It's NSA DAY at the BlackBOX Intel-CENTER!

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

US/1

Growing State Surveillance: National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney (April 20, 2012)

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BlackNET MemberJames Bamford: Inside the NSA's Largest Secret Domestic Spy Center (at the bottom of this center column)

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-CyBER-BlackSEC- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

US/1; ATTN: OSINT, AD-Crew; HST/1 & 2; SCI/2; US/12; CID/2; US/5; US/30; YQ/G-1

BKNT--OSSI Open Source Industry Day co-hosted by the National Security Agency!

Thank you for registering for the OSSI Open Source Industry Day co-hosted by the National Security Agency!

There are only about 100 seats remaining. If your partners, associates and coworkers are interested in attending please recommend they register immediately. http://thebridge.oss-institute.org/index.php/calendar/opensourceindustryday

We are quickly running out of exhibitor tables. If your company would like an exhibit table, please register now. http://thebridge.oss-institute.org/index.php/calendar/opensourceindustryday

If you have purchased a table, please bring the following with you for exhibit.

• Tablecloth - Your exhibit table is bare. Please bring a cover.
• Extension Cord - Electricity is available. 12 Ft of cord should be sufficient.
• Power Strip - If you need it, bring it.
• Free standing graphics - Attaching graphics to walls is prohibited.

Please let us know if you are interested in setting up on the afternoon of the 29th. We have limited access to the facility prior to 5/30.

All tables are expected to be ready to receive traffic by 0730 on May 30th. Doors will open at 0630 for exhibitors, 0730 for attendees. The continental breakfast will be served in the exhibit area to encourage interaction with attendees.

Information regarding transportation, directions and accommodations can be found here http://thebridge.oss-institute.org/index.php/component/content/article/14-events/37-industry-day-directions-transportation-and-nearby-hotels

Are you an OSSI Sponsor? If not there is still time before this event. http://www.oss-institute.org/index.php/lbgmembership-informationlbg-mainmenu-41

There is a WiFi signal in the building available for use. Bandwidth will be limited. If you are using the available WiFi please be considerate of others and turn off your WiFi feature when not in use. Your help will lighten the load and potentially make a difference to some who have WiFi only access.

As a registered attendee you will receive a conference package prior to the event. Please print, download, copy or photograph anything you need for that day. As a consideration for the environment there will be no printed schedules or programs. OSSI will have posters with information throughout the conference area.

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

FISA Applications for Covert Surveillance Increased in 2011

By: Anthony Kimery

05/04/2012 ( 9:16am)

Coinciding with an increase in federal investigations of terrorists, espionage and other threats on United States soil that fall under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and require that applications for covert surveillance be submitted and approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), in fiscal year 2011, the government submitted 1,745 applications to FISC. 

All applications were for foreign intelligence purposes pursuant to FISA to conduct covert electronic surveillance and/or physical searches, to gain access to certain business records (“including the production of tangible things”). They also included requests made by the FBI pursuant to national security letter authorities. 

“The 1,745 applications include applications made solely for electronic surveillance, applications made solely for physical search, and combined applications requesting authority for electronic surveillance and physical search,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich informed Congress through Vice President Joe Biden in the required annual report on FISA surveillance applications by the government. 

“Of these, 1,676 applications included requests for authority to conduct electronic surveillance,” Weich said. “Of these 1,676 applications, two were withdrawn by the government. The FISC did not deny any applications in whole, or in part. The FISC made modifications to the proposed orders in 30 applications. Thus, the FISC approved collection activity in a total of 1,674 of the applications that included requests for authority to conduct electronic surveillance.” 

The government submitted 1,579 FISA applications in fiscal year 2010, including 1,511 for electronic surveillance. 

Government counterterrorism intelligence officials told Homeland Security Today on condition of anonymity that part of the increase in FISA surveillance applications “came about directly from” investigations of thwarted domestic and foreign terrorist plots against the United States in FY 2010 and FY 2011, as well as in response to materials seized in relation to the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and the resulting investigations. 

“The new report says that the government filed 205 applications for business records for foreign intelligence purposes last year, compared to 96 in the previous year,” and that “the number of ‘national security letters’ (a type of administrative subpoena) declined last year,” noted Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' (FAS) Project on Government Secrecy in his FAS blog, Secrecy News. 

“In 2011, the FBI requested 16,511 national security letters pertaining to 7,201 US persons, compared to the 2010 total of 24,287 letter requests concerning 14,212 US persons,” Aftergood added. 

“As is usually the case, the FIS Court did not deny any electronic surveillance applications in whole or in part last year, though it made modifications to 30 of them,” Aftergood said. 

http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/fisa-applications-for-covert-surveillance-increased-in-2011/e9156b55f749dfc336fb515d803d3d12.html

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

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UK Protests...continue:



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CyBER-BlackSEC- OPEN SOURCE

HSToday.us; US/1; ATTN: [REDACTED, ET.AL.]

