategy including more traditional weapons and techniques.

• A Short History of Cyberwar Lookalikes
• In Response to “Cyber Security Coming to a Boil” Comments….
• Cyber Security coming to a boil
• Beware the Cyber-Katrina!
• A Layered Model for Massively-Scaled Security Management

Rybolov’s Note: Hello all, I’m venturing into an open-ended series of blog posts aimed at starting conversation. Note that I’m not selling anything *yet* but ideas and maybe some points for discussion.

Let’s get this out there from the very beginning: I agree with Ranum that full-scale, nation-v/s-nation Cyberwar is not a reality.  Not yet anyway, and hopefully it never will be.  However, on a smaller scale with well-defined objectives, cyberwar is not only happening now, but it is also a natural progression over the past century.

Looking at where we’re coming from in the existing models and techniques for activities similar to cyberwar, it frames our present state very nicely :

Electronic Countermeasures. This has been happening for some time.  The first recorded use of electronic countermeasures (ECM) was in 1905 when the Russians tried to jam radio signals of the Japananese fleet besieging Port Arthur.  If you think about ECM as DOS based on radio, sonar, etc, then it seems like cyberwar is just an extension of the same denial of communications that we’ve been doing since communication was “invented”.

Modern Tactical Collection and Jamming. This is where Ranum’s point about spies and soldiers falls apart, mostly because we don’t have clandestine operators doing electronic collection at the tactical level–they’re doing both collection and “attack”.  The typical battle flow goes something along the lines of scanning for items of interest, collecting on a specific target, then jamming once hostilities have begun.  Doctrinally, collection is called Electronic Support and jamming is called Electronic Attack.  What you can expect in a cyberwar is a period of reconnaissance and surveillance for an extended length of time followed by “direct action” during other “kinetic” hostilities.

Radio Station Jamming. This is a wonderful little world that most of you never knew existed.  The Warsaw Pact used to jam Radio America and other sorts of fun propaganda that we would send at them.  Apparently we’ve had some interesting radio jamming since the end of the Cold War, with China, Cuba, North Korea, and South Korea implicated in some degree or another.

Website Denial-of-Service. Since only old people listen to radio anymore and most news is on the Internet, so it makes sense to DOS news sites with an opposing viewpoint.  This happens all the time, with attacks ranging from script kiddies doing ping floods to massive DOSBots and some kind of racketeering action… “You got a nice website, it would be pretty bad if nobody could see it.”  Makes me wonder why the US hasn’t taken Al Jazeera off the Internet.  Oh, that’s right, somebody already tried it.  However, in my mind, jamming something like Al Jazeera is very comparable to jamming Voice of America.

Estonia and Gruzija DOS. These worked pretty well from a denial-of-communications standpoint, but only because of the size of the target.  And so what if it did block the Internet, when it comes to military forces, it’s at best an annoyance, at most it will slow you down just enough.  Going back to radio jamming, blocking out a signal only works when you have more network to throw at the target than the target has network to communicate with the other end.  Believe it or not, there are calculators to determine this.

Given this evolution of communications denial, it’s not unthinkable that people wouldn’t be launching electronic attacks at each other via radar, radio, carrier pigeon, IP or any other way they can.

However, as in the previous precedents and more to some of the points of Ranum’s talk at DojoSec, electronic attacks by themselves only achieve limited objectives.  Typically the most likely type of attack is to conduct a physical attack and use the electronic attack, whether it’s radio, radar, or IT assets, to delay the enemy’s response.  This is why you have to take an electronic attack seriously if it’s being launched by a country which has a military capable of attacking you physically–it might be just a jamming attack, it might be a precursor to an invasion.

Bottom line here is this: if you use it for communication, it’s a target and has been for some time.

• The Spanish Civil War and the Rise of Cyberwar
• Et Tu, TIC?
• Comments on SCAP 2008
• The Rise of the Slow Denial of Service
• “Machines Don’t Cause Risk, People Do!”

So how does the Guerilla-CISO staff communicate with the locals on jaunts to foreign lands such as Deleware, New Jersey, and Afghanistan?  The answer is simple, we use interpreters, known in infantrese as “terps”.  Yes, you might not trust them deep down inside because they harbor all kinds of loyalties so complex that you can spend the rest of your life figuring out, but you can’t do the job without them.

