One of the most overlooked parts of the Muller report is the detailed information the FBI, et al., collected on Russian interference in the 2016 election. They determined the names and location of the GRU officers and cyberspies who conducted the operation, what they did and how they did it. It was an extraordinary piece of sleuthing. (See Sandworm by Andy Greenberg for more details.) Cyberspies places all this in historical context.
This book has something for everyone: history, spying, and interesting characters. While he argues that "hacking" using technology has a long history dating back millennia, he chose to begin with the cutting of German cables on the ocean floor during WW I. Leaping-frogging rather quickly he then begins with the use of computers (people, those who computed) and especially Flowers and Turing who respectively understood the larger picture and how "valves" (vacuum tubes in American) could be used binarily to process data. Along the way, he tries to answer questions of what cyber spying is, how such developed and its impact in today’s world politically, economically, and in the intelligence communities. An ambitious goal indeed.i.e.
There are two key components to the world of spies: attribution, i.e. can you trace back a decision or instruction to its source; and integrity, the accuracy of the data, for getting just one component of a message wrong could mean sending a missile to the wrong target. Scrambling a message so it can't be read by the unauthorized is an inherent part of spycraft and technology has made all of that both easier and more difficult at the same time. “Few outside the intelligence world understand the extent to which spies in the US and Britain perceive technology as an existential threat to their work,” Corera writes. “An arms race is on between spy services to exploit technology. Only those who adapt will survive.”
Spying has more than just military significance. The Russians and others have taken economic espionage to a new level. Collecting information peripherally is important. The author provides an example of Russian trolling for information about a particular executive whom the intelligence services had determined was gay but not out of the closet. “The hackers then sent him an email from a gay rights organization which they suspected he would open since it looked as if it was sent to him, but in fact held malware,” Corera writes. “They then counted on the fact that, even if the executive did suspect it was malware, he would not be willing to go to his company’s IT department or security team for fear it would reveal his sexuality. This is classic, high level, targeted Russian espionage.”
There's intelligence and then there's information. Spying in common parlance conjures up images of dangerous men with guns in tuxedos in scary situations who can leap tall buildings in a single jump. Or the silent bureaucratic types of Le Carre. The author has a wonderful metaphor for the difference in how spying is done by different countries. Let's say you want to find out what kind of sand is on a particular beach in some foreign country. The UK would send a submarine with divers in wet suits (bow ties and suits underneath) to surreptitiously retrieve a sample of sand from the beach. The Americans would use technology to and fly satellites, drones, and planes over the area to take lots of pictures. The Chinese would send tourists to the country to have a good time, visit the beaches, and then shake out their towels when they got home.
It's a comprehensive look at how spying developed, including the misconceptions about what spying is and its development over time into not just military purposes uses but economic, as well. Corera includes a detailed history and an examination of how cyber spying was affected by the revelations of the collection of data by government agencies by Snowden, and suggestions on what the future of cyber spying and offensive actions may hold for us. It's organized in a logical chronological way and intricate cyber threats and attacks are explained clearly.
The scale of cyber espionage has evolved way beyond the wildest dreams of a former Stasi officer who noted their maximum capability was to tap forty lines at once. Now, given that almost all of the world’s internet traffic flows at some time or another through the United States, the NSA, with its sweeping authority and collection devices, has access to everything. Worried about public encryption keys, they sweep up and store ALL of the telephone traffic in the U.S. and many other places arguing they don’t listen to the content but merely search the metadata attached to digital traffic. And since even analog conversations get converted to digital at some point, that’s everything. Metadata is easy to search and often more revealing than content.
In their search to build an even larger haystack (you can’t find the needle without the haystack) they even resorted to techniques even aside from the famous clipper chip debacle. In one instance, discovered by Kaspersky Labs, they arranged to have malware hidden into DVDs that were given to participants of hacker and security conferences attended by analysts from all around the world that contained records and presentations of the conference. This gave them worldwide access to computers run by the most sensitive personnel.
Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s spying capabilities had less affect on national security than it did on business. It’s hard to maintain a global outreach and increase your revenue if it becomes widely known that anything you do using the company’s products will become NSA fodder. Zuckerberg, in particular, was furious after the revelations, complaining to Obama that his business model was being hurt. Screw national security; you’re hurting our business, was the message.
1984 doesn’t even remotely compare to today’s capabilities.
Some reviewers have complained that a weakness of the book is its specialization and detail; that's what I liked. Unfortunately, the world changes so fast that more recent events are obviously not included. Sandworm by Andy Greenberg fills that gap and should also be read. Overall a fascinating glimpse at the evolution of the new cyber world.
