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Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
“An important, disturbing, and gripping history” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), the never-before-told story of the computer scientists and the NSA, Pentagon, and White House policymakers who invent and employ cyber wars—where every country can be a major power player and every hacker a mass destroyer.In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a teenager unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the scenario was plausible. The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security. From the 1991 Gulf War to conflicts in Haiti, Serbia, Syria, the former Soviet republics, Iraq, and Iran, where cyber warfare played a significant role, Dark Territory chronicles a little-known past that shines an unsettling light on our future. Fred Kaplan probes the inner corridors of the National Security Agency, the beyond-top-secret cyber units in the Pentagon, the “information warfare” squads of the military services, and the national security debates in the White House to reveal the details of the officers, policymakers, scientists, and spies who devised this new form of warfare and who have been planning—and (more often than people know) fighting—these wars for decades. “An eye-opening history of our government’s efforts to effectively manage our national security in the face of the largely open global communications network established by the World Wide Web….Dark Territory is a page-turner [and] consistently surprising” (The New York Times).
353 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 351 reviews
March 27, 2016
I continue my quest to be the most informed snob at any dinner party so I can maintain my delicate card tower of affected pretentiousness by finishing this book about America's secret war of cyber attacks. I will let you know know the most interesting bits in person.
January 21, 2022
متى بدأت الحرب السيبرانية؟ وهل يمكن لها أن تلحق أضرارا مادية بأصول دولة ما؟
إلى أي مدى يمكن للهجمات السيبرانية والبرمجيات الخبيثة أن تؤثر في معارك السيطرة والقيادة؟
هل يقتصر دور السيبرانية على تقديم المساعدات التكتيكية المساعدة للعمليات العسكرية التقليدية؟
يجيب الكتاب على تلك التساؤلات عبر قصة طويلة تمتد عبر أكثر من نصف قرن منذ أول استخدام للحواسيب والشبكة العنكبوتية في الأعمال العسكرية الحكومية. تبدأ القصة الأمريكية حسب الرواية الرسمية بتساؤل طرحه رونالد ريجان حول إمكانية حدوث حبكة وسيناريو فيلم سينمائي يجسد شخصية مراهق يخترق عن دون قصد الحاسوب المركزي لقيادة دفاع الفضاء الجوي لأمريكا الشمالية ونتج عنه بداية حرب عالمية ثالثة، مما أدي في النهاية بعد سلسلة من الاستشارات والدراسات لإصدار توجيه رئاسي سري يتعلق بالسياسة القومية بشأن الاتصالات وأمن نظم المعلومات.
منذ ذلك الحرب فتم تسمية الفضاء السيبراني على أنه ميدان حرب مثل البر، البحر، الجو والفضاء الخارجي، وعرف العالم سلاحا جديدا ، وعرف الإنسان الجانب المظلم من التكنولوجيا وطوعها لإلحاق الضرر والأذى بداعي الدفاع المبكر، الاستطلاع والاستخبارات! الآن يمكن لمجموعة من الضغطات على لوحة مفاتيح في نصف الكرة أن تتحكم في فتح وإغلاق مبدلات وصمامات أجهزة الطرد المركزي في مفاعل نووي في نصف الكوكب الآخر!
استخدمت القوى الكبرى وسائل الحرب السيبرانية مرات عديدة حتى أن أكثر تاريخ تلك الحرب غير مُعلن، بداية من مرحلة الحرب المضادة للسيطرة والقيادة والهدف منها تضليل العدو وإثارة الذعر والحرب النفسية دون توجيه ضرب مادية تثير الانتباه وحدث ذلك في حرب الخليج حينما قصفت الطائرات الأمريكية خطوط الألياف الضوئية العراقية التي مدها صدام من بغداد للكويت مما أدى لتعطيل جزئي لإصدار الأوامر من بغداد للقادة على أرض المعركة، أو كما عطلت روسيا المواقع الالكترونية الحيوية في إستونيا وجورجيا أو كما فعلت إسرائيل من تضليل للدفاعات الجوية السورية أثناء ضرب المفاعل السوري لكن كل تلك الهجمات كانت مجرد مساعدا تكتيكيا مشابه للأدوار الاستخباراتية التقليدية
وتحت زعم التفوق الكمي الهائل في الاعتماد على شبكات الحاسوب في الأنظمة المالية والعسكرية والبنية التحتية وبنية الاحتكار طورت الولايات المتحدة أجهزة استخباراتها السيبراني لشن هجمات استباقية تحت منطق خير وسيلة للدفاع الهجوم، فعطلت البرنامج النووي الإيراني عن طريق تعطيل أجهزة الطرد المركزي الخاصة بمفاعل "ناتنز" واختراق الحواسيب الكورية الشمالية والصينية وحتى الغربية تحت زعم إعادة التوازن العالمي!
يتطرق الكتاب إلي تاريخ الخلافات التنظيمية بين الوكالات والأجهزة الحكومية الأمريكية، وأيضا الخلافات القانونية والأخلاقية حول معضلات الخصوصية والأمان للمدمنين من مواطني الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية بالطبع وليس العالم! وهو ما عرفه العالم بعد هروب إدوارد سنودن وتسريبه للكثير من أسرار هزت الرأي العام العالمي الأمريكي وأدت في النهاية إلي الإعلان عن توقف بعض تلك البرمجيات.
كتاب ممتع ومهم
August 16, 2017
49th book for 2017.
An interesting history of cyberwarfare over the last 50 years, almost exclusively told from an American perspective.
The big take home messages for me were: how vulnerable societies (and interestingly in particular the US) are from crippling attacks (from power stations to hospitals to voting systems); how concerted, long-term lobbying pressure from Silicon Valley has left huge gaps in security, which is almost a design feature as costs of attacks are externalized on society as a whole; how the military (and politicians) continue to have trouble understanding the damages of cyberattacks, despite decades of warnings, even those coming from Presidential Commissions - blowing things up is so much easier to understand; how the temptation to eavesdrop on US domestic communications is so high, given that 80% of the World's internet traffic flows through the US - in fact almost all from through a few buildings in downtown New York and a couple of other US cities; and finally, and most interesting, how the NSA is perhaps not as bad as everyone thinks (I need to digest that last one a bit more).
Unfortunately, I found the writing style quite bland; not doing full justice to a very interesting and important story.
An interesting history of cyberwarfare over the last 50 years, almost exclusively told from an American perspective.
The big take home messages for me were: how vulnerable societies (and interestingly in particular the US) are from crippling attacks (from power stations to hospitals to voting systems); how concerted, long-term lobbying pressure from Silicon Valley has left huge gaps in security, which is almost a design feature as costs of attacks are externalized on society as a whole; how the military (and politicians) continue to have trouble understanding the damages of cyberattacks, despite decades of warnings, even those coming from Presidential Commissions - blowing things up is so much easier to understand; how the temptation to eavesdrop on US domestic communications is so high, given that 80% of the World's internet traffic flows through the US - in fact almost all from through a few buildings in downtown New York and a couple of other US cities; and finally, and most interesting, how the NSA is perhaps not as bad as everyone thinks (I need to digest that last one a bit more).
Unfortunately, I found the writing style quite bland; not doing full justice to a very interesting and important story.
April 6, 2017
Occasionally, I come across a book on an important topic that’s crammed with information I was able to find nowhere else — but is a chore to read. Even though it is not an academic study but clearly intended for a general audience, Fred Kaplan’s recent history of cyber war, Dark Territory, is one such book.
