Technology
Introduction
Anonymous hacker group gained popularity when it hacked the Church of Scientology website in 2008. The group is a structure-less organization that was created to be used by people of all genders, races, ages, nationalities, and religion, to popularize their cause. Since there is no formal membership, the group members communicate via chat rooms on the web or through previous connections2. The group’s symbol is the Guy-Fawkes mask that its supporters worldwide wear at rallies to hide their identities. The group does not have any particular goals, and its only guideline is anti-oppression and is seen to have the desire to mitigate censorship and encourage freedom of speech. Anonymous group pursues its targets aggressively and are known to crash web servers, deface websites, and leak hacked information.
Anonymous Attack on HBGary Federal
In 2011, anonymous hacker group launch an attack on a security services firm called HBGary Federal. The company was helping the federal government investigate hacking activities of businesses that had refused to promote Wikileaks. Wikileaks is an international non-profit whistle-blowing organization that releases secret information from anonymous sources through its website2. This was after the Financial Times published a story quoting HBGary Federal’s head of security services, Aaron Barr, saying that he had discovered the identities of Anonymous group leaders who were using social networking sites. Barr said he planned to reveal the names at a security conference the following week.
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2 Krebs, Brian. “HBGary Federal Hacked by Anonymous.” 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/.
This did not sit well with the group, and some of its members decided to hack the company website and email accounts.
Nature and Sophistication of the Attack
The attack on HBGary servers was very sophisticated unlike the usual distributed denial of service attacks the Anonymous group had been using the previous months. The attackers who infiltrated the company’s network possessed real skills and even posed as HBGary’s CEO to an IT network administrator to socially engineer access, giving them absolute control over rootkit.com1. Rootkit.com was a security research website that HBGary had maintained for a long period. The attack comprised of three stages, the initial breach, stealing of e-mails, and destruction of the company’s servers. The break-in occurred through an insecure web server at the company. The hackers then used the breach to obtain Aaron credentials, who was the administrator of the email system, and used it to access the emails.
Desired Outcome of the Attack
HBGary Federal was an expert company in computer security field for both public and private sectors. The company offered software that detected, isolated, and analyzed various malware and services such as network security, detection of systems intrusions, and vulnerability assessment. The firm had established itself in the field and had high-end clients including McAfee, National Security Agency, and Interpol. The objective of the attack was to gain access to the mail containing the names that Aaron had uncovered, prove Anonymous group’s power, and make a mockery out of the company.
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1 Dipert, Randall R. “The Ethics of Cyberwarfare.” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (2012). Accessed April 29, 2016. doi:10.1080/15027570.2010.536404. http://www3.nd.edu/~cpence/eewt/Dipert2010.pdf.
Later, the group also demanded that Aaron be fired, and his salary donated to Bradley Manning Defense Fund.
Success of the Attack
The attack on the company was very successful; it took the hackers only 24 hours to gain access to the company’s website and replaced it with an image depicting their motivation. Over 60,000 emails of the company were also accessed and publicly posted online2. Twitter accounts of the company’s employees were was also hacked by Anonymous group’s sympathizers who used them to post offensive messages and private information of the account holders.
After the attack, the group released a statement on its Internet Relay Chat networks saying they laughed when they saw the information Aaron was going to sell to the FBI. They called the information nonsense, saying the information was already available on their networks. They further stated that Aaron would not sell the information because they would hand it over to the FBI for free4.
The attack left the company in shambles to the extent of HBGary’s President wandering into the group’s public chat channel to try and reason with them to stop releasing the company’s emails to the public. However, Aaron was not fired but he later voluntarily stepped down from his position in the company, a few weeks after the breach.
HBGary Federal’s Response
HBGary Federal first issued an apology to all its clients whose confidential emails had been leaked to the public.
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2 Krebs, Brian. “HBGary Federal Hacked by Anonymous.” 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/.
4 Sands, Geneva. “What to Know about the Worldwide Hacker Group ‘anonymous.’” March 19, 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://abcnews.go.com/US/worldwide-hacker-group-anonymous/story?id=37761302.
The company also said that Anonymous group stealing private data and publicly posting it online was a federal crime. Greg Hoglund, the co-founder of HBGary also added that the group had picked the wrong company to mess with and would dedicate all their resources to ensure the hackers were apprehended3.
Effectiveness of the Hackers in covering their Tracks
The hackers were not very good at covering their tracks, and the then Chief Security Officer of HBGary Federal was sure that the perpetrators would be apprehended, and this is exactly what happened after only four months. Federal agents arrested a 28-year-old man called Hector ‘Sabu’ Monsegur, who helped in the investigations leading to the identification of three other hackers. The hackers were Ryan ‘Kayla’ Ackroyd, Jake ‘Topiary’ Davis, and a 16 year old teenage only identified as ‘tflow’ in the United Kingdom.
Cyber Warfare
Cyber warfare is any politically motivated virtual attack launched at a rival’s computer and information systems. The attacks take advantage of the global interconnectivity provided by the Internet to launch the attacks via it1. The most common ways of carrying out the attacks are; sabotage and espionage. Sabotage involves disruption of the usual operation of an organization and mostly target military and financial institutions. Espionage involves disabling or finding ways past a network security to gain access to confidential information of a rival organization to be used for political and financial benefit.
