Information Warfare
Midterm Overview
Lectures Covered
Everything until (including) March 2nd
 Reading:

– All lecture slides
– Denning book: Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13
(access control), 14 (Risk management,
Incident handling)
– Additional reading materials (next slide)
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Additional reading
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Familiarity with CSCE 522 lecture notes, 2013 Fall, as
needed, http://www.cse.sc.edu/~farkas/csce522-2013/lecture.htm
Denning, D. E. Stuxnet: What Has Changed? Future Internet 2012, 4, 672687. (.pdf)
Open Source Intelligence: Private Sector Capabilities to Support DoD Policy,
Acquisition, and Operations, http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/oss980501.htm
NSA revelations hobble pursuit of a comprehensive cyberdefense initiative,
Homeland Security News Wire, 08/16,
2013,http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20130816-nsarevelations-hobble-pursuit-of-a-comprehensive-cyberdefense-initiative
Expert calls for “surveillance minimization” to restore public trust, Homeland
Security News Wire,
01/27/2014, http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20140127-expertcalls-for-surveillance-minimization-to-restore-public-trust
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Additional Reading
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Michael N. Schmitt, Computer Network Attack and the Use of Force in International
Law. Thoughts on a Normative Framework., 37 Colum. J. Transnat'l L. 885,
1999,http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA471993
NIST special publications, Incident Handling Updated
Guidelines, http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-61r2.pdf
(general understanding only)
Roger C. Molander, Peter A. Wilson, B. David Mussington, Richard Mesic: What is
Strategic Information Warfare?,
1996,http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR661.pdf
Information Security Policy - A Development Guide for Large and Small
Companies, http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/policyissues/informationsecurity-policy-development-guide-large-small-companies_1331
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Information Security (INFOSEC)
Protection of information against intentional
or unintentional unauthorized
– Disclosure (confidentiality)
– Modification (integrity)
– Destruction (availability)
Concerned mainly with owned resources
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Security Tradeoffs
Security
Functionality
COST
Ease of Use
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Information Assurance
Information security (prevention) plus
– Authenticity and non-repudiation
– Detection and reaction capabilities
– Additional threats, like perception
managements and exploitation of public
media
 Addresses intentional or unintentional
threats
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Information Warfare

Addresses only intentional attacks
 Information in any form and transmitted over any
media
 Defensive operations:
– Protection against attacks
– Concerned with non-owned and owned resources

Offensive operations:
– Exploit vulnerabilities in information resources
– Motives, means, opportunities
WIN-LOSE NATURE OF OPERATIONS
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Gain-Loss Nature of IW
prevent availability
ensure integrity
ensure availability
defense
offense
increase availability
decrease integrity
decrease availability
From: Denning Figure 2.1
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Activities

Play: hackers vs. owners
 Crime: perpetrators vs. victims
 Individual rights: individuals vs.
individuals/organizations/government
 National security: national level activities
– State activities
– Terrorism
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Intention of Attackers

Defensive IW
 Difficult to guess
 Determines response and incident handling
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Offensive Information Warfare
Win-Lose Activity
 Alter availability and integrity of resources to
benefit the offense
 Old vs. new methods
 Areas:
1. Open source and competitive intelligence
2. Psyops and perception management
3. Signal intelligence
Not yet covered:
1. Insiders threat
2. Computer attacks
3. Malicious software
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1 Open Source Intelligence
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Protected information: readily available in public domain,
can be inferred from public data, or deduced from
aggregated public data
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Goal: answer specific question in support of some mission

Advantages: no risk for collector, provides context, mode
of information acquisition, cover for data discovery by
secret operations

Disadvantages: may not discover important information,
assurance of discovery(?)
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1 Privacy and Copyright
Piracy
– Copyright Infringement
Acquisition of protected work without the owner’s
permission
Human perception: not serious crime
Significant loss for marketing/manufacturing/owner
– Trademark Infringement
Intellectual property disputes
Domain name disputes
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2 Psyops and Perception
Management
 Information operations that aim to affect
perception of others
 Goal: influence actions
 Means: influence emotions, reasoning, decisions
 Target: individuals, groups, nation, World
 Censorship
– Offensive: denies population access to certain materials
– Defensive: protect society from materials that would
undermine its culture or governance
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4 Signal Intelligence
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Operations that involves interception and analysis
of signals across electromagnetic spectrum
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Intelligence report, criminal investigations,
employee monitoring

U.S. Federal wiretap restrictions

Foreign intelligence

Privacy rights
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Defensive Information Warfare
Defensive Information Warfare
Protect information resources from attacks
Preserve the value of resource or recover
lost value
Security Policy
Methods
Response
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Vulnerability Monitoring

Identify security weaknesses
 Methods: automated tools, human walkthrough, surveillance, audit, background
checks
 Red team: organized group of people
attempting to penetrate the security
safeguards of the system
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Incident Handling
 Not all incidents can be prevented  Incident
handling
–
–
–
–
Prevention and preparedness
Detection and analysis
Containment and recovery
Post-incident activity
 Benefits:
–
–
–
–
Systematic and appropriate response to incidents
Quick response  reduce loss and damage
Strengthen security
Satisfy legal requirements
 Federal agency requirements
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Sample tests
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Posted on class website
 Will be discussed on March 16, Monday
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