NSA Director Elaborates On DHS Minimum Cybersecurity Standards

By: Mickey McCarter

05/09/2012 ( 9:00am)

The director of the National Security Agency (NSA) recently wrote to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to defend comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, such as that championed by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

On March 27, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, NSA director and chief of US Cyber Command (CYBERCOM), told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should oversee the hardening of the cybersecurity of US critical infrastructure. McCain attacked such reasoning as placing too much control of national cybersecurity in the hands of an inexperienced DHS bureaucracy and as promulgating regulations that would be burdensome to business.

Two days later, McCain wrote to Alexander to ask him to clarify his views on his support of the Cybersecurity Act (S. 2105), the bill sponsored by Lieberman, Collins and others. Alexander defended a significant role for both DHS and NSA in national cybersecurity last week in his response, a copy of which was obtained by Homeland Security Today.

In his letter, Alexander said congressional legislation should bolster information sharing and critical infrastructure hardening.

"If the Department of Defense (DoD) is to defense the nation against cyberattacks originating from outside the United States, it must be able to see those attacks in real time. This requires legislation that, at a minimum, removes existing barriers and disincentives that inhibit the owners of the critical infrastructure from sharing cyber threat indicators with the government," Alexander wrote.

"Additionally, given DoD reliance on certain core critical infrastructure to execute its mission, as well as the importance of the nation's critical infrastructure to our national and economic security overall, legislation is also needed to ensure that infrastructure is sufficiently hardened and resilient," he added.

Businesses currently lack incentives generally to upgrade their cybersecurity defenses to the level required to successfully defend them, the general argued. Setting some minimum security requirements would ensure that owners and operators of core critical infrastructure take measures to harden their networks and thereby discourage adversaries from attacking those networks.

"At the same time, it is important that legislative requirements not be too burdensome," Alexander acknowledged.

In the March 27 hearing and in other forums, McCain contended that the NSA has more cybersecurity expertise and experience, and thus strengthening its cybersecurity capabilities would be more sensible than building up the cybersecurity capabilities of an ineffective DHS.

But Alexander disagreed, saying in his letter that DHS, NSA and the FBI have distinctive and unique roles in national cybersecurity.

"No single public or private entity has all of the required authorities, resources and capabilities; cybersecurity requires a team," Alexander wrote.

The distribution of cybersecurity responsibilities across DHS, FBI and NSA complement one another, forming such a team effort, he said. DHS works to secure unclassified federal civilian networks, to increase the capability of core critical infrastructure and to bolster national resilience. In the event of a significant cyberattack, DHS would coordinate the federal response, Alexander said.

Meanwhile, the FBI investigates, prevents and responds to cyberattacks with its criminal and intelligence authorities as the lead agency for domestic cyberthreat intelligence and attribution as well as law enforcement and domestic counterintelligence. The FBI feeds DHS information to strengthen cybersecurity preparation and protection measures.

The private sector shares information with DHS and the FBI currently, but that information sharing is limited, which weakens the efforts of those agencies to secure cyberspace, Alexander said.

"With respect to both the DHS and FBI roles, the limited, voluntary information sharing by the private sector inhibits the government's ability to protect domestic cyberspace, which is why it must be a key element of any cyberlegislation as I mentioned earlier. It would also greatly benefit DoD, which assists DHS and the FBI with intelligence support in their respective roles," he wrote.

NSA and CYBERCOM must work to defend national assets from foreign cyberthreats. They collect intelligence, attribute attacks, provide guidance for strengthening US national security, and distribute intelligence to DHS, Alexander said.

While DoD relies upon core critical infrastructure to carry out its missions, DoD can work with DHS to secure that infrastructure, with DHS taking the lead on standards for civilian systems, he continued, stressing that doing so would not interfere with DoD reliance on "power, transportation, telecommunications and the Defense Industrial Base (DIB)."

"Pursuant to the administration's proposals, DHS would, in consultation with the private sector and in coordination with DoD and other sector-specific agencies, be responsible for setting cybersecurity requirements and ensuring they achieve a baseline level of security," Alexander wrote. "DoD would share the responsibility to protect the DIB with DHS, support DHS efforts to protect other critical infrastructure and defend the nation in the event of a cyberattack on the critical infrastructure. FBI would be responsible for conducting investigations of intrusion activity in those critical infrastructure networks inside the United States."

DHS cannot protect core critical infrastructure without the assistance of NSA and the FBI, but it is wholly appropriate that it lead core critical infrastructure protection efforts for the private sector, the general emphasized.

McCain expressed concerns that technological innovations could outpace the ability of DHS, or even NSA, to keep up with national cybersecurity defenses.

But Alexander said proposals championed by the White House and envisioned by the Cybersecurity Act would not specify particular technologies and thus ensure maximum flexibility.

"The proposed security requirements in the administration's proposal would not dictate specific measures that may become outdated but rather would require critical infrastructure to achieve security results using methods of their choice," Alexander wrote.

