U.S. Cyberattack Console Aims to Turn Grunts into Hackers (Danger Room)

U.S. Cyberattack Console Aims to Turn Grunts into Hackers

• By Noah Shachtman  
• May 22, 2009  |  
• 1:29 pm  |  
• Categories: Info War

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/us-cyberattack-console-aims-to-turn-grunts-into-hackers/

The U.S. military is putting together a suite of hacking tools that could one day make breaking into networks as easy for the average grunt as kicking down a door.

That's the word from Aviation Week, which snuck an unusual peek inside a "U.S. cyberwarfare attack laboratory." There, researchers are building a "device" that would "weaponiz[e] cyberattack for the non-cyberspecialist, military user."

In recent years, Defense Department officials have thumped their chests, hard, about how good the Pentagon is at hacking enemy networks. But discussing specific online attacks — ordinarily, that's done mostly inside of secure facilities. A 2008 Danger Room post on an unclassified Air Force research project to give cyberwarriors "full control" of "any and all" computers set of a frenzy inside the service. Generals were pelted with questions about how such supposedly-sensitive information was allowed to escape into the public sphere. Since then, there have been increased calls within military circles to show off at least some of what the armed forces' network attackers can do. It's an effective way of detering potential foes online, the logic goes.

The device described to Aviation Week is designed "to tap into satellite communications, voice over Internet, proprietary Scada [supervisory control and data acquisition] networks — virtually any wireless network." And it would be able to do so in a way that makes sense to n00bs.

This particular network attack prototype has a display at the operator's position that shows a schematic of the network of interest and identifies its nodes… A touch-screen dashboard beneath the network schematic display looks like the sound mixing console at a recording studio. The left side lists cyberattack mission attributes such as speed, covertness, attribution and collateral damage. Next to each attribute is the image of a sliding lever on a long scale. These can be moved, for example, to increase the speed of attack or decrease collateral damage.

"Each change to the scales produces a different list of software algorithm tools that the operator needs,"Av Week adds. Those tools would including existing, unclassified software — like packet-sniffers,metasploit-style network vulnerability scanners, and AirCrack-like wireless network security breakers. To those, this new system adds "classified… proprietary cyberexploitation algorithms." What those are, the network attackers wouldn't say.