A story stretching over five decades
Unlike previous treatments that I’ve read about the topic, which zero in on the vulnerability of the American economy to attacks through cyberspace, Dark Territory traces the history of our government’s slowly growing awareness of the threat, beginning nearly half a century ago. Then, a prescient Pentagon scientist wrote a paper warning about the dangers inherent in computer networks. Apparently, though, no one in a position to do anything about it paid much attention to him.
Kaplan identifies an incident fully fifteen years later in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan — a movie fan, of course — saw the film War Games. He queried the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a top-level White House meeting whether it was possible for a teenager like the one portrayed in the film by Matthew Broderick to hack into sensitive Pentagon computers. When the chairman, General John Vessey, reported some time later that the feat was in fact possible, Reagan called for and later signed the government’s first policy directive on the topic of cyber war. But that, too, led to no significant change at the Pentagon or anywhere else in the federal government.
Dark Territory is filled with revealing anecdotes like this, based on what surely was top-secret information not long ago. Kaplan reveals many little-known details about the Russian cyber war on Estonia and Ukraine, the Chinese Army’s prodigious hacking of American corporations and the Pentagon, the massive North Korean assault on Sony, Iran’s disabling of 20,000 computers in Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire, and the successful US-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Kaplan also reveals the reason why US complaints about China’s cyber attacks have fallen on deaf ears: it turns out that the National Security Agency is attacking the Chinese government in much the same way. As The Guardian revealed in 2013, “the NSA had launched more than 61,000 cyber operation, including attacks on hundreds of computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.”
The book casts a particularly harsh light on the Administration of George W. Bush. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other senior officials in the early 2000s cavalierly dismissed urgent reports from national security and intelligence officials that the threat of cyber war, and the vulnerability of the US economy, were growing at an alarming rate. Only under Bush’s successor did reality strongly take hold. As Kaplan writes, “During Barack Obama’s presidency, cyber warfare took off, emerging as one of the few sectors in the defense budget that soared while others stayed stagnant or declined.”
It’s difficult to understand how anyone who was awake could have failed to grasp the problem. For example, a war game conducted in 1997 was intended to test the vulnerability of the Pentagon’s computer systems within two weeks. “But the game was over — the entire defense establishment’s network was penetrated — in four days. The National Military Command Center — the facility that would transmit orders from the president of the United States in wartime — was hacked on the first day. And most of the officers manning those servers didn’t even know they’d been hacked.” Not long afterwards, the Pentagon was hacked in a similar way by two 16-year-old boys in San Francisco. And when national security officials widened the scope of their attention to encompass the country’s critical civilian infrastructure, such as the electricity grid, they were shocked to discover that the situation was far worse. The Pentagon eventually bowed to the warnings and implemented needed security measures. But private corporations blatantly refused to do so because they didn’t want to spend the money — and Congress declined to allow the federal government to make security measures obligatory.
Unfortunately, Kaplan’s book is poorly organized. It’s roughly structured along chronological lines but jumps back and forth through time with such regularity as to be dizzying. And it’s crammed so full of the names of sometimes obscure government officials and military officers that it becomes even more difficult to follow the thread of the story.
However, these challenges aside, a picture clearly emerges from Dark Territory: For decades the American public has been at the mercy of incompetent and pigheaded people in sensitive positions in the government, the military, and private industry — and we still are. Bureaucratic games proliferate. Politics intrude. Inter-service rivalries abound. Personal grudges get in the way. Repeatedly, some of those who are entrusted with the security of the American people make what even at the time could easily be seen as stupid decisions.
Other takes on cyber war
Last year I read and reviewed a book titled Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, by Marc Goodman. I described it as “the scariest book I’ve read in years.”
Five years earlier, I read Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake. From the early 1970s until George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Clarke filled high-level national security positions under seven Presidents, so he knows whereof he writes. (He resigned in protest over the invasion of Iraq, which he thought distracted the government from the real threats facing the country.) Not long afterward, I read and reviewed Worm: The First Digital World War, by Mark Bowden, a much more focused treatment of the topic — a case study, really — but equally unsettling.
Though less current, all three of these books are better organized and more readable than Dark Territory. Admittedly, though, Kaplan’s book reveals the history that is only hinted at in the others.
About the author
Fred Kaplan wrote five previous books about the nuclear arms race and other topics bearing on US national security. He was on a team at the Boston Globe in 1983 that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series about the nuclear arms race.
A story stretching over five decades
Unlike previous treatments that I’ve read about the topic, which zero in on the vulnerability of the American economy to attacks through cyberspace, Dark Territory traces the history of our government’s slowly growing awareness of the threat, beginning nearly half a century ago. Then, a prescient Pentagon scientist wrote a paper warning about the dangers inherent in computer networks. Apparently, though, no one in a position to do anything about it paid much attention to him.
Kaplan identifies an incident fully fifteen years later in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan — a movie fan, of course — saw the film War Games. He queried the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a top-level White House meeting whether it was possible for a teenager like the one portrayed in the film by Matthew Broderick to hack into sensitive Pentagon computers. When the chairman, General John Vessey, reported some time later that the feat was in fact possible, Reagan called for and later signed the government’s first policy directive on the topic of cyber war. But that, too, led to no significant change at the Pentagon or anywhere else in the federal government.
Dark Territory is filled with revealing anecdotes like this, based on what surely was top-secret information not long ago. Kaplan reveals many little-known details about the Russian cyber war on Estonia and Ukraine, the Chinese Army’s prodigious hacking of American corporations and the Pentagon, the massive North Korean assault on Sony, Iran’s disabling of 20,000 computers in Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire, and the successful US-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Kaplan also reveals the reason why US complaints about China’s cyber attacks have fallen on deaf ears: it turns out that the National Security Agency is attacking the Chinese government in much the same way. As The Guardian revealed in 2013, “the NSA had launched more than 61,000 cyber operation, including attacks on hundreds of computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.”
The book casts a particularly harsh light on the Administration of George W. Bush. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other senior officials in the early 2000s cavalierly dismissed urgent reports from national security and intelligence officials that the threat of cyber war, and the vulnerability of the US economy, were growing at an alarming rate. Only under Bush’s successor did reality strongly take hold. As Kaplan writes, “During Barack Obama’s presidency, cyber warfare took off, emerging as one of the few sectors in the defense budget that soared while others stayed stagnant or declined.”
It’s difficult to understand how anyone who was awake could have failed to grasp the problem. For example, a war game conducted in 1997 was intended to test the vulnerability of the Pentagon’s computer systems within two weeks. “But the game was over — the entire defense establishment’s network was penetrated — in four days. The National Military Command Center — the facility that would transmit orders from the president of the United States in wartime — was hacked on the first day. And most of the officers manning those servers didn’t even know they’d been hacked.” Not long afterwards, the Pentagon was hacked in a similar way by two 16-year-old boys in San Francisco. And when national security officials widened the scope of their attention to encompass the country’s critical civilian infrastructure, such as the electricity grid, they were shocked to discover that the situation was far worse. The Pentagon eventually bowed to the warnings and implemented needed security measures. But private corporations blatantly refused to do so because they didn’t want to spend the money — and Congress declined to allow the federal government to make security measures obligatory.
