North Korea-Linked Malware Targets Developers on Windows, Linux, and macOS

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  3 décembre 2021 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Defense Innovation Unit publishes ethical AI guidelines

  The Defense Innovation Unit now has its own guidelines for implementing the Pentagon's principles of ethical artificial intelligence use.

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  25 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR, Sécurité

  The largest cyber exercise you’ve never heard of

  For years, the first time the Department of Defense's cyber forces faced high-end digital attacks was not in practice or in a classroom, but in actual operations. For the cyber teams that focused on offense, a playbook developed from years of National Security Agency operations guided their work. But on the defensive side, standards and processes needed to be created from scratch meaning, in part, there was a lack of uniformity and little tradecraft to follow. Because cyber leaders had focused on staffing, training opportunities for defensive cyber operators had been sparse. To help solve that problem, the Department of Defense is expected to award a contract worth roughly $1 billion later this year for a global cyber training environment. But in the meantime, some units across the joint force have gone so far as to create their own small-scale training events and exercises to keep their forces' skill sets sharp. Perhaps the best example of these efforts are the 567th Cyberspace Operations Group's “Hunt Event,” which has quickly grown to become one of the largest cyber exercises across the department. The bi-monthly exercise pits teams against each other in a competition for the coveted Goblet of Cyber trophy and bragging rights. The group aims to better train defensive hunters, improve defensive tactics, techniques and procedures and develop defensive tradecraft. “The point of this was that we didn't really have a good range space to play on that had an active and live adversary so we could, in theory, replay traffic and we could go in and generate some easy kill, low hanging fruit signatures for detection,” Capt. Reid Hottel, training flight commander at the 837th Cyber Operations Squadron, told Fifth Domain. “If we are supposed to be the primary counter to advanced persistent threats, the way that we were training was not like how we were fighting.” The exercises started roughly a year ago to teach operators how to hunt on networks. It's now evolved to where participants also work on leadership skills and build custom exploits on a large range with multiple stakeholders. In addition to the Air Force CPTs — the defensive cyber teams each service provides to U.S. Cyber Command — members from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and Mission Defense Teams, specialized defensive cyber teams that will protect critical Air Force missions and local installations, also take part. At the most recent exercise in January, a representative from NASA participated. Now, the exercises have become so popular Hottel said other services are interested in participating in the future. This includes a Marine Corps CPT at Scott Air Force Base. Building better leaders and hunters To be the best, cyber leaders recognized their teams would have to beat the best and that meant training against the world's most advanced cyber threats. Some other forms of training — such as the popular capture the flag game, which involve teams trying to find “flags” such as files or scripts inside a network — are not always the most realistic form of training. “When we were fighting, we're up against advanced adversaries. We're up against adversaries that are using tactics, techniques and procedures that are just above and beyond what simple little [scripts] ... we were using in the past,” Hottel said. “This hunt exercise allows us to do that, whereas in the past, particularly in other flag exercises, we are not training at the APT level. We [were] training at the script kiddie kind of level and here we're training at a much higher difficulty, which stretches and grows our operators into being true hunters.” He added that the exercises are also helping develop tradecraft. “That's one thing that nobody really teaches, there's no commercial course that you can go buy that teaches tradecraft, that teaches the military away, that teaches the way that we use to find the APT, which in theory, should be ever evolving because our adversary is as well,” Hottel said. “These exercises have been really eye-opening to provide tradecraft development, to become hunters, to understand what it means to be a cyber protection team.” The exercise has evolved to include custom exploits, custom root kits, custom attacks and zero-day exploits within a real-world mission where in some cases hunters don't have any indictors of compromise that exist in the public domain. This means that there is no public reporting available on the exploits or tactics the adversary is using. Participants can hone their skills, by actively hunting on a network in order to find anomalies that could lead to trouble. “As hunters,” he said, “we don't necessarily have singular methodology, we don't necessarily have a unique way that we can go about finding advanced threats mostly because we haven't really been training like that.” The training is also helpful for new mission defense teams, which are just being officially resourced within the Air Force around local installations. By having those teams sit next to CPTs, who are using generally the same tools, they can learn about tradecraft and what to look for at the local level. During the most recent exercise, officials said it was the first time they intentionally tried to trip up participants. Organizers created fake attack chains to see how the players scoped an investigation into a network and deducted points for the amount of time they wasted following that lead. This technique helps teach teams how to scope investigations without going down “rabbit holes,” and not adequately planning, Lt. Christopher Trusnik, chief of training at the 835th Cyberspace Operations Squadron, told Fifth Domain. Beyond the technical hunting, this approach helped team leader to flex leadership muscles. “It was more of teaching that leadership technique of you plan for this, how do you investigate quickly and how do you triage your investigation,” Trusnik, whose unit ran the January exercise, said. Hottel explained that following this most recent event, teams focused on leadership and organization. At one point, someone on his team previously had been coached on what they needed to include such as specific indictors that might be valuable to their mission partners to understand. At this exercise, they included those indicators. In another instance, one team member who had never run a hunt mission struggled at first. Hottel stepped in and with just a little guidance, the leader became more disciplined and was able to find things much better in the last three days. Benefits of cyberspace in training Training in cyberspace has benefits that other domains don't offer. For one, forces don't need a dedicated battlespace such as the Army's National Training Center or the range used at Nellis Air Force Base for the Air Force's Red Flag. With cyber, a custom range can be built and forces from all across the world can come in and participate. The range used for the hunt exercises stays up weeks after the formal event so individuals or teams can try their hand, though they obviously won't be eligible for the Goblet of Cyber trophy. All of this could change with the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE). PCTE is a major program being run by the Army on behalf of Cyber Command and the joint force to provide a web-based cyber training environment where cyber warriors can remotely plug in around the world and conduct individual training, collective team training or even mission rehearsal — all of which does not exist on a large scale currently. Hottel said that his forces haven't been limited thus far without PCTE. Though, once the platform is online, they can upload the range they used for a competition and it can be accessed by anyone across the joint cyber mission force. Testing new concepts But in the meantime, smaller, unit level exercises like those run by the 567th allow forces to test concepts and learn from others. Unlike larger exercises that have requirements and stated objectives, smaller exercises can serve as a proving ground for staying sharp and pushing the envelope. This allows local units more control over what their personnel do but can also allow teams to test new concepts in a relatively risk-free environment. “Let's say that a national [cyber protection] team wants to test out ... whatever they're currently using because they feel like it would provide them an advantage so they want to test out something,” Hottel said. “We can throw that on the range as well and they can utilize an entirely defensive tool set. We're not trying to make people tool experts, we're trying to make them tradecraft, defensive hunters.” Hottel also said that personnel playing on the archived range can bring new ideas, which can then be tested during the next exercise. In some cases, they may come up with an idea on their own and bring it to the next exercise to see if it actually works. Ultimately, the event is designed to create better cyber warriors. “We're not trying to make people tool experts, we're trying to make them tradecraft, defensive hunters,” Hottel said. https://www.fifthdomain.com/dod/air-force/2020/02/21/the-largest-cyber-exercise-youve-never-heard-of/