But in remembering how we used our interpreters, I’m reminded of some basic concepts that might be transferable to the IT security and risk management world.  Or maybe not, at least kick back and enjoy the storytelling while it’s free. =)

Know When to Treat Them Like Mushrooms: And by that, we mean “keep them in the dark and feed them bullsh*t”.  What really mean is to tell potentially adversarial people that you’re working with the least amount of information that they need to do their job in order to limit the frequency and impact of them doing something nasty.  When you’re planning a patrol, the worst way to ruin your week is to tell the terps when you’re leaving and where you’re going.  That way, they can call their Taliban friends when you’re not looking and they’ll have a surprise waiting for you.  No, it won’t be a birthday cake.  The way I would get a terp is that one would be assigned to me by our battalion staff and the night before the patrol I would tell the specific terp that we were leaving in the morning, give them a time that I would come by to check up on them, and that they would need to bring enough gear for 5 days.  Before they got into my vehicles and we rolled away, I would look through their gear to make sure they didn’t have any kind of communications device (radio or telephone) to let their buddies know where we were at.

Fudge the Schedule to Minimize Project Risk: Terps–even the good ones–are notorious for being on “local time”, which for a patrol means one hour later than you told them you were leaving.  The good part about this is that it’s way better than true local time, which has a margin of error of a week and a half.  In order to keep from being late, always tell the terps when you’ll need them an hour and a half before you really do, then check up on them every half hour or so.  Out on patrol, I would cut that margin down to half an hour because they didn’t have all the typical distractions to make them late.

Talk Slowly, Avoid Complex Sentences: The first skill to learn when using terps is to say things that their understanding of English can handle.  When they’re doing their job for you, simple sentences works best.  I know I’m walking down the road of heresy, but this is where quantitative risk assessment done poorly doesn’t work for me because now I something that’s entirely too complex to interpret to the non-IT crowd.  In fact, it probably is worse than no risk assessment at all because it comes accross as “consultantspeak” with no tangible link back to reality.

Put Your Resources Where the Greatest Risk Is: To a vehicle patrol out in the desert, most of the action happens at the front of the patrol.  That’s where you need a terp.  That way, the small stuff, such as asking a local farmer to move his goats and sheep out of the road so you can drive through, stays small–without a terp up front, a 2-minute conversation becomes 15 minutes of hassle as you first have to get the terp up to the front of the patrol then tell them what’s going on.

Pigs, Chicken, and Roadside Bombs: We all know the story about how in the eggs and bacon breakfast, the chicken is a participant but the pig is committed.  Well, when I go on a patrol with a terp, I want them to be committed.  That means riding in the front vehicle with me.  It’s my “poison pill” defense in knowing that if my terp tipped off the Taliban and they blow up the lead vehicle with me in it, at least they would also get the terp.  A little bit of risk-sharing in a venture goes a long way at getting honesty out of people.

Share Risk in a Culturally-Acceptable Way: Our terps would balk at the idea of riding in the front vehicle most of the time.  I don’t blame them, it’s the vehicle most likely to be turned into 2 tons of slag metal thanks to pressure plates hooked up to IEDs.  The typical American response is something along the lines of “It’s your country, you’re riding up front with me so if I get blown up, you do to”.  Yes, I share that ideal, but the Afghanis don’t understand country loyalties, the only thing they understand is their tribe, their village, and their family.  The Guerilla-CISO method here is to get down inside their heads by saying “Come ride with me, if we die, we die together like brothers”.  You’re saying the same thing basically but you’re framing it in a cultural context that they can’t say no to.

Reward People Willing to Embrace Your Risks: One of the ways that I was effective in dealing with the terps was that I would check in occassionally to see if they were doing alright during down-time from missions.  They would show me some Bollywood movies dubbed into Pashto, I would give them fatty American foods (Little Debbie FTW!).  They would play their music.  I would make fun of their music and amaze them because they never figured out how I knew that the song had drums, a stringed instrument, and somebody singing (hey, all their favorite songs have that).  They would share their “foot bread” (the bread is stamped flat by people walking on it before it’s cooked, I was too scared to ask if they washed their feet first) with me.  I would teach them how to say “Barbara (their assignment scheduler back on an airbase) was a <censored> for putting them out in the middle of nowhere on this assignment” and other savory phrases.  These forays weren’t for my own enjoyment, but to build rapport with the terps so that they would understand when I would give them some risk management love, Guerilla-CISO style.

