ritory, the Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan

Mr. Kaplan wants to inform the public about the dangers and extent of cyberwar between nations today. The top has certainly been in the news recently with the FBI investigating Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. However, this book was published last year and so he doesn’t address this contentious issue. He does address the hacking of computer systems vital to the functioning of the U.S. military, finance, commerce and infrastructure.

In 2014, there were 80,000 security breaches in the United States which resulted in the loss of data with hackers staying inside the network at average of 205 days before being detected. The Chinese routinely hack both government and industry files looking for information. In fact, they stole enough information from Lockheed Corporation on the F35 fighter jet that they were able to make a copy of their own. 

The National Security Agency of NSA is the main organization that provides defense against these attacks in the U.S. Unfortunately, according to Mr. Kaplan, defense is no longer an option in the present cyberwar. The U.S. (and I’m sure Canada is the same) has too many internet access points that can be used to attack computer networks. To monitor them all is an impossibility. And so, he says, focus on exploration and attack. Hack the networks of your enemies, discover what they are doing to you. If they attack, you respond with twice the force.

Mr. Kaplan compares it to the Cold War. If one side attacks the other, all-out cyber war may result. However, at what point does a country believe a line has been crossed and would it result in a real-world war. Computers control almost all aspects of our lives. These include the infrastructure that brings essential utilities to our homes like water and electricity and gas. Software programs and computer networks also control the financial system, communication, and medical equipment. To shut down the networks that control the devices that control our lives would be like shutting down the country. 

The author gives a couple of examples where governments have used a cyber-attack for the purposes of retaliation. In October of 2013, Sheldon Adelson, the pro-Israeli 52% owner of Las Vegas Sands stock suggested on a Youtube video that the United States should drop a nuclear bomb in the desert of Iran to send a message to that government. The Sands corporation owns the Venetian and Palazio resorts in Las Vegas and the a sister casino in Bethlehem, Pensylvania.

On February 10, a massive cyber-attack on the corporation servers destroyed thousands of hard drives and stole thousands of its customers credit-card charges plus the names and Social Security numbers of company employees. On the company website, they displayed the message, “Encouraging the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES is a crime. The hackers, that were identified as Iranian, did not take a dime of the immense cash available to them.

In November of 2014, Sony Corporation was hacked. Three thousand computers and 800 servers were destroyed plus one hundred terra bytes of data. This included information about executives’ salaries, emails, digital copies of unreleased films, and the Social Security numbers of 47,000 actors, contractors and employees. The culprit? North Korea? The Reason? Do you remember? A threat against the release of Seth Rogen and James Franco’s movie “The Interview” for the upcoming Christmas. That was the one about the hapless host and producer of a TV talk-show program that get involved in a CIA plot to kill Kim Jong-un. Regretfully, Sony capitulated and President Obama got involved.

It’s not like cyber-attacks had not been foreseen. President Reagan first became aware of the problem of a potential cyber-attack from the 1983 movie, “War Games.” That’s where kids hack into a game called Global Thermonuclear War, connected to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Three days later, he asked General John Vissey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, if something like this could really happen. The general went home, watched the movie, conversed with his experts and returned to the White House with the following reply, “The problem is much worse than you think.”

Eventually Reagan’s query led to the creation of the NSA. After much bureaucratic wrangling, the agency was able to wrestle control of cyber security from the FBI, the Air Force and other federal departments. They’ve since become a very powerful organization. With 80% of internet traffic flowing through the U.S., they have the ability to access the private information of citizens both within and outside the U.S. The hacking of German Chancellor Merkel’s cell phone could not be a more stark example.

The release of secret NSA documents by Edward Snowden provided proof of that.

Edward Snowden’s revelations led to Barrack Obama appointing an independent committee to study protocols of the NSA and how these could be controlled. One of its more controversial methods of identifying tourists was the monitoring of all the cell phone traffic in the U.S. They said they weren’t accessing the actual content of phone calls. They were simply looking for connections. Who were suspected terrorists contacting and who were the suspected terrorist contacts contacting and so on for another level. The independent committee discovered that this metadata had no nabbed one terrorist. So, the practice was discontinued.

Dark Territory is a phrase coined by Robert Gates who served as Secretary of Defense under both George W. Bush and Barrack Obama. It was an old railway referring a stretch of railway track uncontrolled by signals. Anything could happen out there and, unless someone went out to investigate, nobody would know.

Mr. Kaplan’s book is an exploration of that dark territory. It begins with Ronald Reagan’s “War Games” query to the creation of the NSA to the U.S. use of cyber-attack to destroy centrifuges in nuclear power plants in Iran. (Centrifuges can be used to enrich uranium so that it can be used for nuclear warheads.) If you happen to have an interest in the history of cyber espionage and hacking, this may be the book for you. Otherwise, you’ve just been given a synopsis.