Unfortunately, Kaplan’s book is poorly organized. It’s roughly structured along chronological lines but jumps back and forth through time with such regularity as to be dizzying. And it’s crammed so full of the names of sometimes obscure government officials and military officers that it becomes even more difficult to follow the thread of the story.
However, these challenges aside, a picture clearly emerges from Dark Territory: For decades the American public has been at the mercy of incompetent and pigheaded people in sensitive positions in the government, the military, and private industry — and we still are. Bureaucratic games proliferate. Politics intrude. Inter-service rivalries abound. Personal grudges get in the way. Repeatedly, some of those who are entrusted with the security of the American people make what even at the time could easily be seen as stupid decisions.
Other takes on cyber war
Last year I read and reviewed a book titled Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, by Marc Goodman. I described it as “the scariest book I’ve read in years.”
Five years earlier, I read Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake. From the early 1970s until George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Clarke filled high-level national security positions under seven Presidents, so he knows whereof he writes. (He resigned in protest over the invasion of Iraq, which he thought distracted the government from the real threats facing the country.) Not long afterward, I read and reviewed Worm: The First Digital World War, by Mark Bowden, a much more focused treatment of the topic — a case study, really — but equally unsettling.
Though less current, all three of these books are better organized and more readable than Dark Territory. Admittedly, though, Kaplan’s book reveals the history that is only hinted at in the others.
About the author
Fred Kaplan wrote five previous books about the nuclear arms race and other topics bearing on US national security. He was on a team at the Boston Globe in 1983 that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series about the nuclear arms race.
April 13, 2017
This is compelling book about a worldwide issue that's underreported, under addressed, and honestly terrifying. Governments have been hacking into their rivals' computers for decades but it's taken nearly as long for cyber attacks to be considered a genuine threat.
This also could have a real snoozer of a book, given the complexity of the topic. But Kaplan and the audiobook narrator (Malcolm Hillgartner) make it easier to understand than I expected. That said, I could probably gain even more insight (and recall of facts) by listening a second time. But maybe that's just me and my wandering attention span.
Kaplan lays out the bureaucratic infighting and ignorance that delayed the viability of both offensive and defensive cyber warfare. He explains the background and motivations of the major players, including Presidents since Reagan. In addition, he explains the vulnerabilities of commerce, power, government, and Internet systems on a national and international scale.
If I could wish for one thing, it would be to hear what he thinks of the developments in the years since the book's publication.
I highly recommend this for techies, political junkies, and regular folks.
This also could have a real snoozer of a book, given the complexity of the topic. But Kaplan and the audiobook narrator (Malcolm Hillgartner) make it easier to understand than I expected. That said, I could probably gain even more insight (and recall of facts) by listening a second time. But maybe that's just me and my wandering attention span.
Kaplan lays out the bureaucratic infighting and ignorance that delayed the viability of both offensive and defensive cyber warfare. He explains the background and motivations of the major players, including Presidents since Reagan. In addition, he explains the vulnerabilities of commerce, power, government, and Internet systems on a national and international scale.
If I could wish for one thing, it would be to hear what he thinks of the developments in the years since the book's publication.
I highly recommend this for techies, political junkies, and regular folks.
December 12, 2016
A better title would have been "Dark Territory: A History of American Cyber Security Bureaucracy."
This book contains a wealth of information and a number of interesting stories and insights. Unfortunately, it is a laborious and nod-off inducing read, by a well informed author with no clue how to build a compelling narrative or meaningful critical perspective. It also places far too much emphasis on the bureaucracies of the American defense complex and not enough emphasis on the larger scope of the titular topic.
This book contains a wealth of information and a number of interesting stories and insights. Unfortunately, it is a laborious and nod-off inducing read, by a well informed author with no clue how to build a compelling narrative or meaningful critical perspective. It also places far too much emphasis on the bureaucracies of the American defense complex and not enough emphasis on the larger scope of the titular topic.
April 20, 2019
Quite disappointed.
This is a book about US policies, policies makers and bureaucracy associated with cyber security. Not really about anything else. I was hoping to get some insight on specific measures which were undertaken in specific scenarios of cyber threats, so clearly there was a dissonance between my expectations and what was presented.
Aside from that, I think the narrative was poor, disorganized and noncoherent. There was "no flow". Author didn't engage me with his story and I felt like I was working really hard to go through this book.
Unless you are a lawyer, politician or specifically interested in policy making, I think you can find better books on cyber security.
This is a book about US policies, policies makers and bureaucracy associated with cyber security. Not really about anything else. I was hoping to get some insight on specific measures which were undertaken in specific scenarios of cyber threats, so clearly there was a dissonance between my expectations and what was presented.
Aside from that, I think the narrative was poor, disorganized and noncoherent. There was "no flow". Author didn't engage me with his story and I felt like I was working really hard to go through this book.
Unless you are a lawyer, politician or specifically interested in policy making, I think you can find better books on cyber security.
May 28, 2016
Interesting, but not well written.
wish-list
January 7, 2017Description: In June 1983, President Reagan watched the movie War Games, in which a kid unwittingly hacks the Pentagon, and asked his top general if the scenario was plausible. The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security.
The first use of cyber techniques in battle occurred in George H.W. Bush's Kuwait invasion in 1991 to disable Saddam's military communications. One year later, the NSA Director watched Sneakers, in which one of the characters says wars will soon be decided not by bullets or bombs but by information. The NSA and the Pentagon have been rowing over control of cyber weapons ever since.
From the 1994 (aborted) US invasion of Haiti, when the plan was to neutralize Haitian air-defenses by making all the telephones in Haiti busy at the same time, to Obama's Defense Department 2015 report on cyber policy that spells out the lead role played by our offensive operation, Fred Kaplan tells the story of the NSA and the Pentagon as they explore, exploit, fight, and defend the US. Dark Territory reveals all the details, including the 1998 incident when someone hacked into major US military commands and it wasn't Iraq, but two teenagers from California; how Israeli jets bomb a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 by hacking into Syrian air-defense radar system; the time in 2014 when North Korea hacks Sony's networks to pressure the studio to cancel a major Hollywood blockbuster; and many more. Dark Territory is the most urgent and controversial topic in national defense policy.
Surprise!
December 5, 2019
في عصر التكنولوجيا وانترنت الأشياء فالثقافة العامة حول مسائل الامن التقني مهمة للغاية
وهذا الكتاب يستعرض البدايات لمسائل الحروب التكنولوجية والتي تسير جنباً الي جنب معنا ولا يعلم الكثيرين عنها شئ
وتنتهي أحيانا بدون معرفة أي أحد شئ عنها باستثناء طرفاها او أحيانا طرف واحد فقط
ا
June 30, 2017
Summary: Dark Territory covers the history of US cyber security in fairly broad strokes. These are some of the major events that it discusses:
NSDD-145: After seeing the movie "Wargames" and learning that the state of US cyber security was actually WORSE than it was portrayed in the movie, President Reagan signed this directive that provided initial objectives, policies, and an organizational structure to guide the conduct of federal activities toward "safeguarding systems which process or communicate sensitive information from hostile exploitation," and established a high-level interagency group to implement the new policy. It gave leading roles to the National Security Council, DoD, and NSA.
Eligible Receiver: A U.S. government exercise conducted under what is known as the No-Notice Interoperability Exercise Program, in 1997. The NSA Red Team used hacker techniques and software that was freely available on the Internet at that time and were able to crack networks and do things such as deny services; change and manipulate emails to make them appear to come from a legitimate source; disrupt communications between the National Command Authority, intelligence agencies, and military commands. Common vulnerabilities were exploited which allowed the Red Team to gain root access to over 36 government networks which allowed them to change/add user accounts and reformat server hard drives. They gave themselves 2 weeks as a goal, but accomplished it in 4 days.