He added, "We expect this approach will actually result in greater innovation, as companies look to the commercial market to produce security products and services that satisfy these requirements. Additionally, it is important to note that the administrations' proposal leverages, rather than duplicates, existing regulatory processes, allows for exemption of certain core infrastructure for which sector-specific regulatory agencies have sufficient requirements and enforcement mechanisms, and explicitly excludes regulation of technology products and services."

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mickeymccarter

http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/nsa-director-elaborates-on-his-support-for-dhs-setting-minimum-cybersecurity-standards/d61cdc4b727b11fb00c8460ebf8370bf.html

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Intelligence expert Crispin Black on why sex games feature in so many spy deaths

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

us/1; ATTN:cid/2; us/12; us/8; vs/2; us/17 (Pizza?); rt/66; us/121; hst/2

Intelligence expert Crispin Black on why sex games feature in so many spy deaths

May 5 2012

 

By Crispin Black - former government intelligence adviser

SITTING at the Gareth Williams inquest this week, listening to the more lurid details of the case, it occurred to me the death of spooks in bizarre circumstances involving sex games or women’s clothing is hardly an unusual event.

Disposing of an enemy and making it look like a perverted fantasy gone wrong is in the training manuals of every spy agency from MI6 to Mossad.

Codebreaker Gareth, from Anglesey, north Wales, was found dead in a locked bag, in a flat full of women’s clothing and wigs and with his internet browsing history conveniently featuring bondage sites, sparking a flurry of allegations which horrified his parents.

But the fact the 31-year-old’s death scene was organised in such a way as to suggest a sex game gone wrong should make us more suspicious, not less.

The sex game cover is a very useful mechanism in a murder. Not only does it provide a disguise for the actual means and method of death, it trashes the reputation of the victim and blunts the energy of any subsequent investigation.

And it appears to explain the astonishing number of spies, and other people who step into their murky world, who turn up dead in circumstances similar to Gareth.

Take GCHQ personnel for instance, those that work at the vast electronic doughnut in Cheltenham that is responsible for intercepting and decoding secret electronic traffic of interest to Her Majesty’s Government. And Gareth’s ultimate employer.

In 1983, 25-year-old Stephen Drinkwater, who worked as a clerk at GCHQ, was found dead at his home with a plastic bag over his head. In 1997 another worker, Nicholas Husband, 46, was found dead at home dressed in a bra and panties – with a plastic bag over his head.

Two years later, Kevin Allen, 31, a language expert at GCHQ, was found dead in his bed with a plastic bag over his head and a dust mask over his mouth. One wonders what the Gloucestershire Constabulary make of it all.

To be fair, the kind of higher mathematical ability that many GCHQ codebreakers have is rare and it sometimes comes with some personal eccentricities attached.

Alan Turing, the Cambridge academic and founder of modern computer science who became the greatest of the wartime Bletchley Park codebreakers was a distinctly odd fish – a loner with sexual hang-ups who seemed to spend most of his waking hours dreaming of obscure mathematical theorems.

The point was amusingly made in 60s film The Italian Job in which Charlie Croker, played by Michael Caine, recruits computer genius Professor Simon Peach – Benny Hill – to pull off a daring bullion robbery.

But the whole scheme nearly comes unstuck as Prof Peach is unable to control his powerful urges towards large women. MI6, who recruit a more worldly-wise type than the boffins of GCHQ, have not been immune.

In 1994 ex-MI6 man turned journalist James Rusbridger, 65, was found hanged at his house in Cornwall – in a green chemical protection suit including rubber gloves, gas mask and black plastic mackintosh. Bondage pictures completed the tableau.

And of course, according to the pathologist, it turned out he probably did it himself as part of a sex game.

The same year Stephen Milligan, the Tory MP for Eastleigh, was found dead with electrical flex tied round his neck, a black bin liner over his head and wearing stockings and suspenders.

The 45-year-old was also tied to a chair and had a satsuma stuffed into his mouth.
His boss at the time, then junior defence minister Jonathan Aitken, has since denied suggestions Milligan had links to MI6.

Even if you are not a spook you need to be careful. In 1990, ex-RAF helicopter pilot and editor of Defence Helicopter World Jonathan Moyle, 28, was found hanged in the wardrobe of his hotel in Chile with a pillow case over his head.

At the time his demise was widely thought to be an auto-erotic accident. He was in fact almost certainly murdered after uncovering links between Chilean arms dealers and Saddam Hussein.

The last person to give evidence at the Gareth Williams inquest was Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire – the senior investigating officer in the case.

She stated confidently that she was sure she and her team would be able to unlock the mystery in the end. But she also felt that this, her final appearance in court, was an appropriate time to remind the assembled audience of Williams’s internet browsing habits.

The last website he accessed probably just a few hours before his death was connected to cycling – a photo of him competing in a cross-country cycling race has been seen frequently in the national newspapers.

But then she went on to deal with the browsing information that had been made much of in the media over the last 20 months. Williams had accessed bondage websites on four days over a two-year period.

He had never accessed so-called “claustrophilia” sites which cater for people who get a thrill out of being confined in small spaces. […whisky-tango-foxtrot??...]
There we have it – the view of the woman in charge of the probe. Williams may have had a passing interest in bondage but no more than that. Even this passing interest may have a perfectly innocent explanation.