This book has something for everyone: history, spying, and interesting characters. While he argues that "hacking" using technology has a long history dating back millennia, he chose to begin with the cutting of German cables on the ocean floor during WW I. Leaping-frogging rather quickly he then begins with the use of computers (people, those who computed) and especially Flowers and Turing who respectively understood the larger picture and how "valves" (vacuum tubes in American) could be used binarily to process data. Along the way, he tries to answer questions of what cyber spying is, how such developed and its impact in today’s world politically, economically, and in the intelligence communities. An ambitious goal indeed.i.e.
There are two key components to the world of spies: attribution, i.e. can you trace back a decision or instruction to its source; and integrity, the accuracy of the data, for getting just one component of a message wrong could mean sending a missile to the wrong target. Scrambling a message so it can't be read by the unauthorized is an inherent part of spycraft and technology has made all of that both easier and more difficult at the same time. “Few outside the intelligence world understand the extent to which spies in the US and Britain perceive technology as an existential threat to their work,” Corera writes. “An arms race is on between spy services to exploit technology. Only those who adapt will survive.”
Spying has more than just military significance. The Russians and others have taken economic espionage to a new level. Collecting information peripherally is important. The author provides an example of Russian trolling for information about a particular executive whom the intelligence services had determined was gay but not out of the closet. “The hackers then sent him an email from a gay rights organization which they suspected he would open since it looked as if it was sent to him, but in fact held malware,” Corera writes. “They then counted on the fact that, even if the executive did suspect it was malware, he would not be willing to go to his company’s IT department or security team for fear it would reveal his sexuality. This is classic, high level, targeted Russian espionage.”
There's intelligence and then there's information. Spying in common parlance conjures up images of dangerous men with guns in tuxedos in scary situations who can leap tall buildings in a single jump. Or the silent bureaucratic types of Le Carre. The author has a wonderful metaphor for the difference in how spying is done by different countries. Let's say you want to find out what kind of sand is on a particular beach in some foreign country. The UK would send a submarine with divers in wet suits (bow ties and suits underneath) to surreptitiously retrieve a sample of sand from the beach. The Americans would use technology to and fly satellites, drones, and planes over the area to take lots of pictures. The Chinese would send tourists to the country to have a good time, visit the beaches, and then shake out their towels when they got home.
It's a comprehensive look at how spying developed, including the misconceptions about what spying is and its development over time into not just military purposes uses but economic, as well. Corera includes a detailed history and an examination of how cyber spying was affected by the revelations of the collection of data by government agencies by Snowden, and suggestions on what the future of cyber spying and offensive actions may hold for us. It's organized in a logical chronological way and intricate cyber threats and attacks are explained clearly.
The scale of cyber espionage has evolved way beyond the wildest dreams of a former Stasi officer who noted their maximum capability was to tap forty lines at once. Now, given that almost all of the world’s internet traffic flows at some time or another through the United States, the NSA, with its sweeping authority and collection devices, has access to everything. Worried about public encryption keys, they sweep up and store ALL of the telephone traffic in the U.S. and many other places arguing they don’t listen to the content but merely search the metadata attached to digital traffic. And since even analog conversations get converted to digital at some point, that’s everything. Metadata is easy to search and often more revealing than content.
In their search to build an even larger haystack (you can’t find the needle without the haystack) they even resorted to techniques even aside from the famous clipper chip debacle. In one instance, discovered by Kaspersky Labs, they arranged to have malware hidden into DVDs that were given to participants of hacker and security conferences attended by analysts from all around the world that contained records and presentations of the conference. This gave them worldwide access to computers run by the most sensitive personnel.
Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s spying capabilities had less affect on national security than it did on business. It’s hard to maintain a global outreach and increase your revenue if it becomes widely known that anything you do using the company’s products will become NSA fodder. Zuckerberg, in particular, was furious after the revelations, complaining to Obama that his business model was being hurt. Screw national security; you’re hurting our business, was the message.
1984 doesn’t even remotely compare to today’s capabilities.
Some reviewers have complained that a weakness of the book is its specialization and detail; that's what I liked. Unfortunately, the world changes so fast that more recent events are obviously not included. Sandworm by Andy Greenberg fills that gap and should also be read. Overall a fascinating glimpse at the evolution of the new cyber world.
N.B. Years ago I read Clifford Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage (1990) (how the author tracked down a spy ring because he wanted to know how and why 75 cents of computer time was unaccounted for.) Stoll is highlighted for his work in this book. Stoll also wrote (in 1996) a prescient view of the problems inherent in the Internet: Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway . For a truly prescient view of the problems with interconnectivity written in 1955, see a SF masterpiece by Thomas Ryan, The Adolescence of P-1
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