Solar Sunrise: Using a computer virus, hackers in 1998 penetrated and took control of over 500 computer systems that belonged to the army, government, and private sector of the United States. They also inserted malware into the computers. The whole situation was dubbed "Solar Sunrise" after the popular vulnerabilities in computers that ran on operating systems called SunSolaris. Initially, it was believed that the attacks were planned by operators in Iraq. It was later revealed that the incidents represented the work of two American teenagers from California.
Moonlight Maze: In 1999, a coordinated attack on an unprecedented scale was unleashed by attackers proxying through University networks and small businesses. The attackers used standard tools (Telnet and FTP) to move through networks and steal documents without standing out. The attacks were traced to Russia, and the FBI worked with a Russian General over there who insisted he'd help trace the attacks. A few days in, he disappeared and was never heard from again.
Buckshot Yankee: A 2008 cyberattack on the United States that was the "worst breach of U.S. military computers in history". The defense against the attack was named "Operation Buckshot Yankee". It led to the creation of the United States Cyber Command. It started when a USB flash drive infected by a foreign intelligence agency was left in the parking lot of a Department of Defense facility at a base in the Middle East. It contained malicious code and was put into a USB port from a laptop computer that was attached to United States Central Command. From there it spread undetected to other systems, both classified and unclassified. The Pentagon spent nearly 14 months cleaning the worm, named agent.btz, from military networks. Agent.btz has the ability "to scan computers for data, open backdoors, and send through those backdoors to a remote command and control server." It was suspected that Russian hackers were behind it because they had used the same code that made up agent.btz before in previous attacks. In order to try and stop the spread of the worm, the Pentagon banned USB drives, and disabled Windows autorun feature.
Aurora Generator Test: This demonstrated how a cyber attack could destroy physical components of the electric grid. The experiment used a computer program to rapidly open and close a diesel generator's circuit breakers out of phase from the rest of the grid and cause it to explode.
Stuxnet: A malicious computer worm that targets industrial computer systems; was responsible for causing substantial damage to Iran's nuclear program. Although neither country has admitted responsibility, the worm is now generally acknowledged to be a jointly built American-Israeli cyberweapon. It specifically targets PLCs, which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart. Stuxnet went beyond its intended scope and spread outside of the Iranian computers, which was how it was discovered and traced back to the US.
China Unit 61398: The Military Unit Cover Designator of a People's Liberation Army advanced persistent threat unit that has been alleged to be a source of Chinese computer hacking attacks. They stole from the government and businesses.
DarkSeoul: In 2013, three South Korean television stations and a bank suffered from frozen computer terminals in a suspected act of cyberwarfare; ATMs and mobile payments were also affected. North Korea has been blamed for similar attacks in 2009 and 2011 and was suspected of launching this attack as well.
Five Guys Report: After the Snowden leaks, Obama threw together a group of 5 non-government personnel to determine what the government should do to fix people's worries about the government collecting their data. They came up with a report to develop deterrence strategies and programs, take the data from the NSA and keep it with the phone companies, etc.
Review: 3.5 stars. There was a lot of stuff covered in this book, but it was all very abstract. It also focused too much on the people behind everything, and I found it hard to keep track of all of them (and didn't really care about them either).
It was worth reading just to see how incredibly terrible our military handled cyber security all the way up until like 2015. It seemed like there was practically nothing in place to handle cyber attacks until Obama got into office; the NSA just did whatever they wanted, collected every bit of data from every network (though it was only considered "collected" if they accessed it later on), etc.
NSDD-145: After seeing the movie "Wargames" and learning that the state of US cyber security was actually WORSE than it was portrayed in the movie, President Reagan signed this directive that provided initial objectives, policies, and an organizational structure to guide the conduct of federal activities toward "safeguarding systems which process or communicate sensitive information from hostile exploitation," and established a high-level interagency group to implement the new policy. It gave leading roles to the National Security Council, DoD, and NSA.
Eligible Receiver: A U.S. government exercise conducted under what is known as the No-Notice Interoperability Exercise Program, in 1997. The NSA Red Team used hacker techniques and software that was freely available on the Internet at that time and were able to crack networks and do things such as deny services; change and manipulate emails to make them appear to come from a legitimate source; disrupt communications between the National Command Authority, intelligence agencies, and military commands. Common vulnerabilities were exploited which allowed the Red Team to gain root access to over 36 government networks which allowed them to change/add user accounts and reformat server hard drives. They gave themselves 2 weeks as a goal, but accomplished it in 4 days.
Solar Sunrise: Using a computer virus, hackers in 1998 penetrated and took control of over 500 computer systems that belonged to the army, government, and private sector of the United States. They also inserted malware into the computers. The whole situation was dubbed "Solar Sunrise" after the popular vulnerabilities in computers that ran on operating systems called SunSolaris. Initially, it was believed that the attacks were planned by operators in Iraq. It was later revealed that the incidents represented the work of two American teenagers from California.
Moonlight Maze: In 1999, a coordinated attack on an unprecedented scale was unleashed by attackers proxying through University networks and small businesses. The attackers used standard tools (Telnet and FTP) to move through networks and steal documents without standing out. The attacks were traced to Russia, and the FBI worked with a Russian General over there who insisted he'd help trace the attacks. A few days in, he disappeared and was never heard from again.
Buckshot Yankee: A 2008 cyberattack on the United States that was the "worst breach of U.S. military computers in history". The defense against the attack was named "Operation Buckshot Yankee". It led to the creation of the United States Cyber Command. It started when a USB flash drive infected by a foreign intelligence agency was left in the parking lot of a Department of Defense facility at a base in the Middle East. It contained malicious code and was put into a USB port from a laptop computer that was attached to United States Central Command. From there it spread undetected to other systems, both classified and unclassified. The Pentagon spent nearly 14 months cleaning the worm, named agent.btz, from military networks. Agent.btz has the ability "to scan computers for data, open backdoors, and send through those backdoors to a remote command and control server." It was suspected that Russian hackers were behind it because they had used the same code that made up agent.btz before in previous attacks. In order to try and stop the spread of the worm, the Pentagon banned USB drives, and disabled Windows autorun feature.
Aurora Generator Test: This demonstrated how a cyber attack could destroy physical components of the electric grid. The experiment used a computer program to rapidly open and close a diesel generator's circuit breakers out of phase from the rest of the grid and cause it to explode.
Stuxnet: A malicious computer worm that targets industrial computer systems; was responsible for causing substantial damage to Iran's nuclear program. Although neither country has admitted responsibility, the worm is now generally acknowledged to be a jointly built American-Israeli cyberweapon. It specifically targets PLCs, which allow the automation of electromechanical processes such as those used to control machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or centrifuges for separating nuclear material. Stuxnet reportedly compromised Iranian PLCs, collecting information on industrial systems and causing the fast-spinning centrifuges to tear themselves apart. Stuxnet went beyond its intended scope and spread outside of the Iranian computers, which was how it was discovered and traced back to the US.
China Unit 61398: The Military Unit Cover Designator of a People's Liberation Army advanced persistent threat unit that has been alleged to be a source of Chinese computer hacking attacks. They stole from the government and businesses.
