Cyber Security is everyone’s business – we are vulnerable

  • Published
  • By Maj. Jason Fick
  • 436th Communications Squadron commander
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  Cyber-attacks are real and happen every day. We need to be ready to handle them. Consider the disagreement between Estonia and Russia in 2007. In his book "Cyber War," Richard Clark describes Estonia as one of the most wired nations in the world. During this disagreement Russian factions launched a cyber attack on Estonia's e-commerce and e-banking infrastructure.

While this disagreement was not kinetic in nature, meaning no bombs, tanks or assault rifles were used, the attacks had tremendous impact on Estonia's government functions, banks, and mass media. The weapon of choice for this effort was the Denial of Service attack.

A DOS attack essentially floods a country or institutions' internet connection with more requests for information than its infrastructure can handle. Without firing a shot or crossing a physical border, Russian hackers were able to affect Estonia's government.

One year later Russia and the country of Georgia had a border conflict. This conflict was the first time we saw a kinetic attack preceded by a cyber-attack. This time Russian factions used a distributed-DOS attack.

In a DDOS attack the aggressor propagates code to a myriad of workstations across the world. For example, the aggressor installs a virus, and when the time is right, the aggressor unleashes a DDOS attack by tasking the virus to turn all infected computers into zombies, called bots, that start flooding his adversary's computer systems with requests for information.

Georgia's Internet jammed up so much that mass media, telephone, e-mail, and e-commerce did not work. In fact, the Georgian president couldn't even make calls for help for over 24 hours.

The Air Force is the world's greatest air and space power, and one of our biggest assets on the battlefield is our ability to gather information, process it quickly, and then use it to our advantage. We use this information to target precision guided munitions, air drop supplies, and even to ensure the correct aircraft parts and fuel are delivered at the right location at the right time.

All the data systems required to do these things are connected to the Internet and all of these systems are susceptible to the DOS and DDOS attacks described above, if not properly cared for and protected.

Every Airman plays a part in ensuring our Air Force computers systems are protected and war-ready. If you suspect your computer has been infected, take action by calling your squadron information assurance officer or the communications focal point.

Common signs of a viral infection are a computer that acts sluggish, locks-up or crashes often, frequently accesses its hard drive, disables its anti-virus or reboots on its own. Computer viruses are most frequently spread in the DOD through e-mail.

If you get an e-mail from someone you don't know, be suspicious of it and its attachments. If the e-mail is not digitally signed, delete it. Also, be wary of imbedded URL links, if you get e-mail containing a URL to anywhere other than a ".mil" address, you should be suspicious and consider deleting it.

The attacks described above exploited known vulnerabilities, and patches exist for these vulnerabilities. If you are responsible for a government server, you need to ensure all of the proper patches are installed on your server in a timely manner.
After patches are installed, computers need to be rebooted to ensure the installation is complete. At Dover Air Force Base, Del., we've established Fridays as reboot day to help with patch installs. Patches are pushed to workstations daily, so every Friday we are going to reboot your workstation to facilitate this patching process. When you see this reboot message, don't get frustrated, this is just another safeguard to help protect our cyber resources.

Thanks for everything you do to make airpower happen at Dover AFB. If you are interested in more about cyber warfare I highly suggest Richard Clark's book "Cyber War," it's on the Chief of Staff of the Air Force's 2011 Reading List.