Police, Afghan Army and an Interpreter photo by ME!.  The guy in the baseball cap and glasses is one of the best terps I ever worked with.

• Security Assessments as Fraud, Waste, and Abuse
• How to Not Let FISMA Become a Paperwork Exercise
• “Machines Don’t Cause Risk, People Do!”
• An Open Letter to NIST About SP 800-30
• Opportunity Costs and the 20 Critical Security Controls

One of the best things about being almost older than dirt is that I’ve seen several cycles within the security community.  Just like fashion and ladies’ hemlines, if you pay attention long enough, you’ll see history repeat itself, or something that closely resembles history.  Time for a short trip “down memory lane…”

In the early days of computer security, all eyes were fixed on Linthicum and the security labs associated with the NSA.  In the late 80’s and early 90’s the NSA evaluation program was notoriously slow – glacial would be a word one could use…  Bottom line, the process just wasn’t responsive enough to keep up with the changes and improvements in technology.  Products would be in evaluation for years before coming out of the process with their enabling technology nearly obsolete.   It didn’t matter, it was the only game in town until NIST and the Common Criteria labs  came onto the scene.  This has worked well, however the reality is, it’s not much better at vetting and moving technology from vendors to users.  The problem is, the evaluation process takes time and time means money, but it also means that the code submitted for evaluation will most likely be several revisions old by the time it emerges from evaluation.   Granted, it may only be 6 months, but it might take a year – regardless, this is far better than before.

So…  practically speaking, if the base version of FooOS submitted for evaluation is, say Version 5.0.1, several revisions —  each solving operational problems affecting the  organization — may have been released.  We may find that we need to run Version 5.6.10r3 in order to pass encrypted traffic via the network.  Because we encrypt traffic we must use FIPS-Level 2 certified code – but in the example above, the validated version of the FooOS will not work in our network…    What does the CISO do?  We’ll return to this in a moment, it gets better!

In order to reach levels of FIPS-140 goodness, one vendor in particular has instituted “FIPS Mode.”  What this does is require administration of the box from apposition directly in front  of the equipment, or at the length of your longest console cable…  Clearly, this is not suitable for organizations with equipment deployed worldwide to locations that do not have qualified administrators or network engineers.  Further, having to fly a technician to Burundi to clear sessions on a box every time it becomes catatonic is ridiculous at worst.  At best it’s not in accordance with the network concept of operations.  How does the CISO propose a workable, secure solution?

Standard Hill photo by timparkinson.

Now to my point.  (about time Vlad)   How does the CISO approach this situation?  Allow me to tell you the approach I’ve taken….

1. Accept the fact that once Foo OS has achieved a level of FIPS-140 goodness, the likelihood that the modules of code within the OS implementing cryptographic functionality in follow-on versions have not been changed.  This also means you have to assume the vendor has done a good job of documenting the changes to their baseline in their release notes, and that they HAVE modular code…

2. Delve into vendor documentation and FIPS-140 to find out exactly what “FIPS Mode” is, its benefits and the requirement.  Much of the written documentation in the standard deals with physical security of the cryptographic module itself (e.g., tamper-evident seals) – but most helpful is Table 1.

Bottom line — some “features” are indeed useful,  but this one particular vendor’s implementation into a “one-size fits all” option tends to limit the use of the feature at all in some operational scenarios (most notably, the one your humble author is dealing with.)  BTW, changing vendors is not an option.

3. Upon analyzing the FIPS requirements against operational needs, and (importantly) the environment the equipment is operating in, one has to draw the line between “operating in vendor FIPS Mode,” and using FIPS 140-2 encryption.

4. Document the decision and the rationale.

Once again, security professionals have to help managers to strike a healthy balance between “enough” security and operational requirements.   You would think that using approved equipment, operating systems, and vendors using the CC evaluation process would be enough.  Reading the standard, we see the official acknowledgement that “Your Mileage May Indeed Vary:” ^TM

“While the security requirements specified in this standard are intended to maintain the security provided by a cryptographic module, conformance to this standard is not sufficient to ensure that a particular module is secure. The operator of a cryptographic module is responsible for ensuring that the security provided by a module is sufficient and acceptable to the owner of the information that is being protected and that any residual risk is acknowledged and accepted.”     FIPS 140-2 Sec 15, Qualifications

The next paragraph constitutes validation of the approach I’ve embraced:

“Similarly, the use of a validated cryptographic module in a computer or telecommunications system does not guarantee the security of the overall system. The responsible authority in each agency shall ensure that the security of the system is sufficient and acceptable.”  (Emphasis added.)

