Turf wars and legal disputes are muddying the mission and capabilities of the US Department of Defense’s new Cyber Command according to a story in the Washington Post.

The Cyber Command is seeking authority for offensive capabilities to take action against systems used to target US systems, even to preempt such attacks.

Some of the opposition they are encountering is from senior policymakers and administration lawyers who want to limit them to the battlefield, such as in Afghanistan, not the usual site for offensive computer attacks against the US. At the same time, the CIA argues that operations outside war zones and outside the US are its province.

The issues involved are clearly difficult, as such operations can cause collateral damage to the systems of innocent parties. There are no treaties which allow the US armed forces to operate against computer systems in other countries.

This issue is not new and predates the Obama administration. Cyber Command notes that in order to prevent an attack on US critical infrastructure they may need to act against private computers in other countries without the cooperation of law enforcement there. Even though the President last year declared cyber-security a matter of national and economic security, it’s not clear that the difficult questions have been advanced at all.

The recent Stuxnet attacks against Iran have given some urgency to the matter. The Post quotes Cyber Command’s chief, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who also heads the National Security Agency, as saying that NSA experts “…see it as essentially very sophisticated.” But the value of Stuxnet as precedent for offensive capabilities is limited, as it seems to have been introduced through physical interaction with computers through USB keys. Stuxnet was remotely controlled, but by the time such control is in action the attack is well underway.

View full post on Security Watch

• UK First in the Battle Against Cyber Crime
  The international 'Cybercrime Security Forum' will launch in London in May 2011, in response to growing threats to British Business and recent... - on Computer Crime Research News...
• Europe tests cyber defences against hackers (AFP)
  AFP - European computer guards battled Thursday against a simulated attempt by hackers to bring down critical Internet services in the first pan-continental test of cyber defences. View full post o...
• Internet Security Suites- The shield against cyber crime
  Today, the Internet is fully engaged with the talk of viruses, worms, spyware, cyber crime, malware, spam etc. This is because, as much as the physical world in which we live, the types...
• DoD Cyber Command is officially online
  According to the Navy Times today, the Cyber Command is up. “The nascent command charged with operating the nation’s military computer networks is now a reality, the Pentagon has confirmed.” “U.S. Cy...
• Japanese disaster – ammo for cyber arsenal
  It’s no secret that criminals try to use huge disasters to their benefit to make some cash,  this time is no exception!  We have been able to track several black hat methods ...
• Cyber crime economy – the Spammer side
  Not just the people infecting PCs with malware want to earn money – the spammers want their share, too. The most obvious way to earn money for them is of course when people buy the advertised pr...
• Developments in the cyber crime economy
  It has been written very often already – the malware writers are doing professional development in the meanwhile. They don’t want to show their skills anymore, but just to earn money. Some...
• Write once, Mobile Malware anywhere
  The Zeus (Zbot) crimeware is sold to criminals as a complete toolkit for building custom trojans, usually to steal banking logins.  The trojans are generally quite complex; injecting HTML into banking...
• Zscaler Safe Shopping – Stay protected against compromised or fake stores online
  We're happy to release yet another free Firefox plugin to protect consumers online. Introducing Zscaler Safe Shopping This product has been submitted to the official Mozilla Add-ons sites, but wil...
• Cooperation Grows in Fight Against Cybercrime
  Last week in Strasbourg, France, the Council of Europe organized the Octopus Interface Conference 2010. More than 300 experts from all over the world, representing governments, law enforcement authori...