DarkSeoul: In 2013, three South Korean television stations and a bank suffered from frozen computer terminals in a suspected act of cyberwarfare; ATMs and mobile payments were also affected. North Korea has been blamed for similar attacks in 2009 and 2011 and was suspected of launching this attack as well.
Five Guys Report: After the Snowden leaks, Obama threw together a group of 5 non-government personnel to determine what the government should do to fix people's worries about the government collecting their data. They came up with a report to develop deterrence strategies and programs, take the data from the NSA and keep it with the phone companies, etc.
Review: 3.5 stars. There was a lot of stuff covered in this book, but it was all very abstract. It also focused too much on the people behind everything, and I found it hard to keep track of all of them (and didn't really care about them either).
It was worth reading just to see how incredibly terrible our military handled cyber security all the way up until like 2015. It seemed like there was practically nothing in place to handle cyber attacks until Obama got into office; the NSA just did whatever they wanted, collected every bit of data from every network (though it was only considered "collected" if they accessed it later on), etc.
June 2, 2019
I'll give it a four because of the info. But that same info was was repetitive as if the chapters were independent and not a lot of care given to making this a cohesive read. Redundancies stop me short and have me wondering if I am on the right trail.
If your reading this then you sure listen to his info.
If your reading this then you sure listen to his info.
April 26, 2019
This is an excellent book, a very readable, veritable page-turner that details in clear, understandable terms, the technology, bureaucratic in-fighting, and events that have led us to where we are today, on the cusp of a revolution in surveillance, intelligence, and warfare.
It's almost a truism that generals fight the last war instead of the present one. That is certainly obvious from reading Kaplan's very disturbing history of cyber vulnerabilities in the United States. In spite of the efforts of numerous people in the CIA and NSA to alert the Defense establishment to their vulnerabilities, top ranking officers, for whatever reason, ignored the warnings or even misused the information they were given by the intelligence people or failed to take advantage of that information.
For example, during the first Iraq war, General Shwarzkopf was provided with the locations of the fiber optic switching locations that carried all the traffic between Saddam's headquarters and his army in Kuwait. Schwarzkopf was happy to bomb those installations, but when the transmission were replaced with microwave towers he bombed those, too, against the advice of the intelligence types who knew that microwave transmission were easily monitored via satellite and available for information harvesting.
Generally, the military establishment was very skeptical of charges their networks were insecure. Ironically, it was a movie, War Games, that motivated not just hundreds of hackers but also Ronald Reagan, who, after bringing in experts who assured him all that was possible, began a campaign to analyze networks. Repeatedly, the military had to be shown just how insecure the networks were. There was the inevitable overreaction by the NSA who wanted to install a chip (the Clipper chip) in every computer in the country that would monitor transmissions and provide a backdoor for the intelligence community to monitor everything. That failed, but thanks to Snowden, we know that it wasn't needed and the NSA is basically collecting every phone and message transmission in the U.S. close to 2 billion per day.
There was always tension between the NSA and technologists side and civilians. The NSA wanted "zero days" (holes open for exploitation in software) left open so they could exploit them, while those holes could be used by foreign governments and malicious hackers to wreck havoc on the civilian population: good for national security, bad for individuals. When Bush was elected in 2000, all the work of Richard Clarke and George Tenet was thrown out the window. Bush wanted nothing to do with Clinton initiatives or people so their warnings about Al Qaida were dismissed. Cheney and Bush were more interested in threats from Russia and Iran so they could build their missile defense system.
In the panic following 9/11, bureaucratic in-fighting for control of the money that was being thrown at terrorism went into overdrive. Verisign (the company that controls domain and registration web names) had analyzed web traffic and discovered that 80% of all the internet traffic in the world flowed through one of two major distribution points in the United States. The NSA realized that was a goldmine for information gathering and with the help of Mitch McConnell pushed through features of the Patriot Act that eventually permitted the NSA to "store" (collecting information on U.S. citizens without a warrant was illegal) virtually all the internet traffic in the world. The ramifications were enormous. If for example, an American citizen were to have phoned a number anywhere in the world that "might" have had terrorist connections, the NSA could go to a FISA court (all in secret) to get a warrant to track other calls plus calls made by others this person might have called and calls those people made, looking for "connections". Before you know it, that one call, which might even have been accidental, would result in collecting relationships of millions of Americans, thus completely subverting the prohibition against surveilling Americans.
One can only wonder at the immense power granted numerous federal agencies by the Patriot Act, which permits so much to be done in secret. When I was director of a college library, we were very concerned by one feature that pertained to libraries. The FBI could walk into the library, demand to see the patron records of anyone, and it was a federal crime not just to refuse, but also even to mention to anyone that they had asked for it. Fortunately, the library community designed its software to delete any trace of books that had been checked out. Having read Kaplan's book, I suspect now they wouldn't bother to ask as they have the capability to examine all the metadata of all the internet and phone traffic anywhere in the world.
One can only wonder how Trump, were he smart enough, might use such incredible power. Then again, if I were he, I would be very afraid of what those same agencies might have on him. J. Edgar Hoover is salivating in his grave
It's almost a truism that generals fight the last war instead of the present one. That is certainly obvious from reading Kaplan's very disturbing history of cyber vulnerabilities in the United States. In spite of the efforts of numerous people in the CIA and NSA to alert the Defense establishment to their vulnerabilities, top ranking officers, for whatever reason, ignored the warnings or even misused the information they were given by the intelligence people or failed to take advantage of that information.
For example, during the first Iraq war, General Shwarzkopf was provided with the locations of the fiber optic switching locations that carried all the traffic between Saddam's headquarters and his army in Kuwait. Schwarzkopf was happy to bomb those installations, but when the transmission were replaced with microwave towers he bombed those, too, against the advice of the intelligence types who knew that microwave transmission were easily monitored via satellite and available for information harvesting.
Generally, the military establishment was very skeptical of charges their networks were insecure. Ironically, it was a movie, War Games, that motivated not just hundreds of hackers but also Ronald Reagan, who, after bringing in experts who assured him all that was possible, began a campaign to analyze networks. Repeatedly, the military had to be shown just how insecure the networks were. There was the inevitable overreaction by the NSA who wanted to install a chip (the Clipper chip) in every computer in the country that would monitor transmissions and provide a backdoor for the intelligence community to monitor everything. That failed, but thanks to Snowden, we know that it wasn't needed and the NSA is basically collecting every phone and message transmission in the U.S. close to 2 billion per day.
There was always tension between the NSA and technologists side and civilians. The NSA wanted "zero days" (holes open for exploitation in software) left open so they could exploit them, while those holes could be used by foreign governments and malicious hackers to wreck havoc on the civilian population: good for national security, bad for individuals. When Bush was elected in 2000, all the work of Richard Clarke and George Tenet was thrown out the window. Bush wanted nothing to do with Clinton initiatives or people so their warnings about Al Qaida were dismissed. Cheney and Bush were more interested in threats from Russia and Iran so they could build their missile defense system.