One could say, “it depends,” but you wouldn’t think so at first glance – it’s a Standard for Pete’s sake!

Then again, nobody said this job would be easy!

Vlad

• FIPS and the Linux Kernel
• Your Security “Requirements” are Teh Suxxorz
• The 10 CAG-egorically Wrong Ways to Introduce Standards
• Analyzing Fortify’s Plan to “Fix” the Government’s Security Problem
• “Machines Don’t Cause Risk, People Do!”

Here in the information assurance salt mines, we sure do loves us some conspiracies, so here’s the conspiracy of the month: S.773 gives the Government the ability to view your private data and the President disconnect authority over the Internet, which means he can sensor it.

Let’s look at the sections and paragraphs that would seem to say this:

Section 14:

(b) FUNCTIONS- The Secretary of Commerce–

(1) shall have access to all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access;

Section 18: The President–

(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security;

Taken completely by itself, it would seem like this gives the president the authorities to do all sorts of wrong stuff, all he has to do is to declare something as critical infrastructure and declare it compromised or in the interests of national security.  And some people have:

• S773… Government Control of Internet, Censoring Talk Radio!
• Censorship – A Political Rant
• Politics 4 All Comments

And some movies (we all love movies):

It makes me wonder since when have people considered social networking sites or the Internet as a whole as “critical infrastructure”. Then the BSOFH in me things “Ye gods, when did our society sink so low?”

Now, as far as going back to Section 14 of S.773, it exists because most of the critical infrastructure is privately-held.  There is a bit of history to understand here and that is that the critical infrastructure owners and operators are very reluctant to give the information on their piece of critical infrastructure to the Government.  Don’t blame them, I had the same problem as a contractor: if you give the Government information, the next step is them telling you how to change it and how to run your business.  Since the owners/operators are somewhat non-helpful, the Government needs more teeth to get what it needs.

But as far as private data traversing the critical infrastructure?  I think it’s a stretch to say that’s part of the requirements of Section 14, it’s to collect data “about” (the language of the bill) the critical infrastructure, not “processed, stored, or forwarded” on the critical infrastructure. But yeah, let’s scope this a little bit better, CapHill Staffers.

On to Section 18.  Critical infrastructure is defined elsewhere in law.  Let’s see the definitions section from HSPD-7, Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection:

In this directive:

The term “critical infrastructure” has the meaning given to that term in section 1016(e) of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (42 U.S.C. 5195c(e)).

The term “key resources” has the meaning given that term in section 2(9) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 101(9)).

The term “the Department” means the Department of Homeland Security.

The term “Federal departments and agencies” means those executive departments enumerated in 5 U.S.C. 101, and the Department of Homeland Security; independent establishments as defined by 5 U.S.C. 104(1);Government corporations as defined by 5 U.S.C. 103(1); and the United States Postal Service.

The terms “State,” and “local government,” when used in a geographical sense, have the same meanings given to those terms in section 2 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. 101).

The term “the Secretary” means the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The term “Sector-Specific Agency” means a Federal department or agency responsible for infrastructure protection activities in a designated critical infrastructure sector or key resources category. Sector-Specific Agencies will conduct their activities under this directive in accordance with guidance provided by the Secretary.

The terms “protect” and “secure” mean reducing the vulnerability of critical infrastructure or key resources in order to deter, mitigate, or neutralize terrorist attacks.

And referencing the Patriot Act gives us the following definition for critical infrastructure:

In this section, the term “critical infrastructure” means systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.

Since it’s not readily evident from what we really consider to be critical infrastructure, let’s look at the implemention of HSPD-7.  They’ve defined critical infrastructure sectors and key resources, each of which have a sector-specific plan on how to protect them.

• Agriculture and Food
• Banking and Finance
• Chemical
• Commercial Facilities
• Communications
• Critical Manufacturing
• Dams
• Defense Industrial Base
• Emergency Services
• Energy
• Government Facilities
• Healthcare and Public Health
• Information Technology
• National Monuments and Icons
• Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste
• Postal and Shipping
• Transportation System
• Water

And oh yeah, S.773 doesn’t mention key resources, only critical infrastructure.  Some of this key infrastructure isn’t even networked (*cough* icons and national monuments *cough*). Also note that “Teh Interblagosphere” isn’t listed, although you could make a case that information technology and communications sectors might include it.