All MI6 officers get extensive training before they are allowed out on to the streets. Much of this takes place at Fort Monckton near Gosport in Hampshire – a Napoleonic era fortress surrounded by barbed wire and accessible only by a drawbridge.

It includes instruction in basic entry and exit procedures – buildings and cars mainly. If you ever get locked out of your flat and know a friendly spook from school or university give them a ring.
They should be able to get you back inside and could save you a fortune on locksmith’s fees. The instruction also includes some counter-surveillance techniques – how to make sure you are not followed.

And instruction on what to do if you fall into the wrong hands – resistance to interrogation and crucially, what to do if you are restrained – tied or chained up.
It is possible Williams had some of this training and it might well account for the episode when he was discovered tied up in his room by his landlady.

That the sex game angle was a simple smear is a view certainly not ruled out by the Westminster coroner who said, “it is still a legitimate line of inquiry” Gareth died at the hands of MI6.

In her narrative verdict, Dr Fiona Wilcox said: “I am sure a third party placed the bag into the bath and on the balance of probabilities locked the bag.

The cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated. I am therefore satisfied that on the balance of probabilities Gareth was killed unlawfully.”

I was impressed by Dr Wilcox. She had good judgment and wisdom as can be seen from her verdict in the case. She played down the bondage question and the interest in female fashion – Williams had an expensive collection of women’s clothing nearly all of it unworn and most of it not in his size. [an 8 or a 10?]

She seemed to accept the view of Williams’s sister that these were a store of presents for his female acquaintances. Dr Wilcox pretty much dismissed the idea of any sexual component in his death.

Sadly that is the aspect many people will remember. Well, these kinky games with yourself or other people go wrong – what can you expect – becomes the prevailing attitude.

Occasionally the dark arts of postmortem reputation trashing are employed in a good cause and based on hard facts rather than a set-up.

The strange and squalid habits of Osama bin Laden before his death have been used to great effect by the US to make him a laughing stock.

Crispin Black’s espionage thriller The Falklands Intercept is published by Gibson Square on June 19.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2012/05/05/intelligence-expert-crispin-black-on-why-sex-games-feature-in-so-many-spy-deaths-86908-23848943/

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

W. Scott Malone: DILEMMAS OF WAR - THE MEDIA

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

 US    Member CONTRIBUTIONS

By W. Scott Malone

                                   NavySEALs.com/BlackNET

The role of the media in war has no doubt sometimes been inimical to one side or the other, but it has almost always been integral, probably since the time of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian “scribe of the gods.”

The role of journalists in war and special forces operations in recent times has created dilemmas for all involved. Journalists do not wish to been seen as the ‘tools’ of one side, and possibly put at risk their and other journalists’ lives. Recent journalism deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought this issue once again to the fore.

Even Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qa’eda terrorists understand and exploit the media for their own ends. They struck the Pentagon on its West side for one very telegenic reason—as the news cameras rolled from the West side facing East, the likely target of incoming Flight 93 was clearly visible in the background—the U.S Capitol building--just as the news cameras were all pointed at the World Trade Center when the second hi-jacked plane fire-balled into the second Tower.

Two days before 9/11, Al-Qa’eda terrorists even posed as a Belgian TV news crew to assassinate Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance leader (and key CIA operative) Ahmed Shah Massoud--with a suicide bomb hidden in their TV news camera.

It is not the ‘embedded’ journalism of last year’s war coverage that creates the real dilemma, but rather the non-embedded kind where decisions are up to the various individual participants. They are the kind of decisions you rarely hear about, either in the media or from the military/intelligence community. In US history alone, there has been Revolutionary War pamphleteering, Andrew Jackson’s Indian campaign “reports,” Mathew Brady’s Civil War tin-types, William Randolph Hearst’s “Remember the Maine” yellow journalism, World War II’s certified “US War Correspondent” arm patches, and Vietnam’s “living room’ war coverage.

These modern day “dilemma” stories are mostly told only in smoky barrooms, and usually long after the fact. Modern journalists do not work for intelligence agencies or military commanders—they work, frequently at great risk, for their readers, listeners or viewers. But it can be a very thin line sometimes. The Washington Post’s Rich Leiby told his readers one hell of story about when he arrived in Baghdad in early May last year [2003] [Rich is currently--2012--the Washington Post's newly installed Pakistan Burean Chief]. Over one hundred angry Iraqi troops had gathered in an increasingly dark mood to protest their lack of jobs and even food, against the coalition occupation leaders.

"If the American government will not solve our problems, the Iraqi Army will fight and we don't care if half of them die," Salem Yassin was shouting, “in a deafening rage [to the] desperate crowd,” as Leiby later wrote.  Rather prophetically, Leiby quoted Yassin, a balding Iraqi army colonel who was rallying the protestors in front of the looted Air Force Officers Club near the center of Baghdad: "We cannot wait for a long time. We can all organize again -- as suicide attackers or whatever."