In the panic following 9/11, bureaucratic in-fighting for control of the money that was being thrown at terrorism went into overdrive. Verisign (the company that controls domain and registration web names) had analyzed web traffic and discovered that 80% of all the internet traffic in the world flowed through one of two major distribution points in the United States. The NSA realized that was a goldmine for information gathering and with the help of Mitch McConnell pushed through features of the Patriot Act that eventually permitted the NSA to "store" (collecting information on U.S. citizens without a warrant was illegal) virtually all the internet traffic in the world. The ramifications were enormous. If for example, an American citizen were to have phoned a number anywhere in the world that "might" have had terrorist connections, the NSA could go to a FISA court (all in secret) to get a warrant to track other calls plus calls made by others this person might have called and calls those people made, looking for "connections". Before you know it, that one call, which might even have been accidental, would result in collecting relationships of millions of Americans, thus completely subverting the prohibition against surveilling Americans.
One can only wonder at the immense power granted numerous federal agencies by the Patriot Act, which permits so much to be done in secret. When I was director of a college library, we were very concerned by one feature that pertained to libraries. The FBI could walk into the library, demand to see the patron records of anyone, and it was a federal crime not just to refuse, but also even to mention to anyone that they had asked for it. Fortunately, the library community designed its software to delete any trace of books that had been checked out. Having read Kaplan's book, I suspect now they wouldn't bother to ask as they have the capability to examine all the metadata of all the internet and phone traffic anywhere in the world.
One can only wonder how Trump, were he smart enough, might use such incredible power. Then again, if I were he, I would be very afraid of what those same agencies might have on him. J. Edgar Hoover is salivating in his grave
July 8, 2017
Good recounting of the development of the perception of cyber treats from the Reagan to the Obama presidency and how the executive branch reacted to the rapid change of information warfare. Still, the writing (or the narration) left me very disengaged.
October 3, 2016
My instinct is to ignore the warnings of lawyers, security experts, and anyone else whose income is based on their capacity to invoke fear. With hindsight, it's an instinct that has served me well; the long arc of history is usually on the side of the optimists. But it is also my blindspot. Rarely to I seek out information about the risks and dangers we face.
Fortunately, my colleague Eli Sugarman suggested that we read Fred Kaplan's Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War as the first installment for our Hewlett Foundation nonfiction book club. It was a timely read; cyber warfare has become one of the biggest policy issues of the campaign, and each day brings increasingly dystopian headlines about cyberhacks that erode our trust in our devices, our presumed privacy, and our democracy. First, Trump insinuates that Russian hackers should break into Clinton's email, and then hacker magazine 2600 offers a $10,000 bounty to any hacker able to uncover Trump's tax returns. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security is begging state election authorities to seek help to secure their voting systems against cyberattacks.
I'm the kind of person who learns about the complexities of contemporary issues by studying their history, and so Kaplan's historical telling of the rise of cyber war and the institutions created in response served me well. I had no idea, for example, that the National Security Agency has its roots in World War I, when the government created "MI-8" to surveil all incoming telegraphs from Europe. It continued to do so for ten years after the end of the war until Secretary of State Henry Stimson finally shuttered the program in 1929, proclaiming, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."
A game of cat and mouse resurfaces with each historical anecdote. The US government -- usually the NSA -- discovers some exploitation with which it can surveil its enemies, but also realizes that we are equally susceptible to the same exploitation by others. We were able to penetrate the nuclear reactors of Iran (which were run on Microsoft Windows!), and yet much of our national infrastructure is just as susceptible to attack. Over the years the NSA regularly assembles teams of internal hackers and sets them loose to see how much damage they could hypothetically inflict. A lot, it turns out, and each exercise in exploitation is an effective strategy to request billions from Congress for another expensive policy effort to bolster defense of national cyber-security. Most of the vulnerabilities, however, are embedded in commercial software like Windows, and the private sector has little incentive to invest costly resources in security and cryptography, which tends to slow down performance and means little to consumers that have grown accustomed to free software with new features. When the NSA does uncover vulnerabilities in commercial software, they have to balance the opportunity of using them to break into the computers of terrorists with the risk of terrorists and foreign governments using them to exploit American interests.
The book was also a helpful corrective to my superficial understanding of the NSA's PRISM surveillance program famously disclosed by Edward Snowden. The initial reporting and media fallout over PRISM didn't give readers historical context about the NSA's longstanding relationship with software companies even before the PRISM program. I was under the impression that it was the NSA pressing companies like Microsoft to create backdoors that would allow for surveillance, when it fact it was more often the NSA alerting Microsoft that there were vulnerabilities that allowed anyone to gain access to users' data. Snowden's leaks were fundamental to alerting the public to the potential for abuse (I certainly wouldn't entrust PRISM to a Trump administration), but it's amazing how thoughtful and restrained the NSA actually was in its pursuit of information related to terrorists with little legislation in place to force oversight.
Fortunately, Snowden's leaks prompted Obama to create a five-person commission to draft a report and policy recommendations to better balance "liberty and security in a changing world." Kaplan's chapter describing the relationships and interactions between these five old white guys with gigantic egos is among the most entertaining of the book. They were chosen intentionally for their diverse viewpoints, and yet all five men came to complete agreement about the changes needed to establish sufficient oversight of surveillance in the name of security and protection from surveillance in the name of liberty. Their recommendations prompted by Snowden's leaks led to a number of important reforms, but Obama chose not to adopt all the recommendations, which makes one think that he's seen firsthand the importance of data collection in deterring attacks.
This book is a must-read for anyone who assumes that the NSA does little more than infringe on our civil liberties. Our culture celebrates those who respond heroically during disaster (think the firefighters of 9/11), but does little to recognize those who prevent disasters from happening in the first place (think of a hypothetical engineer who had invented a way of securing cockpits so the 9/11 terrorists couldn't have broken in).
I would have appreciated a final chapter from Kaplan speculating on the future of liberty, security and cyberwar. It seems inevitable that the game of privacy cat and mouse will continue until the computers themselves become better at creating and cracking cryptography than the humans that once programmed them. The cryptography we use today to secure our email, financial transactions and most private documents will be rendered obsolete by quantum computers. Driverless cars, wireless credit cards, instant cloud storage of everything, smart homes -- the more we connect the more vulnerable we become. My biggest takeaway from the book is that there is real reason for concern, and that the NSA is pretty low down on the list of what we should be concerned about.
Though 2016 has seemed like a year of death and disaster, in fact it's been one of the most peaceful years in the history of our species. We've come to take it for granted that major wars between nation states is seemingly a phenomenon of the past. And yet moving forward, cyberwarfare between countries and groups within countries is set to become a constant.
Fortunately, my colleague Eli Sugarman suggested that we read Fred Kaplan's Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War as the first installment for our Hewlett Foundation nonfiction book club. It was a timely read; cyber warfare has become one of the biggest policy issues of the campaign, and each day brings increasingly dystopian headlines about cyberhacks that erode our trust in our devices, our presumed privacy, and our democracy. First, Trump insinuates that Russian hackers should break into Clinton's email, and then hacker magazine 2600 offers a $10,000 bounty to any hacker able to uncover Trump's tax returns. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security is begging state election authorities to seek help to secure their voting systems against cyberattacks.
I'm the kind of person who learns about the complexities of contemporary issues by studying their history, and so Kaplan's historical telling of the rise of cyber war and the institutions created in response served me well. I had no idea, for example, that the National Security Agency has its roots in World War I, when the government created "MI-8" to surveil all incoming telegraphs from Europe. It continued to do so for ten years after the end of the war until Secretary of State Henry Stimson finally shuttered the program in 1929, proclaiming, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."
