The Great Cyberwar of 2016

UPDATE: These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia – Buzzfeed.

UPDATE: Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution – Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

2016 has been a crucial turning point for the international political playing field and the use of offensive cyberwar capabilities.

The devastations in Syria, increasing tension in North-Africa and terror-attacks in Europe are aggressions in the physical domain. The use of proxies and the risk of indirect/direct clashes between Russian and US/NATO-forces has left the many clans of Syria in a constant civil war.

Militarized software

Soft weapons like information warfare, propganda, and stealthy cyberattacks is breaking down the barriers between the physical and virtual conflicts. In the absence of any respected international laws for military operations in cyberspace, the Russians have been accused by the USG of interfering with US elections. The technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services (RIS) is released as “GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity” by the US-CERT.

According to the IBM X-Force Cyber Security Intelligence Index the 5 most cyber-attacked industries in 2015 were healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, government and transportation. Militarized software is the weapon of choice in a spiralingly dangerous physical battlefield.

Hacking with nuclear consequences

Strategic cyber warfare does not distinguish between civilians and military. Cyber weapons are just as likely to be targeting civilian resources as the military. While a nuke is more damaging than a piece of malware is alone, a cyberattack can cause civilian casualties and deaths, according to Forbes.. Will 2016 contain the precursors for a coming global cyberwar?

Will these headlines go down in history at the beginning of “the great cyberwar”?

  • The Podesta-emails; Russia interefering with US elections. Background on Wikipedia. Source material on Wikileaks. Perp: Grizzly Steppe.
  • ShadowBrokers got NSA spy tools from rogue insider – InfoWorld.
  • Pre-installed Backdoor On 700 Million Android Phones Sending Users’ Data To China – HackerNews.
  • The “Dyn Cyber Attack” causing temporary shutdown of Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, Reddit, SoundCloud, etc. Mass internet outage for large parts of the US and Europe. Perp: Anonymous.
  • Hackers publish 20,000 FBI employees’ contact information – CNNPolitics.com.
  • IRS Hackers may have stolen more taxpayers’ information than first thought – CBS News.
  • Data Breach At Oracle’s MICROS Point-of-Sale Division — Krebs on Security.
  • SWIFT took massive $81 million loss in cyber heist – Wikipedia – Bangladesh bank Heist.
  • EANS-Adhoc: FACC AG / UPDATE: FACC AG – Cyber-Fraud –  FACC.
  • Turkey’s internet censorship is starting to look like China’s ‘Great Firewall’ – Mashable.

Resources:

The Hacker News.
Dark Reading.
The Register.
Naked Security.
Cryptome.