The officers were not against the American occupation per se, Leiby wrote, but they were weary of the “humiliating indifference” their demands for back salaries and pension payments had met. They were also demanding “a city with clean drinking water and reliable electricity.”

If the situation continued, Bara Kamel, an engineer who built guided missiles for Saddam Hussein warned Leiby, "you will create terrorists."

A retired Baghdad police lieutenant named Sabih Azzawe had advised the assembled soldiers to postpone any march. “It's too dangerous for military men, even if they're out of uniform and unarmed, to swarm without warning on U.S. troops.”

Then Azzawe turned to Leiby: “Come to my neighborhood in Dora…I found missiles there."

What happened next to the Washington Post reporter soon approached the dilemma threshold when Leiby was shown the location of several hidden missile caches. The potential dilemma was whether to report the locations to the coalition (i.e. US) forces, instead of to his readers, first.

That evening, Azzawe took Leiby and a photographer through a dust-blown residential section near Baghdad to a lot behind an old Christian seminary founded by Chaldeans.

There, Leiby wrote:

“Partially hidden behind a wall near the seminary's dormitory [were] five white missiles, about 30 feet long, still on their mobile launchers. The line of missiles stretches more than a hundred yards.

“Locals identify them as armed surface-to-air missiles. They say they've seen other SAMs and Al Samoud missiles, and even more war machinery, stockpiled inside the seminary's now vacant dormitory.

“Be careful, Azzawe and his neighbors sa[id]. The whole place is mined. Several people had died or been wounded in these fields after stepping on land mines, Azzawe warn[ed].

“So we do not attempt to enter the building, which sits adjacent to a large, barren field…A man named Abu Allowi, wending his way carefully past the missiles with his young son, says, ‘They were brought in at the beginning of the war. Many of them were fired from here.’

“What appears to be mobile radar equipment is also in plain view outside a 10-foot-high concrete wall that rings the religious compound.

“Neighborhood men present a military folder they say they found here. It identifies the Iraqi forces as belonging to a tank unit in the Republican Guard's 2nd Division.”

What Leiby did not include in the article he wrote on his weapons discovery was that he had reported the deadly find directly to US military officials. Leiby had used his GPS-equipped satellite phone to precisely locate the area where the missiles were stored. He gave those GPS readings to the coalition with a warning that the seminary was either booby-trapped or mined or both.

Although Leiby did mention in a magazine article he wrote three months later, in passing and without details, that coalition officials had been notified and the missiles removed, I only learned about this Washington Post weapons enforcement action in a smoky barroom almost one year after the fact.

“When I saw Iraqi kids playing right next to those massive SAMS, I said to my photographer, ‘Holy shit. We've got to get that picture and put it in the paper tomorrow’,” Leiby recalled to me over a glasses of Merlot back in Washington.

“My new Iraqi friend, Lt. Azzawe, wanted to know whether his message would get through to US officials. ‘I'm going to send your message to a million people,’ I remember telling him. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I really thought my story with a good photo might help wake up Washington to the fact that disbanding the Iraqi army, and not paying them, and leaving their weapons in place, probably wasn't such a great idea.”

Yet, in hindsight, Rich Leiby says he does not feel it was a real dilemma—he felt he did the right thing.

He also is not planning on going back to Iraq anytime soon.

****

I myself  have faced similar ‘dilemmas’ over an almost thirty-year career chasing bad guys for the BBC, PBS Frontline, The Washington Post, Life Magazine and others. I was almost always working as an investigative journalist, as opposed to being a regular news guy. In investigative journalism, I found, you were either way ahead or way behind whatever the current “news” was at any given time.

One dilemma arose in late November, 1986, while I was in the Philippines investigating the rampant, 20-year reign of corruption by the just deposed dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. I was NOT there to cover any of the numerous coup attempts that were then being launched almost daily. Lurking not-quite-so-quietly behind most of the coup plots was the then sitting Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, whose own defection from the Marcos regime nine months earlier had helped lead to Marcos’ overthrow.

One foggy morning out of the blue my hotel phone rang and the next thing I knew I was in a car headed to the private estate of Gen. J. Villareal, chief of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA). The general had called myself (who was doing the ‘historical’ Marcos corruption investigation) and old Philippine hand Phil Bronstein of the San Francisco Examiner (who later married Sharon Stone and got bitten by an alligator) to his home in the apparent, if rather faint, hope that we might offer some form of US journalistic “protection” during the morning of the most serious coup attempt to date.

This coup was being instigated as usual by Juan ‘Johnny Ponce‘ Enrile and his special forces chief of security, Gringo Honasen. Gen. Villareal, in a quite serious tone, asked for my counsel on what he should do next. I was torn. I felt uncomfortable to be asked, and troubled to possibly be interfering in on-going events. After a very long pause, I finally gave the chief of Philippine intelligence my advice—separate Honasen and ship him to the countryside away from Enrile’s security detail. I told the general that Gringo would then only be able to plot coup attempts 12-hours a day instead of 24.

