Prerequisite: None

How Cyber Spies and Criminals Make the U.S. - and You - the Target


Moderator: Paul M. Joyal , National Strategies

Panelists:

Mark Danner, Former Clandestine Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency, National Strategies

Bruce Jones, Senior Security Policy Advisor to the UK Ministry of Defense

Ted Price, Former Deputy Director of Operations, Central Intelligence Agency

Gary Warner, Director of Research in Computer Forensics, University of Alabama at Birmingham


The threats and vulnerabilities facing our world today are more complicated than ever. The US military faces serious threats from terrorism, insurgency, cyber attacks and the demands on its budget as the nation continues to grapple with a struggling economy. The Russian-Georgia war of two years ago has reactivated interest in a Russian proposal for an international set of protocols restricting the use of cyber warfare similar to the agreements on nuclear and conventional forces. However, verification remains uncertain since Russia rejects any form of investigation on its territory as set out by the Council of Europe’s Cyber Crime Convention.

Espionage continues to resurface as a persistent challenge as the Col. Herman Simm case illustrates. Simm was head of the Estonian “State Secret Protection Office” and active in cyber defense planning within NATO. He passed hundreds of classified documents between 1995 and his arrest in 2008 to the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR). Simm has perhaps fatally compromised the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center. One possible effect from the Simm affair was the “severe and widespread” electronic attack sustained by the U.S. Department of Defense computers as recently as November 2008. According to the few reports available in open sources, the attack, which may have originated in Russia, led to a special briefing for President Bush concerning its gravity.

This general session will discuss lessons of the Herman Simm affair and how the SVR gained access to NATO and EU classified computer programs, possibly contributing to Russian cyber attacks on the Pentagon.