CIA reportedly planning for a 'cyber strike' against Russia

[Skroe]

Not to sound stupid or anything, but why the hell would you announce when you are going to do any kind of attack, heck why even announce an attack at all? Unless it is just a political move or the story is bullshit or just speculation/conspiracy theory.

There is really no point not to announce it. The folks above saying "why is the CIA announcing it" got it backwards.

First of all, the Russians - or anybody else for that matter - would have prepared for a counter attack before they even launched the attacks, and as soon as attacks were underway, they'd know who was doing it due to the sheer scale of it. There is no mystery to it. Talking in generalities about what they're doing, like they are, in no way undermines any kind of attack because there is no "surprise" possible here.

Secondly the United States is working to define a set of norms involving cyberwarfare due to an expected explosion of it in years ahead - this is likely just the first major cyber confrontation, but certainly not the last or worst. A key concern behind the US not responding up to this point is that the US doesn't necessarily have "escalation dominance", that is to say, control over how far the attack escalates. What if, for example, in retaliation for American counter attacks Russia goes after Wall Street? Then the US would go after the Russian power grid or something. At which point the cyberwar could quickly go non-Cyber.

By being public about it, the Administration is trying to set boundaries. Basically "Russia, you gave us a black eye. We're going to give you a black eye. Let's not take it further than that". In doing so it's trying to to define the norm, essentially, as an Eye for an Eye, so that when this happens again - and it will - the response isn't highly escalatory.

Furthermore the United States needs to be seen doing it. Part of power is for people to know that you have it. US Cyber capabilities reportedly vastly outstrip the Russians or the Chinese (which considering the number of people and dollars involved, shouldn't be surprising). But so many of it's best tools would be good for one use. For example, back in 2013, it was rumored that the US has a way to remotely shut down via a signal much of Assad's computer based military hardware in a Cyberattack... but the US was sitting on that one for a bigger crisis than some air strikes in Syria, because once the US uses that kind of attack, Russia will figure out how the US was able to do that, and it wouldn't work again.

By announcing it, if the results go "public", in the sense of security experts in Russia, China, and Iran particularly, see what happens when they cross a particular line with the US, it could achieve the effect of deterring future attacks.

The President of the United States does not issue approval for every drone strike, every raid, every military operation the Pentagon or CIA does. The only types of attacks the President personally authorizes at the present is Nuclear Attacks, and as of the last couple of years, Cyber Attacks. That is the kind of level that Cyberware is held - potentially on the level of strategic warfare (because it can damage civilian infrastructure as well) well above a mere airstrike or something.

All of this is again, part of "norm building". If the US makes cyberattacks require an executive-level kind of attack, then the hope is, so will Russia and China, which up to this point haven't.

Anyway, this is why. On one hand it's fair retaliation against our adversary, the War Criminal Vladmir Putin and his regime. On the other, the US wants to make sure this sets a positive example for future cyberwarfare.

[Venant]

Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer..... and a complete nut. I am glad he lost as I think he became the worst kind of person when he got into office... before that he was considered a very respectable lawyer.

It would have been worth it for the series of New York Times cover stories portraying women who Ted Cruz had attempted to zodiac kill, the entire corporate media would be doing a collective Larry Wilmore impression.

[Skroe]

https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/787324496491479040

Snowden, as usual, doesn't get it.

And this is coming from someone who thinks the Obama Administration hasn't done almost anything right since 2012.

If your aim is to build norms and establish limits - which the US is clearly - then you have to announce it.

The Russians knew a counter attack was going to come. Or once one was under way, would know who was doing it. The US isn't going to attack through an obvious route. It's going to hit the Russians in ways they weren't expecting. That's the "surprise", not that the US was doing it. There is no surprise at all in that.

[RobertoCarlos]

People on mmo champ pretending to know the agenda of america/russia make me giggle.

[Deleted]

SPOILER ALERT!

Nothing is going to happen.

[Skroe]

People on mmo champ pretending to know the agenda of america/russia make me giggle.

It's because this exactly thing has been discussed before.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.43ede6d97795

The Obama administration is considering how to respond. As in most strategic debates, there’s a split between hawks and doves. But there’s a recognition across the U.S. government that the current situation, in which information is stolen electronically and then leaked to damage and destabilize U.S. targets, is unacceptable.

