Militerisation of Cyber Space
&
Weaponisation of Software
By
DR T.H. CHOWDARY
* Director, Center for Telecom Management & Studies
•Chairman, Pragna Bharati (Intellect India), Andhra Pradesh
•Fellow: Tata Consultancy Service Ltd.
* Former Information Technology Adviser, Government of A.P
Chairman & Managing Director
Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Bombay
T: +91 (40) 6667-1191(O) 2784-3121®
F: +91 (40) 6667-1111 (O)
Hanuman.chowdary@tcs.com
Talk at IETE,Hyd: 17 May 2010
World Telecom & Information Society Day
Preface
• A specter is haunting a great power like the US and the powers
like India that want to be great and the power Russia that was
once a super power.
• The specter is Information Warfare (IW), in cyber space. Internet is
being militarized just as the outer space was militarized by the
Ronald Reagon, Margaret Thatcher combination. Software is being
weaponised in order to smash the adversaries capability to wage
war. This power point presentation is to sensitize Indian policy makers to the looming peril and urge Indian professionals to
develop the skills that are necessary to make our computer
networks impregnable. No amount of funding will be too much to
secure our networks especially those of the armed forces, finance
and banking, telecom and power, health care and emergency
service sectors.
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ICTs are affecting our civilization
• Cell phones, computers, Internet,
communications satellites, optical fiber cables,
wireless in the local loop (WILL)
• Global connectivity to every equipped person,
at any time, to anyone, anywhere
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ICT-based Information Society
• Information storage, transmission and
exchange over millions of computer networks
distributed across the world.
• Diplomatic Missions, e-governance, power
grids, telecoms, civil aviation, railways, police
& related security and law enforcement,
organs, banks, health and relief
services…armed forces networks, supply
chains… are targets.
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ICTs in and for war
• Electronic warfare
• Militerisation of outer space – Star Wars
(Indrajit of Ramayana &
Ghatotkacha of Mahabharat)
• Ronald Reagon, Margaret Thacher
Vs. The Soviet Union
(Gulf Wars I and II, Afghanistan/ Pakistan )
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power
Sources for this presentation:
• 1. Northrop Grumman project; Capability of the Peoples Republic of China
to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation prepared
for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
• Shadows in the Cloud : A report released on 6th April 2010 by the
Information Warfare Monitor Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs,
University of Toronto and (b) The SecDev Group, Ottawa and the
Shadow Service Foundation .
• Cyber Warfare: An Analysis of the Means and Motivations of Selected
Nation States by the Institute for Security Technology Studies at
Dartmouth College, USA
• Ten Critical Trends for Cyber Security - World war 3.0 - The Futurist, SeptOct 2009
• Scrutiny Cyber Space for the 44th Presidency: A report of the CSIS
Commission on Cyber Security
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (2)
• China’s Intellectuals resources for I.W
• The Science of Military Strategy
• The Science of Campaigns
• An Introduction to Information Warfare
-written by Maj.Gen. Dai Qingmin. He worked at the
PLA’s Electronic Engineering Academy .
• The Academy of Military Science has a journal, China
Military Science with close links to PLA theoretical,
experimental and practical work in the weaponisation
of software.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (3)
 China’s Intellectuals resources for I.W
Institutions :
• The National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan
Province
• The PLA Science & Engineering University
• The PLA Information Engineering University
• The AMS has a Department of Warfare Theory and Strategic
Research.
• The PLA maintains 6 Technical Reconnaissance Bureau (TRB)
located in Lanzhou, Jainan, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Beijing
military regions that are responsible for SIGINT collection of
strategic and tactical targets.
• The first TRB in Chengdu received a series of military
commendations for substantial achievements in informatisation
research.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (4)
• China’s I.W Doctrine
• PLA’s goal is to establish control of an adversary’s information flow and
maintain dominance
• In the battle space
• The Information War (IW) strategies called Integrated Network Electronic
Warfare.
• It targets the adversaries’ information systems to delay deployments and
impact combat effectiveness of troops already in theater.
• Campaigns will be conducted in all domains simultaneously – ground, air,
sea and electro-magnetic space.
• It seizes control of adversary’s information flow and establishes
information dominance.
