Obama: Cyberwarmonger against North Korea?

In the early days after the Sony data hack and breach was first announced, after giving some, but not full, credence to the originally proposed idea that North Korea was behind the hack, I backed off, and instead attributed it, as did some guesstimate reporting, to one or more disgruntled current or former Sony employees.

First, nobody connected to North Korea mentioned "The Interview" in the first few days, or even first couple of weeks, after the breach became public knowledge. Wired has also addressed this. And, the type of information that was being leaked seemed to fuel the angle of disgruntlement.

But now, the FBI says Kim Jong Un's minions, or minions by extension, did it.

And yet, I'm still not sure.

And I'm not alone. Here's an in-depth analysis refuting the FBI.

Points 1-2 there address the idea that it seems made to look like it came from North Korea by someone who didn't quite know the right imitation.

Points 3-4 cover the revenge factor.

Points 7-8 cover why Obama would want to blame North Korea, at least in part.

But I think this needs to be taken further.

First, let's say the US, specifically the NSA, has in the past 12 months created some shiny new cyberwarfare weaponry. It's been itching for a chance to try it out.

So, instead of "weapons of mass destruction" and "mushroom clouds," we drum up other slanted or false claims and voila!

Second, let's say Dear Leader ... OUR Dear Leader, not Kim Jong Un's dead daddy ... I gave OUR Dear Leader that name ... let's say our Dear Leader is actually playing, if not 10-dimensional chess (at which he sucks) but bank shot pool. Or bow shot diplomacy.

As in, "Hey, Beijing, watch us do this to Pyongyang."

So, while lives may not be lost, cyberwarmongering against North Korea leaves me about as ill at ease as warmongering against Iraq. That said, Democrats right-or-wrong types still refuse to recognize the foreign policy continuities between Dear Leader and Shrub Bush.

Update, Dec. 30: And, the private sector continues to reject our government's claim that North Korea was behind the Sony hack. Assuming that our government was behind NK's Internet shutdown, this makes Obama a cyberwarmonger, does it not?

Should we be fearing Chinese cyberwar?

America the Vulnerable: New Technology and the Next Theat to National Security by Joel Brenner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


At first, seeing this was written by a national security “insider,” I was leery. Fortunately, I read on. Joel Brenner tells us why we need to be more worried about China, the Russian mafia, and international drug smugglers, among others, conducting cyberespionage and other things.



China stands No. 1, because “war” and “peace” aren’t polar opposites there.  Brenner adds that many of these attacks are against private business, not just defense contractors, but financial agencies and also non-defense contractors for the federal government. Add in the amount of products these companies had that are at least partially made in China, and we have a problem indeed, he says.



Brenner recommends solutions while also looking at some possible bad-case scenarios of Chinese blackmail a decade or two ahead.



A bit of hyperbole here and there about some of the possible threats, but, given that both major political parties don't want to address this, maybe some hyperbole is needed.





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The Dark Side of the Internet — military astroturf bots

In part 2 of this ongoing series, I called out Clay Shirkey (and boy extension, Michael Shermer, Jeff Jarvis and other Internet utopians) for their failure to wrestle with the idea that Western democracies, especially now that we are in a "War on Terror" will have little compunction about Internet-spying and games-playing on their own people. Beyond the history of 19th-century Europe, the First Red Scare and the War on Drugs in the U.S. would have provided enough food and information on those lines for thought.

In current times, I mentioned the HBGary Federal e-mail promoting its ability to set up cyberbots, or astroturfing bots, to "game" liberal blogs and other sites on the Internet.

Well, now it's happening.

The U.S. Army is devising software to do just that. Now, the Pentagon says it will be used only overseas.

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.

Right. Remember the quaint idea that the CIA would only operate overseas? That one was shredded 40 years ago. And, we saw how the NSA shredded that overseas-local distinction with its warrantless domestic wiretapping.

Remember also this is the same Army that recently got busted for having brainwashed U.S. Senators about Afghanistan.

Notify Clay Shirky, Michael Shermer and other Internet utopians ASAP.

(Hat tip Discover magazine.)

Who's targeting Iran with a cybervirus? Israel?

The NYT basically says that if the Stuxnet virus was produced by a government's electronic espionage agency or program, it's a flop because it hit so many sites besides the computers at Iran's Natanz nuclear centrifuge site.

That's entirely backward thinking. Wouldn't a smart enough, high-tech nation consider "looking incompetent" precisely to try to cover up its tracks?

Or, there's another possibility, in a country like Israel. This wasn't a government operation. Rather, some individual(s) did it.

Plus there's new, additional, albeit indirect, information from inside the code pointing at Israel (or individual Israelis) as the creator, and Iran as the target.

And, the Christian Science Monitor further addresses the claims of why Israel or some other government couldn't have written Stuxnet because it's too clunky or whatever.

Here's why it's spread beyond Bushehr if that was its intended target:

Stuxnet might have been spread by the USB memory sticks used by a Russian contractor while building the Bushehr nuclear plant, Langner offers. The same contractor has jobs in several countries where the attackware has been uncovered.

Sounds simple enough. And, I think, probably known to the NYT writer. Or, it should have been. No, John Markoff isn't a "Friend of Likud" or something. But, he's a tech writer, not a national security writer, so, I don't think so. Rather, nobody on the national security side was giving him feedback, I guess.