Cyberspace

Washington D.C., November 26, 2019 – In September 2018 the National Security Archive filed a FOIA request with the United States Cyber Command for a 2016 briefing on operational strategy given to the Defense Science Board by Dr. Richard J. Harknett, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who was then an adviser to the command’s Combined Action Group.  The briefing was given to the Defense Science Board’s Task Force on Cyber as a Strategic Capability.  Provided below are Dr Harknett’s thoughts on the slide deck, generously provided by Dr.

Washington D.C., November 21, 2019 – Hours before a shutdown deadline, President Trump today signed a short-term spending bill that will keep the government open until the end of December 2019. The last-minute nature of the process recalled an earlier experience that had raised significant concerns about, among other things, cybersecurity preparedness.

Over the past few years surveillance using IMSI-catchers has become a significant issue for law enforcement and counter-intelligence. The International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) serves as the identity that a mobile carrier uses to identify a subscriber, essentially acting as a virtual thumbprint linking an individual to their mobile telephone.

A May 2019 report by Blake Sobczak at E&E news revealed that a Western power utility company was hit with a denial of service attack on March 5 2019. The report stated that the attack did not result in power disruptions, but few other details were available. From that report the National Security Archive and Sobczak independently filed FOIA requests for OE-417 (Electric Emergency Incident and Disturbance Report) documents related to the event.

From 1972-1995 the United States Congress maintained the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) to provide analysis to lawmakers on issues related to technology. By the time the office was de-funded in 1995 it had produced a sizeable collection of reports (archived in full by the Federation of American Scientists) on wide-ranging topics.

The National Security Archive Cyber Vault has combed the collection for reports connected to cyber security. These reports are listed below and have been added to the Cyber Vault collection.

Washington D.C., September 5, 2019 - Recently declassified materials from U.S. Cyber Command provide new details about an important component of cyber operations – the targeting process – as well as clues to considerations regarding the potential linkage between cyber and traditional military force in U.S. planning.

The Olympic Games are being held in Tokyo, Japan, during the summer of 2020. In light of widespread concerns about a potential cyber threat from Russia, the Cyber Vault is posting a variety of primary-source documents and other materials that offer additional context to the issues.

After a series of events starting in the late 1980s gradually awakened the US Department of Defense to the seriousness of threats to computer networks, the US military assembled the first joint task force explicitly formed around the concept of cyber warfare

In 2013, cybersecurity experts Jason Healey and Karl Grindal released A Fierce Domain, an edited volume covering major "wake-up calls" in cyber from 1986-2012. Thanks to a generous donation by Healey and Grindal, today the National Security Archive Cyber Vault is making available a collection of documents combining research from the "Realization" section of A Fierce Domain with previously released documents from the Eligible Receiver 97 exercise.

The U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee convened last April for the first time since August 2017. The two governments agreed that a cyber attack could, in certain circumstances, constitute an armed attack for the purposes of Article V of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. A decision as to when a cyber attack would constitute an armed attack would be made on a case-by-case basis.