It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Air Force Seeking Cyber-Weapons

page: 1
2

log in

join
share:

posted on Aug, 28 2012 @ 10:11 PM
link   

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) posted a broad agency announcement [PDF] recently, calling on contractors to submit concept papers detailing technological demonstrations of ‘cyberspace warfare operations’ (CWO) capabilities.

The Air Force is looking to obtain CWO capabilities falling into a number of categories including: ‘cyberspace warfare attack’ and ‘cyberspace warfare support.’

The broad agency announcement defines ‘cyberspace warfare attack’ capabilities as those which would give them the ability to “destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries [sic] ability to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage.”


I found this bit particularly interesting.

This public announcement comes at something of an odd time considering the outrage feigned by Congress and the ensuing investigation launched by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after the New York Times published an article in which anonymous Obama administration officials were quoted admitting that the Stuxnet worm had been a U.S. operation. Odd timing or not, the Air Force’s frank call for arms is emblematic of an increasingly stark reality: the construction and eventual deployment of military-grade malware and other electronically-transmitted weapons is only going to become more main stream as we move forward, urging some to call for a more open dialogue on the use of cyberweapons.


It seems like a good thing to do in the name of military readiness, but I hate to think how little privacy or even (apparent / superficial) anonymity will still be left in the future...

As for cyberwar defense it would seem that the smartest thing to do is quit putting our critical infrastructure online unless absolutely necessary and when it is necessary make sure it is secure. Honestly, I suspect the USA is a huge target for cyberwar at some point as we do seem to have become dependent upon the internet always being available.

Are cybertreaties that far off?

edit on 28-8-2012 by Elton because: (no reason given)



posted on Aug, 28 2012 @ 10:24 PM
link   
If cybertreaties ever are tabled, I doubt that any truly powerful, military nation would sign them or honor them.


Senior officials such as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warn that the "next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack." But what if cyberwarfare is not such a bad thing after all, though? What if it saves lives? The evidence so far actually suggests that cyberwarfare costs fewer lives compared with traditional types of warfare.


Source

The ability to take out radar, communications, power grids, AA batteries, the ability for an enemy to coordinate effectively during attack? With these benefits handy? The smart money is on this becoming SOP - not something that will be relegated to the past.

As for the people? Well, as is seen in Iran and China - even when powers seek to control access to the masses, they find a way to overcome that restriction through proxies.

What intrigues me here is what nations will do to prevent cyber attack efficacy... Darknets? Spidernets? Going back to the days of small, intertwined LANs?

Whatever the case this is definitely a hot button issue and one that every ATS member needs to research!

Thanks for posting.

~Heff



posted on Jul, 18 2013 @ 09:22 AM
link   
Whenever i hear about cyber - efforts for the U.S i automatically think of general Keith Alexander. In an recent article by wired magazine called "the secret war" a lot of light was shed on the activities of Alexander, and how he does what he does ( heres a link to the article www.wired.com... )

"General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army."

"Alexander runs the nation’s cyberwar efforts, an empire he has built over the past eight years by insisting that the US’s inherent vulnerability to digital attacks requires him to amass more and more authority over the data zipping around the globe. In his telling, the threat is so mind-bogglingly huge that the nation has little option but to eventually put the entire civilian Internet under his protection, requiring tweets and emails to pass through his filters, and putting the kill switch under the government’s forefinger. “What we see is an increasing level of activity on the networks,” he said at a recent security conference in Canada. “I am concerned that this is going to break a threshold where the private sector can no longer handle it and the government is going to have to step in.”

Heres an exert from the article about stuxnet and how he and his "cyberwarriors" launched the attack.

"And he and his cyberwarriors have already launched their first attack. The cyberweapon that came to be known as Stuxnet was created and built by the NSA in partnership with the CIA and Israeli intelligence in the mid-2000s. The first known piece of malware designed to destroy physical equipment, Stuxnet was aimed at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz. By surreptitiously taking control of an industrial control link known as a Scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, the sophisticated worm was able to damage about a thousand centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material. "

Either way you look at it, this is just down right scary. This is exactly what we have to watch out for, people like Alexander are beyond smart and know that this arena right now is growing and in the coming years will probably be a more serious threat than most things in this world. Using that to his advantage hes scared the hell out of congress with his assesments on how vulnerable we are and got a massive chunk of the whole intelligence budget funneled right into his cybercommand program. People dont realize it, well or some people dont realize that cyberwar is infact the future, it is inevitable, as we advance technologically as a species our methods of warfare will evolve and advance as well. As a people we've become so dependent on the internet being at our fingertips 24 /7, i've even refereed to the internet many times as an extension of the human brain and i truly believe that. Most of us dont think of this because we think it would never happen but what if one person controlled the flow of information through the internet, could you imagine that power and control?

the article "the secret war" is linked at the top of this post i suggest you read it (one more link so you dont have to scroll up. www.wired.com...), its truly eye opening and intriguing. At the end of the day, if you hear and branch of government fighting for cyberweapons you can bet that Alexander is the one whos chosing how they get it and how quick. He literally has the monopoly on cyberwarfare and all things related.



 
2

log in

join