Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive Faculty and Researcher Publications Selected Student Papers and Publications, not including Theses and Dissertations 2016-06 Cyber Weapons are not Created Equal Bartos, Christopher A. Bartos, Christopher A.. "Cyber Weapons are not Created Equal". U.S. Naval Institue Proceedings 142/6/1 (2016): 30-33. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/49618 U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE Since 1873 WWW.USNI.ORG /' PROCEEDINGS The Independent Forum of the Se. Servk:e. June 2016 Vol. 1421611 ,360 The U. S. Naval Institute is a private, self-supporting, not-for-profit professional society that publishes Proceedings as part of the open forum it maintains for the Sea Services. The Naval Institute is not an agency of the U.S. government; the opinions expressed In these pages are the personal views of the authors. FEATURES 18 The Fourth Battle of the Atlantic By Vice Admiral James Foggo. USN. and Alarik Fritz The Russian bear is stirring anew, and NavylNATO vigilance is all the more crucial in European waters. 24 'launch the Flyswatter!' By Lieutenant Jeff Vandenengel, USN Submitted for your consideration: a subsurface-to-air missile for U.S. submarines. 34 The lives of a Chinese Gunboat By Ryan D. Martinson Cyber Weapons Are Not Created Equal 30 With in-your-face swagger, YZ-3JO made a name for herself By Captain Christopher A. Bartos. USMC throughout the maritime-dispute hot zone. "Cyber attack" is the buzz-phrase, but the real meat of the matter is "cyber defense." 42 Bronco 12, Cleared Hot By Captain Andy Walton, USN The irregular-air warfare lessons of Combat Dragon IT: adaptability, flexibility, innovation. 48 Containing the Nuclear Threat By Captain Geoff P. Gagnier. USCG, and Captain Larry LeGree, USN Domestic port security does not begin at home, but before a. nuke-filled cargo container ever reaches U.S. shores. ENL:STED ESSAY CONTEST WINNER CAPSTONE ESSAY CONTEST WINNERS 40 Share Who We Are 54 Submarines Reign Supreme By Hospital Corpsman Second Class Crystal Tao, USNR By Ensign Gavin Fuller. USN It is up to veterans and active-duty personnel to make the Now more than ever, U.S. nuclear-powered submarines public aware of the military's important role- a receptive "have an overwhelming fighting advantage in the maritime audience awaits. domain." 58 Embrace the Digital-Native Marines By Second Lieutenant Robert Vachon, USMC In an increasingly data-centric battlespace, data-centric THIS MONTH'S COVER millennial are the answer to a prayer. The Los Angeles-class submarine Pivot to the Pacific-at Hypersonic Speed USS Toledo (SSN-769), assigned to 62 Commander, Task Force (CTF) 54, transits By Ensign Shane Kravetz, USN through the Persian Gulf early this year. "Scrarnjet" and other advances will be key to preserving U.S. NAVY (TORREY w. LEE) freedom of the seas in the Indo-Asia-Pacific. 66 SEAL Training Is a Choice By Ensign Joseph Dinkel. USN Few roads are more arduous, few honors so great. www.usni.org PROCEEDINGS • 1 CYBER W APONS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL By Captain Christopher A. Bartos, U.S. Marine Corps Despite public phobia to the oday's prevailing wisdom, both inside and out­ side the Department of Defense, is that offense contrary, cyber attacks are no dominates in the cyber domain. I Determining the balance between offense and defense arises with simple thing; great sophistication the emergence of every new military technology. Driv­ ing the current belief in cyber's offensive dominance is is required to bridge the 'Iogical­ the idea that digital weapons-which rely primarily on manpower- are cheap to create, while society's overall physical divide,' where defense has dependence on the Internet creates a plethora of vulnera­ bilities for intrusion, exploitation, and attack. 2 The primary a distinct advantage over offense. benefit to the offense in the cyber domain is the lack of 30 • June 2016 www.usni.org Military students man the computers in Pyongyang, North Korea, where in the system, and finally exploit that foothold to obtain Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un has hailed cyber warfare as a "magic the objective. Smart defenders can, and often do, spoil weapon ." The North Koreans did succeed in engineering the Infamous 2014 Sony Pictures hack- but ultimately such a stunt Is "nothing more attacks on networks by interrupting this process at any of than a cyber prank." the four steps.6 This process will become even more dif­ fICUlt as cyber defenses are strengthened. Material losses from hacks have brought visibility from top-level corpo­ physicality. Cyber, unlike the other domains, is a hybrid rate executives, prompting cyber defenders to strengthen of the logical and the physical, which means that intru­ their shielding structures even more and build network sions, attacks, and defense occur at the "speed of light."3 architectures with redundancy in mind- a principle every