• PLA considers that this is a pre-requisite for seizing air and naval
superiority.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (5)
• China’s Haktivist communities
• The Chinese hacker community. They are thousands of web
based groups. They are developing malware tools. The community
is engaged in large scale politically motivated denial of service
attacks, data destruction and web-defacements of foreign
networks. They are HACTISTS . They trade attacks with their
counter parts in the USA, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and South
Korea.
• Hackers are 2 kinds - White hat Hackers: These are bug hunters exploit coders. Their goal is profits. They help improve security
and achievement of recognition with great exploits & Black Hat
operators : They are mercenaries, get paid to penetrate networks;
they write worms and viruses.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (6)
• Chinese cyber ware hactivists have a nation state
customer, making the activity state- sponsored
by default, regardless of the affiliation of the
actual operators at the keyboard.
• These operators have resources necessary to
develop and exploit previously unknown
vulnerabilities that are often missed by
signature based IDS /IPS and end point
protection software . These groups are heavily
focused and research new Zero Day vulnerability
(that is first ever discovery of vulnerability
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (7)
• Recruitment & Organisaion
• PLA has Information Warfare Militia units
since Y2002.
• The PLA scouts and identifies IT professionals
with specific backgrounds such as advanced
degree holders; who had studied overseas
and computer networking experts to co-opt
them in the cyber Militias.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (8)
• Targets
• Numbers: 30,000/40,000 Hactivists cleverly
covered links with the PLA
• Forensic analysis suggests that the groups are
comprised of multiple members of varying
skill levels operating with fixed schedules and
standard operating procedures They take
detailed steps to mask their activities on the
targeted computer.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (9)
• Exfiltration Operations
• These attacks often begin with an e-mail message with a file
attachment containing both exploit code and another small piece
of software which will give the attacker control of the victim’s
computer. Then this file ( usually, an image document or
spreadsheet is opened by the vulnerable program on the victim’s
computers ( eg: Power Point, WordPad, Adobe Acrobat etc. the
back door program executes. E-mail is the most common entry
vector).
• Analysis of forensic data associated with penetrations attributed
to sophisticated state-sponsored operators suggest that in some
operations multiple individuals are possibly involved, responsible
for specific tasks such as gaining and establishing network
accessed, surveying portions of the targeted network to identify
information of value and organizing the data exfiltration.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (10)
• Staging points are servers where the exfiltrated data are
copied into. They compress, encrypt, segment and replicate
exfiltrated information before distributing it through
encrypted channels to multiple external servers that act
as drop points .
• The US information security staff could eventually detect
and block the exfiltration in mainstream but not before
significant amounts of data left the network.
• Intrusion prevention systems were then turned on to alert
and block further activity and for the next five hours,
these systems continued to detect attempts by the
hacking operators to return to complete the exfiltration.
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China- The Foremost
Information War (IW) Power (11)
• Main Theater of operations; Chengdu
• Operational Exercises
• A Lanzhou Military Region division conducted
in Feb 2009 an opposed forced information
warfare exercise featuring computer network
attack while countering electronic warfare
attacks
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Some exploits
• In Jan 2007 the PLA successfully fired a laser to bring down a defunct
Chinese weather satellite. That system has been operationalised since.
This technology is called the Nuclear Generated electro-magnetic pulse
attacks for controlling space-based information assets
• In 2007 China successfully tested direct ascent ASAT weapon that used a
kinetic kill vehicle to destroy an aging Chinese weather satellite.
• China has developed a road mobile ICBM , the DF-31A that can range the
continental United States and a submarine launched variant, the JL-2 that
will be deployed in China’s new nuclear powered submarines.
• In 2006 the Chinese used a laser dazzling weapon that temporarily
blinded a reconnaissance satellite .
• A long term persistent campaign by the Chinese hacker community
successfully exfiltrated at least 10-20 terabits of data from US government
networks as of Y 2007.
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Other countries on to E.W
•
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USA
Russia
Pakistan
Iran
South Korea
Israel
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What India should do
• Evolve & adopt an IW doctrine
• Train ad equip defence personnel (like south
Korea ) in EW
• Build intellectual resources
• Universities, Institutes, Journals
• Carry out exercises
• Hold Hacking competitions
• Fund Adequately
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A surprise
• Kautilya’s Artha Sastra has a chapter on
warfare- China’s PLA’s doctrine of IW appears
to be the electronic version of physical
actions.
• Welcome GOI’s decision (13.05.’10) to set up
a National Defense University near Gurgaon.
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Dhanyawad:
Thank You
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