http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39466
By Bob Brewin
Govexec.com
March 6, 2008
The United States is in the midst of a cyberwar and is not prepared to
deal with it, top Defense Department and intelligence officials
acknowledged this week.
"Cyberwarfare is already here.... It's one of our major challenges,"
said Defense Deputy Secretary Gordon England on Monday at the annual
National Community Service and Legislative Conference of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars.
"I think cyberattacks are probably analogous to the first time, way back
when people had bows and arrows and spears," he said. "And somebody
showed up with gunpowder and everybody said, 'Wow. What was that?'"
England made his comments the same day that the Pentagon released a
report saying that the 2007 cyberattacks against its networks and those
operated by other governments around the world "appear" to come from
China.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. John
Thune, D-S.D., asked National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell if
the United States was prepared to deal with threats against military and
civil networks and information systems. "We're not prepared to deal with
it," said McConnell, identifying both China and Russia as adversaries
who are attempting to penetrate U.S. information systems.
Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, agreed with McConnell and told the panel that a key threat
facing this country is the "sophisticated ability of select nations and
nonstate groups to exploit and perhaps target for attack our computer
networks."
Security experts had warned earlier about the cyberthreats that England
and McConnell publicly acknowledged this week. In November 2007, Andrew
Palowitch, a former CIA official who is now an industry consultant to
the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, declared that the United States
was "in the midst of a cyberwar" and said there were 37,000 reported
penetrations of government and private systems in fiscal 2007.
McConnell also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the ability
of an enemy to enter information into systems and destroy data in
financial, power distribution and transportation networks is the other
threat that "concerns us a great deal."
According to McConnell, U.S. military systems are better protected than
those operated by civilian agencies or in the private sector. "So the
question is, how do we take some of the things that we've developed for
the military side, [and] scale them across the federal government? And
the key question will be, how do we interact with the private sector?"
The military's capability against cyberattacks and network penetration
reflects the substantial investment the Defense Information Systems
Agency has made in information systems security.
DISA has spent $493.3 million from its operations and maintenance
account on information systems security and assurance in 2007 and 2008,
including Defensewide secure network access card systems. The agency has
asked for $316.6 million in its fiscal 2009 budget. In addition, DISA
spent $69.9 million in procurement funds over the past two years, and
has asked for an information systems security procurement budget of
$45.8 million in 2009.
These funds include support for a Computer Emergency Readiness Team
Coordination Center, and computer systems that include firewalls for
both classified and unclassified military networks, demilitarized zones
to isolate Defense systems from the Internet and "honeypot" systems to
lure attackers to fake networks away from real ones.
The Bush administration plans a $6 billion Comprehensive National
Cybersecurity Initiative which McConnell testified will beef up network
and information systems defenses against cyberattacks. DISA requested
$36 million in its fiscal 2009 budget for the initiative.
The White House has released little information about this cybersecurity
master plan, but President Bush revealed some details in a Nov. 6, 2007,
letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for amendments to his
fiscal 2008 budgets related to the Homeland Security and Justice
Departments "which will enhance the security of the government's
civilian cyber networks and will further address emerging threats."
This request included a $115 million increase in Homeland Security's
budget for infrastructure protection and information security, from
$538.2 million to $653.2 million, to enhance cybersecurity
governmentwide. Bush said the extra money will fund accelerated network
monitoring for civil agency networks and increased analytical operations
by computer readiness teams.
Bush also asked for an increase of $39 million in the FBI's 2008 budget
to support investigation of incursions into government computer
networks.
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