Cyberwar

70mn cyberattacks, mostly foreign, targeted Russia’s critical infrastructure in 2016 – FSB

Over the past year, Russia had to repel a whopping 70 million cyberattacks endangering its critical information infrastructure, Federal Security Service (FSB) communications and security spokesman Nikolay Murashov revealed on Tuesday.

“Seventy million cyberattacks [targeted] relevant facilities of the Russian Federation during this year,” the official told a State Duma committee for Information Policy, adding that the bulk of the attacks originated from abroad.

Touching on Russia’s readiness to ward off the mounting number of cyber threats, Murashov insisted that “at present, Russia has sufficient potential in the development of means of information security.”

Cyberwar

CYBERCOM: We’re Ready For War

U.S. Cyber Command’s 133 Cyber Mission Force teams reached initial operating capability last week, the command said in a statement Monday. 

The milestone comes six years after the new command launched and two years before it’s scheduled to reach full operating capability.

It also comes as the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are considering whether to recommend decoupling Cyber Command from the National Security Agency with which it currently shares a single leader and numerous resources. That idea faces opposition in Congress, including from Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who chairs the Armed Services subcommittee that oversees cyber operations.Initial operating capability means all cyber teams have reached “a threshold level of initial operating capacity and can execute their fundamental mission,” according to a Defense Department statement. CYBERCOM is currently staffed at 5,000 troops with a final goal of 6,200 troops, according to the DOD statement. Even full operating capability is often defined as less than 100 percent staffing because of the basic churn of troops in and out of units.

About half of Cyber Mission Force teams have already reached full operating capability, DOD said.

Cyberwar

Rules For Cyberwarfare Still Unclear, Even As U.S. Engages In It

When Defense Secretary Ashton Carter landed in Iraq for a surprise visit this week, he came armed with this news: More than 200 additional U.S. troops are headed to that country. They'll join the fight to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State.

As that battle unfolds on the ground, a parallel war against ISIS is unfolding in cyberspace.

U.S. officials have confirmed to NPR that over the past year, the cyber campaign has taken off. They describe an escalation in operations, from using cybertools to geolocate a particular ISIS leader to hacking into and then conducting surveillance on a particular computer.

The activity occurs even as the rules for cyberwarfare remain a work in progress. Among the outstanding questions: Who's in charge when the U.S. wages cyberwar?

"The chain of command is clear on paper," says Susan Hennessey, who served as a lawyer at the National Security Agency until November 2015. "It's much more difficult to understand in practice."
...Sulmeyer notes that the Pentagon now officially recognizes cyberspace as the fifth domain of warfare, after land, sea, air and space. That — combined with the urgency of the campaign against ISIS — is prompting military planners to think creatively, he says, about both how to govern and how to weaponize the cyber battlefield.