Deibert, Ron. The hidden geopolitics of cyberspace. September 27, 2010

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Deibert, Ron. The hidden geopolitics of cyberspace. September 27, 2010.

  • Director, the Citizen Lab
  • Univ of Toronto
  • r.deibert@utoronto.ca
  • New directions in public diplomacy, public lecture series
  • Michael K Hawes, Fulbright Canada and Fulbright Visiting Chair

"Cyberspace ... carved up, colonized, militarized"

  • "Diplomacy ... keeping cyberspace open"

Contents

Ghost, shadows

  • Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network
  • Shadows in the cloud: Investigating cyber espionage 2.0

Cyber espionage

Victims: governments, industry

  • Large multi-national orgs

Compromise tends to be social engineering

  • Emails to people within orgs
  • Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF exploits

Vulnerability

  • If an ally is compromised, even "secure" institutions are weakened

Fusion methodology

Collaborations:

  • Infowar Monitor
  • OpenNet Initiative

Technical interrogation

  • Network probes, reconnaissance, software-based test
  • Multi-disciplinary analysis, advanced data fusion, visualization, analysis
  • Field research, underaken by local experts in situ, interviewsm and tests

Guided by

  • Canadian law
  • Research Ethics office at U of Toronto
  • No "break ins"

Transformations of signals intelligence

  • Once only superpowers could engage (Cold war)
    • "Sigint"
  • "Cyber-collection platform": very low cost
    • DIY sigint

Gh0st RAT Beta 3.6

No cost, localized

Botnets

  • Available for rent
  • 24/7 tech support
  • Used for DDOS attacks

"Consensual privacy invasion"

  • Social networking participation
  • Visiting certain websites may enable compromises
    • One strategy is to compromise sites of interest to your targets

Ecosystem of "cybercrime", "malware"

  • Production of malware "exceeding" bonware?
  • Looking primarily at 0day exploits
  • Measurement is confusing
    • Misleading?
    • How does one assess the problem of a botnet?
      • Infiltration or efficacy?

Internet + governments

First Phase: Cyber commons (1990s)

  • Hands off liberal regulation
  • Telecom development policies
  • Dot-com boom

Second phase: Cyber borders (2000)

  • Documented in Access denied
  • Many govts intercept and filter access to certain resources

Third phase: Cyber arms race (2010s)

  • Documented in forthcoming Access controlled, MIT Press
  • Beyond filtering
  • Interventions home + abroad

Legal and normative measures

  • Cultivating a climate of fear, self censorship

Informal requests

  • Contacting ISPs

Outsourcing, downloading

  • Pressure on private companies who

Just in time Blocking

  • Jamming at critical moments
  • During elections, demonstrations
    • Kirgistan, Burma, Iran

Computer Network Attacks

  • A component of military action

Patriotic Hacking

  • Cultivating a climate in which unlawful activities are tolerated/encouraged in the service of state goals

Militarization of cyberspace

  • U.S. Cyber Command
    • General Keith Alexander, NSA
  • "Institutional innovation"
    • Other states wish to adapt, follow US model

Impact is in all areas of net

  • Physical, code, regulation, theory/ideas

Is cyberspace "ungovernable"? Immune to regulation?

D argues that, in fact, it is "overregulated"

  • Dark nets
  • Private sector
  • Civic networks
  • Individual
  • Governments, armed forces, intelligence

Online gray/black markets

  • Porn, spam, click fraud, phishing

"The perfect storm"

  • Arguments for "policing"
  • Belief that anonymity should be abolished
  • New wiretap legislation would require service providers to build in law enforcement backdoor
  • Fear, insecurity leads to individual "disconnection"

Jump offs

Q&A

Patriotic hacking

  • Government actors "seeding" in forums
    • Inspiring action
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