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1 Dipert, Randall R. “The Ethics of Cyberwarfare.” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (2012). Accessed April 29, 2016. doi:10.1080/15027570.2010.536404. http://www3.nd.edu/~cpence/eewt/Dipert2010.pdf.
3 Lindsay, Jon. R. Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare. n.p.: University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 2013. http://erikgartzke.com/assets/lindsay2013_stuxnet.pdf.
Future of Cyber Warfare
Technology is deeply rooted in today’s political, social and economic life. Systems are used to connect and synchronize the operations of different organizations across geographical borders to increase and ultimately optimize efficiency2. Unfortunately, this same connectivity has promoted an avenue for malicious activities that can prove harmful. Cyber warfare can be used as a means to interrupt the operations of a rival’s physical infrastructure. In future, cyber warfare will be used with traditional military operations to increase the efficiency of a military attack. During military infiltrations, cyber activities will be used to degrade rivals’ data processing limiting their ability to stop the infiltration.
Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are used to control factory automation, power grids, financial networks, water distribution, and other critical industries. Disrupting of ICS can cause massive infrastructure failure and wreck lot of havoc with little or no risk to the attacker. This is because ICS accidents sometimes happen without human interference and is difficult to distinguish between planned sabotage and accidents3. Targeting the ICS of an adversary would make it very hard to prove that anybody was involved in the ICS failures. With most advanced militaries across the world already researching cyber attacks as a means of surveillance, control, and disruption of rival systems, it makes sense if cyber attacks on ICS are used in future as a substitute to traditional military operations.
It is also assumed that in future weak adversaries will use cyber warfare to target and counter the advantages of materially strong adversaries.
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2 Krebs, Brian. “HBGary Federal Hacked by Anonymous.” 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/.
3 Lindsay, Jon. R. Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare. n.p.: University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 2013. http://erikgartzke.com/assets/lindsay2013_stuxnet.pdf.
This is because tools used in cyber warfare are readily available at an affordable cost on the internet. Also, powerful countries have a lot of infrastructure that rely on cyberspace to function. This makes the infrastructures easy target for cyber attacks, and small intrusions on the countries’ networks could have catastrophic effects.
Ethics in Cyber Warfare
Cyber warfare is more ethical than traditional military operations; this is because of its nature and what it targets. Cyber attacks are not as physical and aggressive as other military weapons. This is because the primary aim of most cyber attacks is to benefit financial or politically from the gradual deterioration of a rival’s systems as opposed to gaining an immediate advantage4. Cyber warfare also uses intangible electrical pulses as weapons to make tangible systems malfunction rather than use humans and tangible weapons. This limits the damage and destruction of cyber attacks to a minimum. The loss of lives due to cyber warfare is also significantly reduced compared to traditional war strategies.
The United States Defense against Cyber Attacks
The United States uses various methods and techniques to defend itself against cyber attacks. One of these methods is the use of early detection framework systems that have the capability to efficiently detect potential malware threats. The objectives of the systems are; to quickly detect any worldwide attacks, provide law enforcement with relevant authorities, and provide measures to prevent any potential damages of the attacks.
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4 Sands, Geneva. “What to Know about the Worldwide Hacker Group ‘anonymous.’” March 19, 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://abcnews.go.com/US/worldwide-hacker-group-anonymous/story?id=37761302.
Another way is through the use of commercial off the shelf products and trusted software applications to prevent cyber attacks. However, the problem with this method is that there is no guarantee that the products would work.
The final method is deterrence that involves convincing potential attackers that their actions may have dire consequences. There are two ways of doing this; deterrence by denial and deterrence by punishment. Deterrence by denial involves hindering a specific nation’s ability to develop the necessary technology to carry out cyber attacks4. This can be done through the signing of treaties and agreements. Deterrence by punishment is adopted by when deterrence by denial has failed. This strategy involves using more aggressive retaliation means than the ones used to by the attacker. This will prevent potential attackers from attempting cyber warfare activities because they will fear losing more than what they gain.
Next Step in Cyber Warfare
Cyber warfare is becoming a growing threat that is facing most of the countries in the world. These countries have to find ways to face these threats and have established teams to respond to them. However, due to the complexity of cyber warfare, there is no international consensus on the basic ideas and methods to deal with the problem. The United States and the United Kingdom are already making steps towards this goal and other should be encouraged to come on board.
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4 Sands, Geneva. “What to Know about the Worldwide Hacker Group ‘anonymous.’” March 19, 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://abcnews.go.com/US/worldwide-hacker-group-anonymous/story?id=37761302.
Bibliography
Dipert, Randall R. “The Ethics of Cyberwarfare.” Journal of Military Ethics 9, no. 4 (2012). Accessed April 29, 2016. doi:10.1080/15027570.2010.536404. http://www3.nd.edu/~cpence/eewt/Dipert2010.pdf.
Krebs, Brian. “HBGary Federal Hacked by Anonymous.” 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/02/hbgary-federal-hacked-by-anonymous/.
Lindsay, Jon. R. Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare. n.p.: University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 2013. http://erikgartzke.com/assets/lindsay2013_stuxnet.pdf.
Sands, Geneva. “What to Know about the Worldwide Hacker Group ‘anonymous.’” March 19, 2016. Accessed April 28, 2016. http://abcnews.go.com/US/worldwide-hacker-group-anonymous/story?id=37761302.
