ARLINGTON: “We needed to learn to speak infantry,” said Col. William Hartman, commander of the Army’s first offensive cyber operations brigade. That’s not easy. When one of Hartman’s teams joined a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division for an exercise this spring, the colonel recounted, the 25th’s commanding general told Hartman that his cyber operators…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: The Pentagon named a Navy cryptologist to a top cyber policy position today. Rear Adm. Sean Filipowski, who’ll get his second star with the new job, is a protégé of former NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander. Filipowski even served as Alexander’s intelligence chief at US Cyber Command — a position that requires keeping on…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.There’s an old trope in intelligence circles that defenders have to be right all the time, while the terrorists only need to get lucky once to execute a successful attack. The knowledge that no one is right all the time makes most counterterrorism experts cautiously pessimistic about the likelihood of another successful terrorist attack on…
By James KitfieldCOLORADO SPRINGS: The United States invented the Internet, but we may not rule it any more. “We are certainly behind right now. We are chasing our adversary, for sure,” one of the Air Force’s top cyber warriors, Col. Dean Hullings, told an audience of about 350 here at the National Space Symposium‘s one-day cyber event. Hullings,…
By Colin ClarkCAPITOL HILL: On the day that China’s president took personal charge of his country’s new cyber body, pledging to make the People’s Republic of China a “cyber power,” the outgoing head of America’s Cyber Command laid out a clear red line that, if crossed, could lead to war. “If it destroys government or other networks,…
By Colin ClarkChinese and Russian hackers have everybody running scared. So whatever else happens with the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2015, we know it will include more money for things cyber, from purely defensive network security to black-budget “offensive cyber weapons” such as the Stuxnet worm. But one big thing remains in doubt: the role…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.PENTAGON: Vice Adm. Michael Rogers
By Colin ClarkCAPITOL HILL: The rumor has been rife for weeks: Cyber Command is about to be elevated to a command equal to the powerful regional combatant commands such as Central and Pacific Commands. This would make what many observers regard as the natural maturation of the increasingly important command, as well as its separation from the…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: The nation’s top military cyber commander offered his version of how government and military agencies are likely to work together when America suffers cyber attacks, and warned that industry needs to take a greater role. “We have laid out lanes of the road,” Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of Cyber Command and director of the…
By Henry KenyonORLANDO: Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, told a standing-room-only crowd at the annual Geoint intelligence conference last year that the NSA and its sister intelligence agencies could save one third or more on their information technology costs by moving to the so-called cloud. Given that Director of National…
By Colin ClarkWASHINGTON: NSA director and Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander stepped into the lion’s den today to address the Chamber of Commerce, which helped kill cybersecurity legislation Alexander had strongly backed. Over and over, Alexander reassured the business-dominated audience at the Chamber’s cybersecurity conference today that the government sought to work together with industry as…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.CAPITOL HILL: Maybe cyberspace isn’t as fragile as it’s made out to be. “Relax, Chicken Little, the sky isn’t falling,” said Columbia professor Abraham Wagner. “Protection ultimately is easier than penetration.” Wagner’s argument reverses the conventional wisdom that the attacker always has the advantage online. A forthcoming study by the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, for…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.WASHINGTON: Cyberspace is an inherently unstable realm where traditional strategic concepts of deterrence and defense break down – and it’s the United States that has the most to lose from that instability, warns a forthcoming report from the Cyber Conflict Studies Association. “The Cyber Conflict Studies Association’s two-year study has lead to the sobering conclusion…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.