Former NSA Chief Calls for Allied ‘Radar’ to Defend Against Cyber Criminals

Former manager of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), Keith Alexander, has called upon the United States, Australia, and different allies to run nether a unified cyber defence “radar” to support against planetary cyber attackers and support captious infrastructure.

Speaking astatine an Australian Strategic Policy Institute webinar alongside the caput of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), Alexander stated that cyber defence was captious successful the modern epoch fixed the imaginable easiness of onslaught from distant locations.

“Cyber is going to beryllium hugely important for our future,” Alexander said. “It’s the 1 country wherever adversaries tin onslaught Australia and the United States without trying to transverse the oceans.”

In particular, Alexander suggested a radar-like mechanics that would let organisations to study cyber attacks to a centralised determination disposable by the cyber information departments of some governments and backstage organisations.

National Security Agency office successful Fort Meade, Maryland, United States. (National Security Agency/Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

“We request an ‘event generator’ that shows events that are hitting companies astatine web speed, that tin beryllium anonymised, pushed up to the cloud, and make a radar representation truthful you tin present spot each the companies wherever these types of events are hitting.”

“Imagine if we built a radar representation for cyber that covered not lone what impacts Australia, but what impacts different countries, and we could stock successful existent clip threats that are hitting our countries and support from that,” Alexander said.

Alexander highlighted that a rising menace of cyber actors was becoming progressively hard to face, particularly without practice from susceptible industries.

“I deliberation the biggest occupation that I faced successful government, and that we look today, is governments—not conscionable ours, but yours arsenic well—can’t spot attacks connected the backstage sector. Yet the authorities is liable for defending the backstage sector,” Alexander said.

Cyber incidents person flourished successful Australia and globally, with a worryingly increasing fig of attacks connected captious infrastructure crossed government, hospitals, food producers, communications, media, and educational institutions. In all, Australia has received a 13 percent leap successful cyber transgression successful the past 12 months, with the ACSC receiving a study connected mean erstwhile each 8 minutes.

While immoderate of these see autarkic ransomware attackers, others see state-based actors—such arsenic the Russia-linked SolarWinds attack, and the China-linked Microsoft email server attack.

The SolarWinds logo is seen extracurricular its office successful Austin, Texas connected Dec. 18, 2020. (Sergio Flores/Reuters)

However, careless of source, Alexander argued that astir nary had been brought to justness with repercussions often constricted solely to verbal condemnation.

“We person to property who’s doing it and marque them wage a terms close now,” Alexander said. “The ransomware guys, and Russia, predominantly get disconnected beauteous overmuch free.”

“Imagine if we indicted [them] and enactment their representation up and said ‘that’s the guy,'” Alexander said. “And if we can, we volition apprehension you. You can’t determination retired of Russia, you’re gonna person to enactment determination for the remainder of your beingness … we got you, we cognize who you are.”

Typically, governments person been incapable of cooperating with backstage organisations to the grade indispensable to code cyber threats.

However, this is acceptable to alteration successful Australia with the projected Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2020 (pdf) that seeks to fortify Australia’s captious infrastructure against cyber attacks by mandating incidental reporting for organisations.

While receiving mostly affirmative feedback, an enquiry into the measure drew angered responses from large tech operating information warehouses—meaning they excessively would go taxable to laws which, successful immoderate instances, could spot the authorities instal their ain cyber information bundle connected their systems.

Head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre Abigail Bradshaw. (Australian Cyber Security Centre)

ACSC Head Abigail Bradshaw pointed to occurrences worldwide that had targeted captious infrastructure—such arsenic hacks of the United States’ Colonial Pipeline and JBS meatworks—highlighting the value of the reporting mechanism.

Bradshaw said that portion an optional reporting strategy was already successful place, much authorities engagement done a mandatory strategy would beryllium indispensable to place aboriginal threats.

“The menace against captious infrastructure is real,” Bradshaw said.

“We analysed that astatine slightest a 4th of those attacks which were recorded subordinate to entities which we would respect arsenic captious infrastructure. That’s a scary statistic. It’s much scary erstwhile we cognize that the instances of attacks are severely underreported.”

“We are successful hand-to-hand combat with the atrocious guys each day. We cognize what they look like, astir apt due to the fact that we’ve seen them before. We tin found patterns … and we gully those patterns unneurotic and usage the afloat scope of our quality capabilities to marque assessments arsenic to who mightiness beryllium next.”