Two days later, Honasen was indeed detached from the Defense Minister’s security detail and shipped to a remote base far from Manila. He only pulled one more coup attempt, about six weeks later, this time using purloined jet fighters. It too was put down and Gringo Honasen was finally put out of the coup business.

Thus, the Scott Malone-PBS Frontline coup control counseling program proved successful, if not rather unorthodox.

****

Although not quite a modern armed conflict, I faced a similar dilemma during a 1980 island insurrection in the then ‘condominium’ of New Hebrides in the South Pacific. That time I handled it a little differently.

The exotic, paradise-green island nation was being granted independence from both Britain and France, hence, it was the last jointly-ruled ‘condominium’ territory in the world. In the weeks prior to this grand celebration in the capital of Vela, the ‘big-man’ chief of the largest island of Espiritu Santo had declared his own independence. He was backed in this endeavor by a millionaire American businessman out of Reno, Nevada. And, secretly, by the French, who did not like the British leanings of the about to be installed government of the about to be renamed country of Vanuatu.

While dignitaries from around the world arrived for gala celebrations on the capital island, Jimmy Molly Stevens, with his piercing green eyes evidencing his partial decent from a long ago Scottish sea captain, took over the Espiritu Santo airport and booted out the local authorities and declared it the new nation of Nagramel.

French paratroopers then landed and cleared the runway so a British Royal Air Force C-130 could land. The French took over the airport bar, and the Brits went into the only town and re-raised the Union Jack. Jimmy Stevens continued to rule the rest of his new, rebel island nation.

The commander of the RAF C-130, a group wing captain, whose name is now lost to me, kindly allowed us to fly with him and his crew and film all over the islands. But he was under strict orders NOT to fly the intrepid Yankees into the disputed Northern island. Finally, I managed to arrange for a rebel “speedboat,” as my local contacts kept referring to it, to pick us up from a sparsely populated island between the capital island and Espiritu Santo. It took even longer, it seemed, to persuade my recalcitrant cameraman that the rebel “speedboat” would not tip over and destroy his expensive equipment. I then organized a puddle-jumper flight to the middle island, where we camped in the jungle overnight, and were met the next morning by a 100-foot French yacht with its name painted out.

Upon our arrival, we took a bone-jarring, 2-hour jeep jungle ride up to the beautiful Bay of Espiritu Santo, from which the World War II Battle of the Coral Sea had been launched by US forces some forty years earlier. We were formally greeted by a grass-skirted rebel formation whose members were armed with bows and arrows. With our camera running, President Stevens welcomed us with a sudden and unannounced display of his previously unknown stash of refurbished Springfield infantry rifles.

In the flash of the camera’s eye, it was no longer just a “bow and arrow revolution,” as it had been labeled by some rather impertinent Aussie and Kiwi journos still sitting in a bar back in the capital.

A day or so later, the RAF group wing captain flew in to re-supply the French airport bar garrison, and he was now more than glad to fly us OUT of the rebel island. Over the roar of the four turboprop engines, as we stood on the open tail ramp of the RAF C-130 cruising at 5,000 feet, the group wing captain asked me if I would speak to the “intelligence boys.” I asked if they would tell me anything in return, and he shook his head. So I said, screw them, but that I would be honored to brief the group wing captain in their stead.

I was, after all, particularly indebted to the group wing captain for all the help he had extended to us, including getting us out there. (Again, I was not a “news” reporter per se, and my film would not go on the air for another five weeks.)

Back on the ground in the still festive capital of Vela, the RAF group wing captain and another member of his flight crew joined me for drinks at the hotel. They brought with them one of those gigantic, duty-free, gallon bottles of the Queen’s scotch. I helped them put a major dent in it, told them my version of world history since it began, along with the salient details of the previously unknown arms cache, and, as they stumbled down the hall, I heard the loud crash of what was left of the Queens’ scotch hitting the stone floor.

At a later embassy suare in Vela, an “MI6 type,” like the very ones I had earlier told the group wing captain to tell to go screw themselves, did slide up to me in a crowd and drop me one intelligence nugget—the visiting Cuban Ambassador to Japan was actually a major player in the DGI (Cuban intelligence)—a tip which I later verified and used in the program.

Jimmy Molly Stevens’ rebellion was eventually put down after I left, and Stevens’ oldest son was killed in the process.

I still have my Nagramel passport, just in case, signed by the President, Jimmy Molly Stevens.

****

Finally, there are the unintended, indirect consequences kind of media-war dilemmas. In the Fall of 1987, Life Magazine dispatched this reporter on assignment to exclusively cover the dismantling of Titan II ICBM missiles and silos outside of Little Rock, Arkansas.

These liquid-fueled, nine-megaton city killers were actually targeted during the Cuban Missile Crisis on Moscow. Although employing vacuum-tube technology, these versatile and dangerous monsters could be set for either “ground burst” or “air burst.” One silo, labeled in red graffiti as the “ghost silo,” had actually killed 54 silo construction workers back in the early sixties.

