New Tactics for Cyber Combat

Aviation Week's Ares blog recently posted a good article on cyber-warfare.

It begins with an example, from a test exercise, of a 2MW electrical generator being over-loaded and self-destructing under a cyber-attack. This is a very good illustration of the potential two-way relationship between cyber effects and kinetic effects in the physical world. In the same way that a carefully-targeted JDAM could take down a large part of an enemy's C2 network, a carefully-targeted cyber-attack could take down a key part of an enemy's infrastructure.

The part of the article that I found the most interesting is the following, which includes quotes from Lt. Gen. William Lord, the US Air Force's CIO and Chief of Warfighting Integration:

“We need to protect and defend parts of the network so that our forces can continue network centric operations [during a cyber attack]. That’s the price of admission. Protecting the network is a ship that sailed 5-6 years ago. Now we have to learn
to fight through attacks [while operating on a] network that the enemy is already in. We can’t afford to shut down the network every time it is attacked. We live on the network, so that requires a defense in depth.”

As a result, Air Force cyber warriors are redefining their tactics. Instead of defending the network, they are defending the work that network does – the data and the applications.

The one error that the article makes is that it overstates the significance of the recent hack of UAV video feeds. Intercepting an unencrypted video stream being transmitted in the clear over a radio frequency is one thing. Penetrating secure networks is quite another.

By: Guardian