While we watch politicians stand in line
to develop questionable solutions to the problem of violence in America, it is
easy to forget that some very bad people are constantly trying to do us harm
from overseas. But they are. And it is working. Here is how we know.
According to a recent article by Ellen Nakashima
(an excellent reporter of homeland security issues for the Washington Post –
see http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-11/world/36272281_1_banks-ddos-nsa ), several large banks have approached the National Security Agency and
asked for help securing their systems from outside attack.
For years, businesses in general, and
financial businesses in particular, have resisted calling law enforcement in
the wake of cybercrimes. The reason is simple. If you call the police to
investigate a break-in at your home, and they see something illegal during
their visit (say, too many pet rabbits for a local city ordinance), they are
obligated to investigate your “law breaking,” too. And their investigation goes
to the prosecutor, whether they catch the burglars or not. Now assume you are a bank with hundreds of
employees, thousands of depositors, and millions of transactions. Would you be
thrilled to have an FBI team taking an electronic stroll through your records? How
do you think your depositors would feel? Think it might hurt business for
people to know:
1)
The
electronic defenses of your bank have been penetrated and accounts may have
been accessed.
2)
So
federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies are combing through bank
systems and depositor records.
Anyone who says “You have nothing to
worry about if you are not guilty,” doesn’t understand tax law.
So
what does it tell us when six major banks (Bank of America, PNC Bank, Wells
Fargo, Citigroup, HSBC and SunTrust according to the Washington Post article)
consider going to the feds? It tells us
that we as a nation have a problem. A big problem.
The Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) considers 18 sectors of our national “enterprise” to be Critical
Infrastructure (CI). (http://www.dhs.gov/critical-infrastructure-sectors) CI is defined
as: “the assets, systems, and networks,
whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that their
incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security,
national economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof.” The sectors include Food, Energy,
Transportation, etc. . . . and Banking and Finance.
Attacks
on this sector have been common for years because, to quote bank robber Willie
Sutton, “that’s where the money is.” But starting about a year ago – as
sanctions really began to bite into the Iranian economy – a new type of
coordinated attack emerged. Called a “Denial of Services” attack, these high
tech efforts do not go after data or accounts, but seek to prevent the banks
from doing business, by overwhelming their computers with what look like
legitimate requests for attention. It is
as if a million people showed up to stand in line at the ticket windows of a
football game, even though they had no intention of buying tickets. The windows
would be shut down, legitimate customers frozen out, the attention of officials
diverted, and over time, the team owners would suffer significant loss. Since
last September, such attacks on the banking industry have accelerated. Some banks
(most remain very leery of telling the stock markets who is having the worst
problems) are so hard pressed that they have turned to the National Security
Agency for help.
To
be clear, the NSA is an intelligence agency, not a law enforcement agency. It
has long monitored the communications of opponents overseas and performed other
services so secret that during the Cold War many claimed that NSA stood for “No
Such Agency.” But since 9/11, the NSA
has stepped to the fore in seeking America’s dangerous enemies abroad and
protecting federal electronic resources at home. And in some cases they have extended that
protection to resources that were not owned by the federal government but
served a national purpose, like the computer systems of defense
contractors. While exactly what they do
is not exactly clear (by design), it appears that for non-governmental
partners, they do more consulting and recommending than actual protection. And
while their interaction with defense and law enforcement agencies is a matter
for classified Congressional oversight, it would certainly be reasonable to
expect coordination with those who can investigate, prosecute, and perhaps even
retaliate.
So
if we do not know exactly what federal agencies are involved with this new
defense effort, or exactly what they are doing, why be concerned about this
activity? Because it tells us two
things:
1)
Somebody
is making a serious, large scale attempt to attack the economic sinews of the
United States.
2)
It’s
working well enough to get the full attention of the US government at the
highest levels.
It is public knowledge, supported by statements
from “unnamed sources,” that both China and Iran have mounted major efforts to
penetrate our government computers, our key industries, our university research
facilities, and a wide range of our critical infrastructure. Some claim that
damage already achieved would be cause for war if it had been done by physical
attack. And it is especially interesting that the current attacks as described
in the Nakashima article were conducted on specific days in a coordinated
manner. This may indicate a military operation, or an exercise for organized
forces, or even (as we may have seen in the Russian attacks on Estonia and
Georgia six years ago), the contracting out of services to some other agent. (A
third party intelligence service? A transnational crime organization?)
All we know for sure from the two
points above is that some very bad people are trying to do some very bad things
to the foundations of American power and society. We all ought to be paying
attention.
Oh yes, there is a third point. We might not win.
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