<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div class="page_top" style="box-sizing: border-box; position:
relative;">
<div class="page_date" style="box-sizing: border-box; color:
rgb(183, 179, 180); font-size: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"><font
color="#000000">Ok, so I wanted to point out another hilarious
example where people in the policy space, as they always do,
start off by stating that YES, they are still relevant even in
the "Cyber" age. :) Of course, I love his summary directly
contradicting the keynote, which had more strategic depth than
you can normally expect. The Estonian President, as you might
expect, has the kind of deep thinking on cyber that you get
from staring down the barrel of Russian teams for a number of
years.</font><br>
<br>
<font color="#000000">-dave</font><br>
<br>
<br>
06 June 2016</div>
<div class="page_title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px
0px 25px;">
<h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 60px; margin: 0px;
font-family: "Proxima Nova", arial, verdana,
helvetica; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1; color:
rgb(42, 55, 89); padding: 0px;">Cyber in Tallinn</h1>
<p><a href="http://cepa.org/experts/edward-lucas"
style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(183, 179, 180);
text-decoration: underline; outline: 0px; font-family:
"Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif; font-size:
20px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight:
normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 28.5714px;
orphans: auto; text-align: right; text-indent: 0px;
text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Edward Lucas</a> via
<a href="http://cepa.org/Cyber-in-Tallinn">http://cepa.org/Cyber-in-Tallinn</a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="page_content_short" style="box-sizing: border-box;
color: rgb(42, 55, 89); font-size: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 25px;">“Cyber”
implies a world apart—like outer space—in which normal rules don’t
apply. In fact, the reverse is true. Every bit of real life—from
the criminal justice system to social norms, via military force
and political activism—impinges on the way computers and networks
operate. And computers and networks increasingly affect them too.</div>
<div class="page_content" style="box-sizing: border-box; color:
rgb(42, 55, 89); font-size: 18px; margin: 0px 0px 25px;">
<div class="pages_list_box2" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
<div class="list_news_content" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For this reason,
CyCon, the annual conference organized by the NATO
Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn,
is particularly interesting. It attracts technical experts,
but also lawyers, business people, spymasters, academics and
journalists, all of whom have a stake in the way in which
the rules of the internet are made, and how they are
applied.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">My panel was about
the lessons learned from past cyber-conflicts. One message
was that thinking about dividing lines is a mistake.
“Cyber-attacks” sit on a spectrum. At one end is a “pure”
cyber-attack: one that never becomes public, and has no
“kinetic” effect: it doesn’t break things or blow them up. I
gave the fanciful but pleasing example of a bug in Vladimir
Putin’s nuclear “football” – the portable command system
which launches Russia’s nuclear weapons. If that top-secret
device could be made to play the “Star Spangled Banner” at
random intervals, the Kremlin would assume that its nuclear
deterrent was unusable in a crisis. But nobody would ever
know.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sometimes the aim is
to spread information: computers and networks can be an
essential part of propaganda attacks, as the NATO Centre in
Tallinn has highlighted, in an excellent book on Russia’s
war in Ukraine. Conceivable, but still for now in the realm
of fiction, are attacks on critical national infrastructure
that make the lights go out, or sewage systems run
backwards.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is easy to focus
too much on the technical details. The main point I tried to
get across at CyCon was that “cyber” is a vector—a direction
of attack—but not the attack itself. The most mind-clearing
way to look at events involving computers and networks is to
ask who is the perpetrator, who is the victim, and what is
the objective.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Take for example the
crude swamping attack mounted by Russian hackers on Estonia
in 2007. This was effective in the short term—the country
had briefly to cut itself off from the outside internet in
order to maintain public services. Many outside observers
count that as an example of successful cyber-warfare. But
Russia’s tactical triumph belies a strategic defeat. If the
aim of the attack was to force Estonia’s government to back
down, it failed: the Soviet war memorial at the center of
the dispute stayed in the military cemetery to which it had
been moved. If the aim of the attack was to display
intimidatory capabilities, that failed too: the Estonian
internet rapidly returned to normal and Estonia gained
plaudits for its resilience. Thereafter expertise in dealing
with swamping attacks (DDoS in geek-speak) mushroomed.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It can be hard to
know if an attack is taking place. My co-panellist, the
British expert Keir Giles, highlighted mysterious events in
Sweden in recent days, affecting emergency communications
systems, air-traffic control, the rail travel booking
system, banking and payment systems, as well as DDoS attacks
on the media, and sabotage to the national communications
infrastructure. Some Swedes in the audience insisted: these
are all unrelated. Perhaps they are.</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br
style="box-sizing: border-box;">
</div>
<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(42, 55, 89);
font-family: "Proxima Nova", Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal;
font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height:
25.7143px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent:
0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1;
word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Either way, the
damage is done. It’s enough for people to believe that the
system is vulnerable and that Russia’s hidden hand is at
work—even if it isn’t. As Giles pointed out: the effect “in
terms of loss of security confidence and trust is pretty
much the same.”</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>