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  25 octobre 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Canadian satellites vulnerable to cyberattack, internal Defence note warns

  Jim Bronskill / The Canadian Press OTTAWA — Satellites vital to Canadian military operations are vulnerable to cyberattack or even a direct missile strike — just one example of why the country's defence policy must extend fully into the burgeoning space frontier, an internal Defence Department note warns. The Canadian military already heavily depends on space-based assets for basic tasks such as navigation, positioning, intelligence-gathering, surveillance and communications. Canada is also working on the next generation of satellites to assist with search-and-rescue and round-the-clock surveillance of maritime approaches to the country, including the Arctic. But those important roles could be endangered as technological advances and lower costs allow more countries, including adversaries, to cause trouble in orbit. Powers such as China and Russia are developing the ability to wage technological attacks in space, the note points out. "Easier access could also open the door to non-state actors or to failed states with nothing to lose from disrupting space." Canada's new defence policy underscores the importance of space, creating a need for "innovative investment" to ensure National Defence has the tools and know-how to fend off threats, the internal document adds. A copy of the note, Space Technology Trends: Threats and Opportunities, was recently obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act. Several sensitive passages were stripped from the note, prepared last November for the deputy minister of National Defence. In a statement, the department called the intention to protect and defend military space technology a "very important change" in the new policy. "What 'defending and protecting' these assets means in practice will evolve, as technology and international discussions mature." Despite public perception, the militarization of space actually happened decades ago, said Dave Perry, vice-president and senior analyst at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "Militaries the world over depend on an extraordinary amount of infrastructure that's space-based, even if there are no physical weapons in space," he said in an interview. "Space is well-emerged, but we keep calling it emerging." Even so, the internal note points out space is becoming ever more congested due to the advent of commercial space companies and the dawn of space tourism. "In addition, more and more nations are becoming space-capable and will expect their share of access to space." The most direct threat to Canada's space capabilities comes from adversaries with the ability to attack satellites, the note bluntly states. China, for example, has demonstrated the ability to destroy one of its aging low-orbit weather satellites with a ballistic missile, creating plenty of space debris. Other possible tactics include a directed energy attack, electronic jamming or a cyberattack, which can temporarily or permanently disable a satellite, the note adds. It says Canada is working with the U.S. and other allies on the idea of being able to quickly dispatch replacements for critical space assets that are damaged or destroyed. As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in operating space technology, such as a robotic arm, it will be easier for a hostile player to sabotage it, Perry said. "If you can figure out a way to affect the software, then that's a potential vulnerability. Whereas before you would have (needed to fly) someone there, and actually put them on the piece of equipment, to be able to do something." High-resolution images of the Earth captured by space satellites, once exclusive to the military, have become increasingly available to other government agencies, companies, the public and hostile players — essentially "whomever is willing to pay," the note says. The accessibility of this data and the ability to link it with other sources, such as social media, "will present immense challenges" to privacy and public safety. As space-based sensing and communication technologies rapidly improve, they become capable of scooping up more information, creating another headache for the military, the note says. "The challenge of collecting, handling, storing, processing and accessing this data will become more and more severe as the data volume, velocity and variety continues to increase." — Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter https://www.richmond-news.com/canadian-satellites-vulnerable-to-cyberattack-internal-defence-note-warns-1.23474192