A game of cat and mouse resurfaces with each historical anecdote. The US government -- usually the NSA -- discovers some exploitation with which it can surveil its enemies, but also realizes that we are equally susceptible to the same exploitation by others. We were able to penetrate the nuclear reactors of Iran (which were run on Microsoft Windows!), and yet much of our national infrastructure is just as susceptible to attack. Over the years the NSA regularly assembles teams of internal hackers and sets them loose to see how much damage they could hypothetically inflict. A lot, it turns out, and each exercise in exploitation is an effective strategy to request billions from Congress for another expensive policy effort to bolster defense of national cyber-security. Most of the vulnerabilities, however, are embedded in commercial software like Windows, and the private sector has little incentive to invest costly resources in security and cryptography, which tends to slow down performance and means little to consumers that have grown accustomed to free software with new features. When the NSA does uncover vulnerabilities in commercial software, they have to balance the opportunity of using them to break into the computers of terrorists with the risk of terrorists and foreign governments using them to exploit American interests.
The book was also a helpful corrective to my superficial understanding of the NSA's PRISM surveillance program famously disclosed by Edward Snowden. The initial reporting and media fallout over PRISM didn't give readers historical context about the NSA's longstanding relationship with software companies even before the PRISM program. I was under the impression that it was the NSA pressing companies like Microsoft to create backdoors that would allow for surveillance, when it fact it was more often the NSA alerting Microsoft that there were vulnerabilities that allowed anyone to gain access to users' data. Snowden's leaks were fundamental to alerting the public to the potential for abuse (I certainly wouldn't entrust PRISM to a Trump administration), but it's amazing how thoughtful and restrained the NSA actually was in its pursuit of information related to terrorists with little legislation in place to force oversight.
Fortunately, Snowden's leaks prompted Obama to create a five-person commission to draft a report and policy recommendations to better balance "liberty and security in a changing world." Kaplan's chapter describing the relationships and interactions between these five old white guys with gigantic egos is among the most entertaining of the book. They were chosen intentionally for their diverse viewpoints, and yet all five men came to complete agreement about the changes needed to establish sufficient oversight of surveillance in the name of security and protection from surveillance in the name of liberty. Their recommendations prompted by Snowden's leaks led to a number of important reforms, but Obama chose not to adopt all the recommendations, which makes one think that he's seen firsthand the importance of data collection in deterring attacks.
This book is a must-read for anyone who assumes that the NSA does little more than infringe on our civil liberties. Our culture celebrates those who respond heroically during disaster (think the firefighters of 9/11), but does little to recognize those who prevent disasters from happening in the first place (think of a hypothetical engineer who had invented a way of securing cockpits so the 9/11 terrorists couldn't have broken in).
I would have appreciated a final chapter from Kaplan speculating on the future of liberty, security and cyberwar. It seems inevitable that the game of privacy cat and mouse will continue until the computers themselves become better at creating and cracking cryptography than the humans that once programmed them. The cryptography we use today to secure our email, financial transactions and most private documents will be rendered obsolete by quantum computers. Driverless cars, wireless credit cards, instant cloud storage of everything, smart homes -- the more we connect the more vulnerable we become. My biggest takeaway from the book is that there is real reason for concern, and that the NSA is pretty low down on the list of what we should be concerned about.
Though 2016 has seemed like a year of death and disaster, in fact it's been one of the most peaceful years in the history of our species. We've come to take it for granted that major wars between nation states is seemingly a phenomenon of the past. And yet moving forward, cyberwarfare between countries and groups within countries is set to become a constant.
March 22, 2017
Found this to be an highly engrossing read, especially because I have for a time been keen on the topic of "cyber warfare"...
I especially loved this book's approach - a behind the scenes look into the History of Cyber War in relation to the US. The NSA of course taking the major spotlight.
Any good book I think should be able to make you reconsider one or more viewpoints that you hold...
This too was no exception. I find myself reconsidering my attitude towards the NSA, much of it formed during the somewhat recent scandal.
I especially loved this book's approach - a behind the scenes look into the History of Cyber War in relation to the US. The NSA of course taking the major spotlight.
Any good book I think should be able to make you reconsider one or more viewpoints that you hold...
This too was no exception. I find myself reconsidering my attitude towards the NSA, much of it formed during the somewhat recent scandal.
April 3, 2022
Tikėjausi daugiau istorijų apie kibernetinius karus, jų metodus, o gavau istoriją apie biurokratinį aparatą ir intrigas rašant dokumentus. Kaip ir nuobodoka...
December 27, 2024
يدخل بك الكتاب إلى دهاليز الإدارة الأمريكية و يورد ملابسات إنشاء الأجهزة الحكومية المتخصصة في الأمن السيبراني..... عدا عن هذا فالكتاب ممل و يبث مثالية مفترضة عن أخلاقيات الحرب التي عُرفت بها الإدارات الأمريكية في عهد بوش الأرعن و غيره....... ورأينا و خبرنا وقعا على المدنيين في العراق و أفغانستان.
لم أظفر هنا إلا بالنزر اليسير و هو على كل سلوى للمجهود المبذول في تخصيص الوقت و القراءة
لم أظفر هنا إلا بالنزر اليسير و هو على كل سلوى للمجهود المبذول في تخصيص الوقت و القراءة
July 13, 2019
حقيقة قلما أجد كتابا متماسكا كهذا الكتاب يشجعني على قراءةه حرفا حرفا،ورغم أن العمل يعتبر عملا صحفيا بامتياز، لكنه كتب بطريقة سردية أدبية روائية، جعلتك تشعر وكأنك تتابع فيلما روائيا على مدى قرون...
العمل محكم التفصيلات مترابط الجوانب، والعرض، خاصة بالنسبة للأسماء التي تكررت لتعيدك لحقبات سابقة ثم تأتي بك للاحق الأحداث فتحفظ أسماء أبطالها رغما عنك، كنت تساءلت عن ماهية وظيفة الكاتب، خاصة أنك تشعر وكأنه عاشها الأحداث فعلا، للسرد التفصيلي الملفت، لكنه يجيبك في آخر الكتاب ، في فقرة شكر وعرفان، فيشكر زوجته وابنتيه، وكل من ساعده وبشكل سري، وكلمة سري قد لاتقنعنا عندما نجد العمل نشر بلا اعتراض من جهة ما، وإذن هل كان يلمع وجه أمريكا مثلا ؟ أظن أنه يقدم كثيرا مما توصل إليه، وهناك حقائق ناقصة كانت ظهرت لاحقا ودحضت ماعرفناه بداية مثل هجوم 11 أيلول وغيرها من أمور ذات باطن سياسي، يمكننا أن نشفع للكاتب لأنه لن يخرج عن مواطنته، وهذا أمر طبيعي، ولايوجد عملا كاملا أصلا.
شكر مع امتنان.
العمل محكم التفصيلات مترابط الجوانب، والعرض، خاصة بالنسبة للأسماء التي تكررت لتعيدك لحقبات سابقة ثم تأتي بك للاحق الأحداث فتحفظ أسماء أبطالها رغما عنك، كنت تساءلت عن ماهية وظيفة الكاتب، خاصة أنك تشعر وكأنه عاشها الأحداث فعلا، للسرد التفصيلي الملفت، لكنه يجيبك في آخر الكتاب ، في فقرة شكر وعرفان، فيشكر زوجته وابنتيه، وكل من ساعده وبشكل سري، وكلمة سري قد لاتقنعنا عندما نجد العمل نشر بلا اعتراض من جهة ما، وإذن هل كان يلمع وجه أمريكا مثلا ؟ أظن أنه يقدم كثيرا مما توصل إليه، وهناك حقائق ناقصة كانت ظهرت لاحقا ودحضت ماعرفناه بداية مثل هجوم 11 أيلول وغيرها من أمور ذات باطن سياسي، يمكننا أن نشفع للكاتب لأنه لن يخرج عن مواطنته، وهذا أمر طبيعي، ولايوجد عملا كاملا أصلا.
