The 12th Annual Cyber Defense Exercise was held by the National Security Agency at a Lockheed Martin Corporation facility in Hanover, Maryland during April 17-20. Cadet teams from the U. S. service academies competed with one another to defend their own team’s computer network designed, built and configured by them against attacks by the National Security Agency and the Department of Defense. This year’s winner was the Air Force Academy. The Army team from West Point had won the prior six. Previously, the Air Force Academy had two wins, the Naval Academy two wins and the Merchant Marine Academy one win. The United States is taking cyber warfare very seriously. Tony Sager, Chief Operating Officer of NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate who created the contest in 2000, noted that cyber defense is extremely difficult, in part because things like home banking, military applications and power systems all share the same network.

Serendipitously, on Friday the 13^th of April, I attended a presentation by Paul A. Strassmann on cyber warfare at the New Canaan Senior Men’s Club. Strassmann is a member of the club, and an internationally recognized authority on the subject. Strassmann convincingly argued that cyber warfare is a legitimate concern, which affects us all.

FBI Director Robert Mueller at a Senate hearing indicated that he believes that cyber threats are becoming the number one threat to the USA, according to Strassmann. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, believes that cyber threats are a danger to economic and national security. The magnitude of the danger is indicated by the inter-connectivity of the following systems: oil and gas. electric power, transportation, emergency services, government services, banking and finance, water and communications. To help thwart attacks from a broad range of attackers — “crackers”; “insiders,” “hostile countries,” and “terrorists” — the Department of Defense established the U. S. Cyber Command in May 2010 under the U. S. Strategic Command, working hand in hand with the Department of Homeland Security. I’m not sure what the clandestine services are doing. A strategy document was issued in July 2011. Army General Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, notes that the cost of cyber-crime to the global economy is estimated to be about $1 trillion dollars per year. There are about 124 million malicious programs that are currently in place, and about 3.6 million new malicious codes are introduced each month. A few of them have become infamous.

Two of the malicious programs that have received significant amounts of attention are Conflicker which infected millions of computers in November of 2009; and Stuxnet, which was used to attack industrial controllers at Iranian nuclear facilities in June of 2010. Conflicker infected government, business and home computers throughout the world. It created havoc, and was very difficult to eradicate. Conflicker is considered relatively simple compared with Stuxnet which demonstrated that industrial control devices are at risk. In Iran, the impacts of Stuxnet on its centrifuges may have slowed down its nuclear development program. Excellent articles in Vanity Fair by Michael Joseph Gross and The New Yorker by Seymour M. Hersh explored these and related cyber war issues. Ralph Langer, a German cyber security consultant, helped research Stuxnet. Langer concluded that there might be an American and Israel Stuxnet connection to slow the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. The detection work involved is mind boggling.

Stuxnet and Conflicker are very sophisticated programs, and it is highly likely that only a cyber warfare superpower could have developed Stuxnet. A close analysis of the codes suggests that a number of teams of cyber warriors were involved, and they seem to have incorporated some self-limiting elements into it to contain the potential damage of the worm. On the other end of the cyber threat spectrum, virtually anyone who has a computer can become a hacker. Instruction books and prototype codes are readily available.

Cyber warfare dangers are not science fiction. Strassmann provided the following list as examples of cyber-attacks: “denial of service, viruses, worms, Trojans, logic bombs, password intrusion, spoofing, masquerading, sniffers, back door and trap doors, emanation detection, unauthorized targeted data mining, eves-dropping and tapping, and metamorphic attacks.” Currently, cyber defense spending is about ten percent of the amounts the U. S. spends on warfare, and its share is growing.

The age of cyber warfare has begun, posing dangers on the national and international fronts, and also very close to home.