CyberWire Daily - The CyberWire 12.28.15

Episode Date: December 28, 2015

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group claims hack of downstate New York dam. I'm Dave Bittner in Baltimore with your Cyber Wire summary for Monday, December 28, 2015. A large distributed denial-of-service campaign continues to disrupt Turkey's servers. Online banking has been worrisomely affected, with other sectors sustaining various degrees of disruption. The.tr domain has been under attack since around December 14th, and Turkey's government has resorted to blocking inbound foreign traffic in an effort to mitigate the campaign's effects. resorted to blocking inbound foreign traffic in an effort to mitigate the campaign's effects. Anonymous claims credit for the operation, which it maintains is retaliation for Turkish support of ISIS.

Turkey naturally denies supporting ISIS. Anonymous also claims to have averted a significant terrorist action in Italy through its infiltration of ISIS communications, perhaps, the hacktivist darkly suggest, shared with various governments. Italian authorities have nothing to say on the matter. ISIS Dash over the weekend posted a new video mocking the Saudi-led Coalition Against Extremism. ISIS sympathizers also took a poke at university websites in New Jersey and small business in Texas. The fight against ISIS makes for strange bedfellows.

Russian intelligence services are said to be cooperating closely with Afghanistan's Taliban against Daesh. No government seems to have an answer to Daesh recruiting and inspirational chatter. Frustration moves some officials and policy wonks in the U.S. to talk up measures to restrict strong encryption or access to jihadist websites. And China enacts a law that mandates backdoors. But these measures are overdetermined. They would have been attractive modes of social control in any case. A nominally independent Iranian group claims credit for the New York dam hack. Downstate officials continue to press the feds for details and cast doubt on the effectiveness of cyber threat intelligence sharing measures.

The recently disclosed Juniper Network's issues remain under investigation. Many observers perceive some governments' hand in the matter. Which government or governments remains a matter of dispute. Do you know the status of your compliance controls right now? Like, right now. We know that real-time visibility is critical for security, but when it comes to our GRC programs, we rely on point-in-time checks. But get this. More than 8,000 companies, like Atlassian and Quora,

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John, let's talk about information operations. In particular, what have they got to do with cybersecurity? I know the conventional wisdom is that information ops have nothing to do with hacking, viruses, Trojans, and things like that. Well, as usual, the conventional wisdom has the details right, but it's got the big picture wrong. Now, of course, information operations need have nothing at all to do with hackers, APTs, viruses, or malware of any kind. They're much broader than that. I think a good way to approach them is by understanding U.S. military doctrine. And in that doctrine, and here I'll quote Joint Pub 3-13, information operations include strategic communications, public affairs. include strategic communications, public affairs. They are the integrated employment, the manual says,

of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and information security in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities to, and this is the key point, influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversary of human and automated decision-making while protecting our own. That's the U.S. Department of Defense. Okay, but once again, how does cyberspace figure into information ops? So once again, I think we can return to the Department of Defense doctrine. And on that topic, it says, or what they call a cyber persona, that is an online identity that facilitates communication,

decision-making, and the influencing of audiences in the cognitive dimension. When employed in support of information operations, cyberspace operations, the manual says, generally focus on the integration of offensive and defensive capabilities exercised in and through cyberspace in concert with other measures and coordination across multiple lines of operations and lines of effort. So to step away from the language of doctrine for a minute, if you're familiar with online marketing, think of cyber information operations as online marketing and battle stress. But the target demographic isn't customers here, it's adversaries. And so are we seeing the bad guys engaging in information operations?

Yes, we are indeed. And in fact, in the case of ISIS, it's their stock and trade. Few governments worry about ISIS hacking very much in the classical sense of hacking and that their technical operations conducted against non-cooperating systems. ISIS really hasn't shown much ability in that regard. However much they'd like to, we haven't seen reports of ISIS sympathizers establishing persistent presence in networks, shutting down systems, corrupting data, or even stealing data. We have seen some website defacements.

We saw some late last week, essentially cyber vandalism. But governments still worry about ISIS in cyberspace. And they're concerned because ISIS recruits its members online, and it does so with considerable success. They're also concerned because ISIS uses the Internet to inspire acts of terrorism. They may also use it to some extent to coordinate or control terrorist actions. But to their successful inspiration of terrorists, there's no doubt. So if you could summarize, like, why is this of concern for those of us in the cybersecurity world? Yeah, today information is carried, it's stored, it's transmitted, it's even created largely in cyberspace.

And what happens in cyberspace under opposition is a security matter. Because unfortunately, what happens in cyberspace doesn't stay in cyberspace. And that makes it cybersecurity. All right, John Petrick, once again, thanks for joining us. John is the editor of the Cyber Wire. And now a message from Black Cloak. Did you know the easiest way for cyber criminals to bypass your company's defenses is by targeting your executives and their families at home? Black Cloak's award-winning

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Learn more at blackcloak.io. And that's The Cyber Wire. We are proudly produced in Maryland by our talented team of editors and producers. I'm Dave Bittner. Thanks for listening. Thank you. innovative uses that deliver measurable impact. Secure AI agents connect, prepare, and automate your data workflows, helping you gain insights, receive alerts, and act with ease through guided apps tailored to your role. Data is hard. Domo is easy. Learn more at ai.domo.com.

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