شكر مع امتنان.
June 28, 2017
Fascinating and scary read about the state Of modern warfare
Kaplan does a spectacular job about laying out the facts of the history of American warfare and the people and events that drove policy or lack thereof.
The world is scarier now which is why it's more important that everyone with an eye to government over reach, foreign policy, freedom of information and privacy read this book.
I do wish, however that Kaplan had spent more time discussing what America does in a modern offensive stance rather than a focus on the defensive. I know a lot now about the threats to America but far less about what we do to deter cyber warfare by using tactics against would be intruders.
Kaplan does a spectacular job about laying out the facts of the history of American warfare and the people and events that drove policy or lack thereof.
The world is scarier now which is why it's more important that everyone with an eye to government over reach, foreign policy, freedom of information and privacy read this book.
I do wish, however that Kaplan had spent more time discussing what America does in a modern offensive stance rather than a focus on the defensive. I know a lot now about the threats to America but far less about what we do to deter cyber warfare by using tactics against would be intruders.
February 16, 2018
If anybody knows of a great book about cyber warfare, please let me know, because this is definitely not it.
December 30, 2020
A pretty standard narrative style history of the public cyber security efforts of the United States up to the point of the books publication. There really isn’t any useful information in this book, although you do come away with the impression that the US government, and especially the security agencies, are inept and stuck in their ways.
June 16, 2018
This book reminds me of Tom Clancy's novels; tons of federal agency -names, job titles, acronyms- who all appear to be doing things that sound the same. It can get very confusing. I didn't keep track but would say roughly 2 dozen folks (or less) that float in and out of the same federal and commercial job posts; a very small world where everyone seems to know each other.
The jumping back and forth in time was a bit confusing but it would have to be done to cover all the events and career paths running in parallel, and follow the hand-offs to the next generations.
A very good read if you want to see the history of the cyber world, from the US government's perspective; it filled in alot of gaps in my knowledge about things I'd heard in the news over the years.
The jumping back and forth in time was a bit confusing but it would have to be done to cover all the events and career paths running in parallel, and follow the hand-offs to the next generations.
A very good read if you want to see the history of the cyber world, from the US government's perspective; it filled in alot of gaps in my knowledge about things I'd heard in the news over the years.
November 12, 2021
Hey, only two problems
1. It's childish and one-sided propaganda:
- "America didn't steal other countries industrial secrets - it didn't need to".
- called the Federal Reserve a "federal body"
- Snowden leaked the NSA's **metadata** program
- "Russian scientists had attended conferences on every subject that interested the hacker"
- the obviously false story of 911 happening 'cos info wasn't collated
2. It's written in a silly breathless style:
- "Just elever months before the report came out..."
- "While at Fort Mead he worked on computers. . . . "
- chapters start with "Bob Smith was flustered "
- "within four days, the team was on the case"
Other than that, hey, no problemo!
1. It's childish and one-sided propaganda:
- "America didn't steal other countries industrial secrets - it didn't need to".
- called the Federal Reserve a "federal body"
- Snowden leaked the NSA's **metadata** program
- "Russian scientists had attended conferences on every subject that interested the hacker"
- the obviously false story of 911 happening 'cos info wasn't collated
2. It's written in a silly breathless style:
- "Just elever months before the report came out..."
- "While at Fort Mead he worked on computers. . . . "
- chapters start with "Bob Smith was flustered "
- "within four days, the team was on the case"
Other than that, hey, no problemo!
Read
April 30, 2017Kaplan provides an excellent account of how cyber tactics, cyber security, and cyber warfare evolved in the United States. It was not a smooth evolution, encountering, as it did, speed bumps of complacency, disinterest, and skepticism. We arrived later to the party than we should have. Kaplan's level of detail and insight is at times surprising, and the reader might wonder at his access to what seem like highly sensitive, and very likely classified, information. All thinking people should read this book for a solid, and highly accessible, lesson in cyber--a domain in which we all play, more or less knowingly.
October 21, 2018
Good easy to read summary of the history of cyber warfare, defense, hacking and governmental red tape and ignorance. I might have given it an extra star if it contained more about other countries and didn’t concentrate so much on the US. Also I can’t put my finger on it but something strikes me wary when it comes to the book’s politics. It’s definitely trusting of US intentions and rarely seems to question the potential for misuse of these seductive powers of omniscience.
June 16, 2016
Slim contents - I did not learn very much new from this book as I follow cyber security in the popular media. It was nice to see it all laid out chronologically. I am sure there is much more to the stories that we will never know.
July 20, 2016
An excellent history of cyber warfare. One can see how this could easily escalate out of control, and is the weapon of the future which most companies aren't even thinking about defending against. Which puts them at grave risk.
November 14, 2019
Without going totally Kaczynski, maybe we shouldn't be connected to the Internet of Things all the time...
September 18, 2019
Great overview. Lays out the important points of debate with historical context, then tries to give the strongest argument to each side.
Takeaways:
-There's a balance between cyber offense and defense. The more holes America can exploit against others, means more holes for us to be attacked. Since America is the most "integrated" country into the internet of things, we're arguably the most vulnerable. This makes retaliation trickier than in the nuclear side of things.
-After then Snowden revelations, Obama had a blue ribbon panel investigate the issues. The NSA claimed that 54 attacks were foiled because of their PRISM program (phone metadata). Upon investigation, the panel found that all attacks would have been foiled with or without PRISM. Basically seemed like a giant waste of money. This was supported by their findings that the NSA tried a similar program with internet metadata but abandoned it because of no results.
-The panel did find that the NSA/FBI were extremely cautious of how they used the data. But it required good faith and the internal checks could easily be undone. The panel proposed fixes, some of which were accepted. Also they issued a warning: "we cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."
-Finally a hilarious but terrifying point is that NATO used Baywatch to pacify and distract Serbians from protesting against their occupation. The turned off the TV stations that were anti-NATO and got Baywatch on the pro channels. Makes ya think.
Takeaways:
-There's a balance between cyber offense and defense. The more holes America can exploit against others, means more holes for us to be attacked. Since America is the most "integrated" country into the internet of things, we're arguably the most vulnerable. This makes retaliation trickier than in the nuclear side of things.
-After then Snowden revelations, Obama had a blue ribbon panel investigate the issues. The NSA claimed that 54 attacks were foiled because of their PRISM program (phone metadata). Upon investigation, the panel found that all attacks would have been foiled with or without PRISM. Basically seemed like a giant waste of money. This was supported by their findings that the NSA tried a similar program with internet metadata but abandoned it because of no results.
-The panel did find that the NSA/FBI were extremely cautious of how they used the data. But it required good faith and the internal checks could easily be undone. The panel proposed fixes, some of which were accepted. Also they issued a warning: "we cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."
-Finally a hilarious but terrifying point is that NATO used Baywatch to pacify and distract Serbians from protesting against their occupation. The turned off the TV stations that were anti-NATO and got Baywatch on the pro channels. Makes ya think.
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