Yes, this is not immediately obvious, you have to stitch about half a dozen laws together, but if we didn’t do pointers to other laws, we would have the legislative version of spaghetti code.

Going back to Section 18 of S.773, what paragraph 2 does is give the President the authority to disconnect critical infrastructure or government-owned IT systems from the Internet if they have been compromised.  That’s fairly scoped, I think.  I know I’ll get some non-technical readers on this blog post, but basically one of the first steps in incident response is to disconnect the system, fix it, then restore service.

Paragraph 6 is the part that scares me, mostly because it has the same disconnect authority as paragraph 2and the same scope (critical infrastructure and but the only justification is “in the interests of national security”. In other words, we don’t have to tell you why we disconnected your systems from the Internet because you don’t have the clearances to understand.

So how do we fix this bill?

Section 14 needs an enumeration of the types of data that we can request from critical infrastructure owners and operators. Something like the following:

• Architecture and toplogy
• Vulnerability scan results
• Asset inventories
• Audit results

The bill has a definitions section–Section 23.  We need to adopt the verbiage from HSPD-7 and include it in Section 23.  That takes care of some of the scoping issues.

We need a definition for “compromise” and we need a definition for “national security”. Odds are these will be references to other laws.

Add a recourse for critical infrastructure owners who have been disconnected: At the very minimum, give them the conditions under which they can be reconnected and some method of appeal.

• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 4
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 3
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 1
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 5
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 2

Rybolov Note: this is part 4 in a series about S.773.  Go read the bill here.  Go read part one here.  Go read part two here.  Go read part three here.  Go read part 5 here. =)

SEC. 18. CYBERSECURITY RESPONSIBILITIES AND AUTHORITY. This section needs to be reviewed line-by-line because it’s dense:

“The President–

(1) within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, shall develop and implement a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, which shall include–

(A) a long-term vision of the Nation’s cybersecurity future; and

(B) a plan that encompasses all aspects of national security, including the participation of the private sector, including critical infrastructure operators and managers;”

OK, fair enough, this calls for a cybersecurity strategy that includes the agencies and critical infrastructure.  Most of that is in-play already and has overlap with some other sections.

(2) may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network;

Declaring an emergency is already a President function for natural disasters, this makes sense, except where you militarized cybersecurity and indirectly give the President the authority here to declare a cyberwar, depending on how you interpret this paragraph.

The cutoff authority has been given much talk.  This part pertains only to Government systems and critical infrastructure.  Note that the criteria here is that the part being cutoff has to have been compromised, which makes more sense.  The part that I’m worried about is when we preemptively cut off the network in anticipation of pwnage.

(3) shall designate an agency to be responsible for coordinating the response and restoration of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network affected by a cybersecurity emergency declaration under paragraph (2);

This is interesting to me because it leaves the designation up to the President.  Remember, we have all this debate as to who should “own” cybersecurity: DHS, DoD, NSA, FBI, and even Commerce have been proposed here.  I don’t think Congress should leave this designation to the President–it needs to be decided before an incident so that we don’t fight over jurisdiction issues during the incident.  Ref: Cyber-Katrina.

(4) shall, through the appropriate department or agency, review equipment that would be needed after a cybersecurity attack and develop a strategy for the acquisition, storage, and periodic replacement of such equipment;

This is good.  What it means is stockpiling or contracting for equipment in advance of an attack… think DDoS response teams and you have a pretty good idea.  And hey, this also works in disaster recovery, which I’ve never understood why we don’t manage some DR at the national level.  GSA, are you paying attention here?

(5) shall direct the periodic mapping of Federal Government and United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks, and shall develop metrics to measure the effectiveness of the mapping process;

Enumeration is good, depending on what we’re using the information for.  If you use it to beat up on the agency CISOs and the critical infrastructure owners/operators, then we have better things to spend our time doing.  If you do this and then use the information to help people Ref: security metrics, architecture support, Federal Enterprise Architecture.  I also have a problem with this because you can map vulnerabilities but how do you get the information to the right people who can fix them?

(6) may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or networks in the interest of national security;

OK, this gives the President authority over private networks.  And fo-shizzle, I thought the President already had disconnect authority over Government networks.  If I was an owner of critical infrastructure I would be sh*tting bricks here because this means that the President has disconnect authority for my gear and doesn’t have to give me an answer on why or a remediation plan to get it turned back on–Ref: National Security Letter.  I think we need the disconnect authority, but there has to be some way for people to get turned back on.