As we began photographing the various dismantling procedures, it became abundantly clear that these procedures were actually the previously classified codicils of the SALT II arms control treaty. A definite scoop. After the missiles were de-fueled and removed, the heavy steel launch rings were cut in half and photographed by the Air Force.  The internal workings of the warheads were removed and then crushed. This too was photographed. The plutonium from the thermonuclear “triggers” was actually saved to be recycled if necessary.

The 10-foot tall, aluminum and epoxy-resin nosecones were then blown up with 17-pounds of C-4 explosive. I know, because, in order to coordinate with our science photographer’s multiple remote cameras, they gave me the detonation plunger. I got to actually blow up the nuclear warhead (nosecone). (I still have the blackened tip of it.)

Finally, the silos themselves were blown up with 8,000 pounds of crystalline explosive, and the holes were left open for six months to allow then Soviet satellites to verify their destruction. The various collected Air Force photos were then quietly turned over to the Soviets.

All of the above was previously unknown publicly. It made for an excellent Life Magazine spread. The editors, in their eminent wisdom, actually employed my working title: “Swords into Plowshares.”

Only years later would I learn from official Russian sources that that independent magazine spread had significantly helped sooth still-simmering Cold War mistrust.

It was also the only time I ever won a peace prize. New York University’s Center for War, Peace and the Media presented Life Magazine with its 1987 “Olive Branch Award.”

Unintended consequences indeed.

[Scott Malone is a multiple Emmy, Dupont and Peabody award-winnirg investigative journalist who was the then editor of NavySEALs.com and its counter terrorism newsletter, BlackNET Intellligence Channel, wherein this article was first publded on 09 April 2004] 

FLASH--CyBER-BlackSEC- BBC - Web War II: What a future cyberwar will look like

- LIMITED DISSEMINATION

Magazine

FLASH-CyBER-BlackSEC 

CyberIntelligenceNETWORK; US/1; ATTN: ALL

The first episode of the three part documentary series Danger in the Download presented by Ed Butler will be broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday 1 May at 00:06GMT and will be available afterwards on i-player.

30 April 2012 Last updated at 04:21 ET 

By Michael Gallagher BBC World Service

 

How might the blitzkrieg of the future arrive? By air strike? An invading army? In a terrorist's suitcase? In fact it could be coming down the line to a computer near you.

Operation Locked Shields, an international military exercise held last month, was not exactly your usual game of soldiers. It involves no loud bangs or bullets, no tanks, aircraft or camouflage face-paint. Its troops rarely even left their control room, deep within a high security military base in Estonia. 

These people represent a new kind of combatant - the cyber warrior. 

One team of IT specialists taking part in Locked Shields, were detailed to attack nine other teams, located all over Europe. At their terminals in the Nato Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, they cooked up viruses, worms, Trojan Horses and other internet attacks, to hijack and extract data from the computers of their pretend enemies. 

The idea was to learn valuable lessons in how to forestall such attacks on military and commercial networks. The cyber threat is one that the Western alliance is taking seriously. 

It's no coincidence that Nato established its defence centre in Estonia. In 2007, the country's banking, media and government websites were bombarded with Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks over a three week period, in what's since become known as Web War I. The culprits are thought to have been pro-Russian hacktivists, angered by the removal of a Soviet-era statue from the centre of the capital, Tallinn. 

DDOS attacks are quite straightforward. Networks of thousands of infected computers, known as botnets, simultaneously access the target website, which is overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and so temporarily disabled. However, DDOS attacks are a mere blunderbuss by comparison with the latest digital weapons. Today, the fear is that Web War II - if and when it comes - could inflict physical damage, leading to massive disruption and even death.

"Sophisticated cyber attackers could do things like derail trains across the country," says Richard A Clarke, an adviser on counter-terrorism and cyber-security to presidents Clinton and Bush. 

"They could cause power blackouts - not just by shutting off the power but by permanently damaging generators that would take months to replace. They could do things like cause [oil or gas] pipelines to explode. They could ground aircraft." 

Clarke's worries are fuelled by the current tendency to put more of our lives online, and indeed, they appear to be borne out by experiments carried out in the United States.

At the heart of the problem are the interfaces between the digital and physical worlds known as Scada - or Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition - systems.

Today, these computerised controllers have taken over a myriad jobs once performed manually. They do everything from opening the valves on pipelines to monitoring traffic signals. Soon, they'll become commonplace in the home, controlling smart appliances like central heating.

And crucially, they use cyberspace to communicate with their masters, taking commands on what to do next, and reporting any problems back. Hack into these networks, and in theory you have control of national electricity grids, water supplies, distribution systems for manufacturers or supermarkets, and other critical infrastructure. 

In 2007, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demonstrated the potential vulnerability of Scada systems. Using malicious software to feed in the wrong commands, they attacked a large diesel generator. Film of the experiment shows the machine shaking violently before black smoke engulfs the screen. 

Although this took place under laboratory conditions, with the attackers given free rein to do their worst, the fear is that, one day, a belligerent state, terrorists, or even recreational hackers, might do the same in the real world. 