“A line has been crossed. The hard part is knowing how to respond effectively,” argues one U.S. official. Retaliating in kind may not be wise for a country that is far more dependent on its digital infrastructure than is Russia. But unless some clear signal is sent, there’s a danger that malicious hacking and disclosure of information could become the norm.

http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/mo...#ixzz4NB3LHUU0

When President Barack Obama thinks about computer viruses, he treats them as more than a casual metaphor. In an interview with Wired released on Wednesday, the president endorsed an approach to cybersecurity that many experts say is necessary to building robust digital defenses. “Increasingly, I find myself looking to medicine and thinking about viruses, antibodies,” Obama said. “Part of the reason why cybersecurity continues to be so hard is because the threat is not a bunch of tanks rolling at you, but a whole bunch of systems that may be vulnerable to a worm getting in there.” In the same interview, Obama admitted that the process of “developing international norms, protocols and verification mechanisms around cybersecurity” was “in its infancy.” And he took a not-so-veiled shot at the way America’s top cyber adversaries conduct themselves in the digital domain: “When you have countries around the world who see America as the preeminent cyber power, now is the time for us to say, ‘We’re willing to restrain ourselves if you are willing to restrain yourselves.’ The challenge is the most sophisticated state actors — Russia, China, Iran — don’t always embody the same values and norms that we do.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/06/ob...cyber-warfare/

President Barack Obama told reporters at the G-20 summit in China that he has been in discussions with other world leaders, including Russian president Vladimir Putin, about creating a set of standards for cyber warfare. The debate over how and when to hack another nation has also reached the presidential race, with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton calling last week for increased cyber capability for the U.S. military and for international norm-setting.

“Look, we’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities,” Obama said. “But our goal is not to suddenly, in the cyber arena, duplicate a cycle of escalation that we saw when it comes to other arms races in the past, but rather to start instituting some norms so everybody’s acting responsibly.”

But as Obama and Clinton call for discussions of cyber attacks, experts say that government-led hacking is already booming, and the lack of international guidelines has led to unintended consequences for ordinary civilians caught up in cyber conflict. The U.S. and the United Nations are each working to develop rules of engagement for the digital arena, but in the meantime, countries are deciding for themselves whether or not to follow the same guidelines for cyber capabilities as they do for traditional weaponry.

“This behavior is already being engaged in. We don’t have the procedures in place but we’re already engaging in that way, so we’re putting the cart before the horse,” says Amie Stepanovich, U.S. policy manager at the digital rights organization Access Now.

Stepanovich points to examples of U.S. hacking efforts like Stuxnet, malware believed to be developed in a U.S.-Israeli collaboration that spread beyond the Iranian nuclear facility that was its initial target, or a 2012 NSA exploit that knocked the entire country of Syria offline. These incidents, she says, demonstrate how cyber attacks can unintentionally impact broad swaths of the population — and show why nations need clear rules about cyber attacks on infrastructure.

“It’s something the next administration is going to have to address. All of our interactions are moving into the digital space very quickly and we’re seeing cyber activity that could determine the outcome of an election,” Stepanovich says. “Making sure there are protections for human rights and for people becomes exceptionally important on the internet because we all use the same infrastructure.”

Clinton is positioning herself to lead that conversation. Her remarks last week at the American Legion convention offered insight into how the Democratic presidential candidate views the recent cyber attacks against Democratic organizations, and how she believes the U.S. should respond.

The U.S. military should be ready and able to hack back against governments who target the country online, Clinton said. She pointed to the breach of the Democratic National Committee as an example of a cyber attack against the U.S., and advocated political, economic and military responses to such attacks.

There is some historical context for this.

It wasn't until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki that it was moved to require Presidential approval for the use of nuclear weapons. In fact, Nagasaki in particular there is some cloudy history as to the extent of Presidential involvement in ordering that attack. During the Korean War, it was proposed (but not adopted) that Nuclear Weapons be placed at MacArthur's discretionary use, and moves were made to use them against China to stop their intervention into the Korean conflict.

The modern norms about Nuclear Weapon use came from several events like this int he US, USSR, UK and France in the 1940s and 1950s. They emerged through trial and error, and more routine use of weapons as simply "very very big bombs" (against ground forces, not cities this time) nearly happened several times in those early years.

We're at a similar period with Cyber weapons, so there is a push to get the norms worked out, before we live in a world where China, Russia and the US are taking down each other's power grids every month.

[Venant]

The Russians knew a counter attack was going to come. Or once one was under way, would know who was doing it. The US isn't going to attack through an obvious route. It's going to hit the Russians in ways they weren't expecting. That's the "surprise", not that the US was doing it. There is no surprise at all in that.

You might agree with attacking the Russians, but they are doing it because they moved against a scumbag gangster politician who made tens of millions of dollars selling government access.

[Azadina]

No. I never heard of that. It sounds ridiculously absurd. A super-secret, super-fast, underwater mini-sub nuclear-weapon that can't be stopped by any means and contaminates land with magical cobalt-60. Jesus it's so patently ridiculous they might as well they they invented a magic wand that grants wishes. It'd only be more believable if Russia claimed they had a Stargate.

I always thought that Putins behavior resembles that of a Goa'uld....