(7) shall, through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, direct an annual review of all Federal cyber technology research and development investments;

Good stuff, I would be surprised if this isn’t happening already, what with Congress providing the budget for cyber technology research.

(8) may delegate original classification authority to the appropriate Federal official for the purposes of improving the Nation’s cybersecurity posture;

This paragraph is interesting, mostly because it could go anyway.  If we get a Cybersecurity Advisor, this will most likely be dedicated to them, meaning that they get the authority to determine what’s national security information.  This also works in conjunction with quite a few sections of the bill, including all the information-sharing initiatives and paragraph 6 above.

(9) shall, through the appropriate department or agency, promulgate rules for Federal professional responsibilities regarding cybersecurity, and shall provide to the Congress an annual report on Federal agency compliance with those rules;

I had to read this paragraph a couple of times.  Really what I think we’re doing is establishing a case for agency executives to be found negligent in their duty if they do not ensure security inside their agency–think CEO liability for negligence.

(10) shall withhold additional compensation, direct corrective action for Federal personnel, or terminate a Federal contract in violation of Federal rules, and shall report any such action to the Congress in an unclassified format within 48 hours after taking any such action; and

There are 2 parts of this paragraph: Federal personnel and contractors.  This is a sanctions part of the legislation.  Note that there is not a penalty and/or authority for anybody outside of Government.  The problem with this is that proving negligence is very hard in the security world.  Combined with Paragraph 9, this is a good combination provided that the professional responsibilities are written correctly.  I still think this has room for abuse because of scoping problems–we already have rules for sanctions of people (personnel law) and contracts (cure notices, Federal Acquisition Regulations), only they don’t have much teeth up to this point because it’s hard to prove negligence.

(11) shall notify the Congress within 48 hours after providing a cyber-related certification of legality to a United States person.

I had to search around for a description here.  I found some people who said this paragraph pertained to the certification of professionals as in section 7.  This is wrong.  Basically, what happens is that the Department of Justice issues a “certification of legality” when somebody (usually inside the Government) asks them if a certain act is legal to perform.  Think legal review for building a wiretap program: the President has to go to DoJ and ask them if the program is legal under existing laws.

What this paragraph really does is it institutes Congressional oversight on a “FYI-basis” over Executive Branch decisions on policy to keep them from overstepping their legal bounds.

Verdict: This section is all over the map.  Like most things in S.773, it has some scope issues but overall this section establishes tasks that you can expect the Cybersecurity Advisor or DHS under the Cybersecurity Advisor’s auspices to perform.

Capitol Rotunda photo by OakleyOriginals.

SEC. 19. QUADRENNIAL CYBER REVIEW. This section mandates a review of the cyberstrategy every 4 years.

Verdict: We’ve been doing this so far on an ad-hoc basis, might as well make it official.

SEC. 20. JOINT INTELLIGENCE THREAT ASSESSMENT. This section mandates an annual report on the bad guys and what they’re doing.  This is similar to the Congressional testimony we’ve seen so far on the subject.  If we’re going to expect Congress to make good public policy decisions, they need the information.

Verdict: OK, I don’t see much wrong with this as long as it’s done right and not abused by politics.

SEC. 21. INTERNATIONAL NORMS AND CYBERSECURITY DETERRANCE MEASURES. This section authorizes/mandates the President to cooperate with other countries about “cybersecurity stuff”.

Verdict: Not specific enough to mean anything.  If we keep this section, we need to enumerate specifically what we want the Executive Branch to do.

SEC. 22. FEDERAL SECURE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ACQUISITIONS BOARD. This section creates a board to review large IT purchases.  Yes, that slows down the purchasing process horribly, as if it isn’t bad enough by itself.  Um, I thought we were supposed to do this with the Federal Enterprise Architecture.

Verdict: This is a macro-scale solution for a micro-scale problem.  Sorry, it doesn’t work for me.  Make FEA responsible for the macro-scale and push good, solid guidance down to the agencies for the micro-scale.  Replace this section with the NIST checklists program and a true security architecture model.

• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 3
• The World Asks: is S.773 Censorship?
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 2
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 5
• Blow-By-Blow on S.773–The Cybersecurity Act of 2009–Part 1