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posted by martyb on Monday June 17 2019, @06:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-the-pandora-box-again dept.

"We will impose costs on you until you get the point." (National Security Advisor John Bolton, Wall Street Journal conference, Tuesday June 11)

Since at least 2012, the United States has been injecting malware into the control systems of the Russian electricity grid, reports the New York Times.

While the campaign originally started as a reconnaissance mission, it became more aggressive under new authorities granted to United States Cyber Command.

As a result, under a "defend forward" policy,

American strategy has shifted more toward offense ... with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before.

The new authorities can be found in two documents, the National Security Presidential Memoranda 13 (classified) and the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act, in which

Congress affirms that the activities or operations referred to in subsection (a), when appropriately authorized, include the conduct of military activities or operations in cyberspace short of hostilities (as such term is used in the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148; 50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.)) or in areas in which hostilities are not occurring, including for the purpose of preparation of the environment, information operations, force protection, and deterrence of hostilities, or counterterrorism operations involving the Armed Forces of the United States.

These activities are now considered a routine matter, for which only Secretary of Defense approval is needed. With section (c) of SEC. 1632. of the Act specifying that the "clandestine military activity or operation in cyberspace shall be considered a traditional military activity", the Secretary is not even required to brief the President.

One can't help to think of a couple of other milestones targeting power networks: stuxnet (2009), the Ukraine power grid attacks of 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 involving Industroyer (2016) and note that, ultimately, such attacks did not remain restricted to the original target area.


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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday June 17 2019, @08:22PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday June 17 2019, @08:22PM (#856780) Journal

    Moooo....

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