"Over the past several months we've seen a variety of things," says Jenny Mena of the DHS. "There are now search engines that make it possible to find those devices that are vulnerable to an attack through the internet. In addition we've seen an increased interest in this area in the hacker and hacktivist community."

One reason why Scada systems may be prone to hacking is that engineers, rather than specialist programmers, are often likely to have designed their software. They are expert in their field, says German security consultant Ralph Langner, but not in cyber defence. "At some point they learned how to develop software," he adds, "but you can't compare them to professional software developers who probably spent a decade learning." 

Moreover, critical infrastructure software can be surprisingly exposed. A power station, for example, might have less anti-virus protection than the average laptop. And when vulnerabilities are detected, it can be impossible to repair them immediately with a software patch. "It requires you to re-boot," Langner points out. "And a power plant has to run 24-7, with only a yearly power-down for maintenance." So until the power station has its annual stoppage, new software cannot be installed. 

Langner is well-qualified to comment. In 2010 he, along with two employees, took it upon himself to investigate a mystery computer worm known as Stuxnet, that was puzzling the big anti-virus companies. What he discovered took his breath away.

Stuxnet appeared to target a specific type of Scada system doing a specific job, and it did little damage to any other applications it infected. It was clever enough to find its way from computer to computer, searching out its prey.

And, containing over 15,000 lines of computer code, it exploited no fewer than four previously undiscovered software errors in Microsoft Windows. Such errors are extremely rare, suggesting that Stuxnet's creators were highly expert and very well-resourced. 

It took Langner some six months to probe just a quarter of the virus. "If I'd wanted to do all of it I might have gone bust!" he jokes. But his research had already drawn startling results. 

Stuxnet's target, it turned out, was the system controlling uranium centrifuges at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. There is now widespread speculation that the attack was the work of American or Israeli agents, or both. Whatever the truth, Langner estimates that it delayed Iran's nuclear project by around two years - no less than any air strike was expected to achieve - at a relatively small cost of around $10 million. This success, he says, means cyber weapons are here to stay. 

Optimists say Stuxnet does at least suggest a scrap of reassurance. Professor Peter Sommer, an international expert in cyber crime, points out that the amount of research and highly skilled programming it involved would put weapons of this calibre beyond anyone but an advanced nation state. And states, he point out, usually behave rationally, thus ruling out indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets. 

"You don't necessarily want to cause total disruption. Because the results are likely to be unforeseen and uncontrollable. In other words, although one can conceive of attacks that might bring down the world financial system or bring down the internet, why would one want to do that? You would end up with something not that different from a nuclear winter."

But even this crumb of comfort is denied by Langner, who argues that, having now infected computers worldwide, Stuxnet's code is available to anyone clever enough to adapt it, including terrorists.

"The attack vectors and exploits used by Stuxnet - they can be copied and re-used reliably against completely different targets. Until a year ago no one was aware of such an aggressive and sophisticated threat. With Stuxnet that has changed. It is on the table. The technology is out there on the internet."

One thing is for sure, he adds: If cyber weapons do become widespread, their targets will lie mostly in the west, rather than in countries like Iran, which have relatively little internet dependence. This means that the old rules of military deterrence which favoured powerful, technologically advanced countries like the United States do not apply: Responding in kind to a cyber attack could be effectively impossible. 

This asymmetry is likely to grow, as developed countries become ever more internet-dependent. So far, the Internet Protocol format allows only 4.3 billion IP addresses, most of which have now been used. But this year, a new version is rolling out, providing an inexhaustible supply of addresses and so allowing exponential growth in connectivity. Expect to see far more machines than people online in the future. 

In the home, fridges will automatically replenish themselves by talking to food suppliers; ovens and heating systems will respond to commands from your smartphone. Cars may even drive themselves, sharing GPS data to find the best routes. For industry, commerce and infrastructure, there will be even more reliance on cyber networks that critics claim are potentially vulnerable to intrusion. 

"There will be practically infinite number of IP addresses," says former hacker Jason Moon. "Everything can have an IP address. And everything will have one. Now, that's great. But think what that's going to do for the hacker!" 

In fact, it has already become a challenge for even sensitive installations, let alone households, to remain offline. Although military and other critical networks are supposedly isolated from the public internet, attackers can target their contractors and suppliers, who plug into the "air-gapped" system at various times. Somewhere down the food chain, a vulnerable website or a rogue email will provide a way in.

According to Richard Clarke, the mighty American armed forces themselves are not immune, since their command & control, supplies, and even some weapons systems, also rely on digital systems.

"The US military ran headlong into the cyber age," he says. "And we became very dependent on cyber devices without thinking it through. Without thinking that if someone got control of our software, what would we be able to do? Do we have backup systems? Can we go back to the old days?"

The answer it seems is no. A new form of weapon appears to be emerging. And the world may have to learn to adapt.

The first episode of the three part documentary series Danger in the Download presented by Ed Butler will be broadcast on BBC World Service on Tuesday 1 May at 00:06GMT and will be available afterwards on i-player.

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