Yet cyber's greatest offensive advantage is the same factor good communications officer in the military has imple­ that limits its overall effectiveness as a weapon, namely, mented for years. the logical-physical divide. Bridging this steep divide is Offensive cyber weapons also face the dual problems required if digital operations are to significantly impact of "perishability" and obsolescence. Perishability is when the physical world. a cyber weapon is no longer effective after it has been used. Obsolescence refers to a cyber weapon becoming Cyber Misperceptions ineffective because of time. The vulnerability in a system When compared to traditional arms manufacturing, the that is exploited when an attacker uses a cyber weapon im­ creation of mo t cyber weapons is not only cheap, but also mediately becomes well known to system administrators easy to hide. Computers, Internet access, and manpower and those who developed the original code. Patches are with the right education and skills are all one needs to written and, when installed, close the gap that the attack begin hacking computers. This is likely the reason why originally used. A cyber weapon is perishable because it even Kim Jong-Un, the leader of reclusive North Korea, is impossible to reuse as long as the system is updated. calls cyber warfare a "magic weapon."4 Cyber attacks will Obsolescence occurs by the same process except that only increase as more computers connect to the Internet the vulnerability is discovered and fixed before an attacker and more people gain the skills to hack them. uses the cyber weapon. Unlike weaponry in the physical Misperceptions about cyber warfare are fueled by a cog­ world, the development of cyber weapons and countermea­ nitive bias with regard to cyber intrusions and attacks. On sures happens at an incredibly rapid pace, meaning that any given day there are millions of attempted malicious attackers in cyberspace must constantly update their arse­ operations within the cyber domain; any approximation nals to have any hope of conducting a successful attack. for all attacks will likely be under­ estimated, considering the billions of people connected to the Internet and the automated way the simplest of malware searches for and attacks targets. Many of these attempts are blocked before they even can gain access to a system. Even if on a per­ centage basis the number of effec­ tive attacks is small, news reports of these attacks gamer media attention, increasing the perception that suc­ cessful cyber attacks are easy. Cyber attacks are hard for the same reason any attack is diffi­ cult-there are many steps involved in skirting the defenses of the ad­ versary. For military operations in ~ urban terrain, the Marine Corps ~ uses a template for successful at- i tacks: reconnoiter the objective, iso- ~ late the objective, gain a foothold, ~i and secure the objective.5 Success­ ful cyber· attacks require the same t process. Hackers must first conduct ~ reconnaissance on a tar et isolate Cyber enlisted students at the Naval Postgraduate School are training for the contingencies of the . g , new high-tech balliespace. ''To take full advantage of our nalion's substantial defensive and offensive that target from potential cyber de- cyber capabilities, planners must account for the proper strategic balance between the two." fensive support, gain the foothold www.usni.org PROCEEDINGS • 31 Since it is difficult for an attacker to know if a developed Attacks on confidentiality, commonly referred to com­ weapon has become obsolete, it is extraordinarily difficult puter network exploitation (CNE) in the Department of to plan a truly effective cyber attack. Though these same Defense, are effectively a form of espionage. Breaches of factors affect the defender, who must constantly update confidentiality are actually intrusions rather than attacks, systems and fix gaps in the defense, the burden of action because they do not cause any damage per se. CNE is rests on the shoulders of attackers. typically used to gather intelligence on computer systems Minimal vulnerability also makes cyber weapons more as well as for any of the other myriad p«rposes crimi­ defensive in nature. Missiles in hardened silos and ships nals and nation-states want information. Intrusions into a in harbors are relatively well defended, reducing the incen­ system can serve a dual purpose in that they not only en­ tive to strike first because able information extraction, each side can reasonably but they can also provide a expect to use its weapons way to plant malicious code and defend itself success­ within a system or corrupt fully. Cyber criminals and its data without the owner nation-states can effectively knowing. According to some hide and protect their cyber cyber experts, this highlights arsenals from other actors the offensive nature of all because of the complex na­ malicious cyber actions.9 ture of cyber geography and Just because intrusions are good encryption.