The U.S. military’s struggling to prevent counterfeit goods from infiltrating their supply chains. Now, they’re considering a novel approach to give legit wares a mark of distinction: embed them with strands of plant DNA.
Working with a sub-contract from the Defense Logistics Agency, researchers at Applied DNA Sciences Inc. have figured out how to create unique DNA “signatures” out of plant genomes. A DNA-marked coating can then be applied to just about anything, from circuit boards to microchips to routers.
Once embedded, the DNA can be detected in one of two ways: A handheld scanner that can instantly spot the DNA strand, or a forensic analysis that requires a swab of the mark. So as a product moves through the supply chain, it’d be checked for authenticity every step of the way.
It’s one thing to mimic holograms or sand off a computer chip’s label. It’s another to come up with bogus DNA that’s a perfect copy of the original, or try to tamper with the complex sequences of base pairs that comprise a single DNA strand. Company director Dr. Jim Hayward claims that the error rate for false positives using his DNA technology is 1 in 1 trillion.
That’s exactly the kind of infallibility the Pentagon needs. Phony parts are already causing major financial headaches in military circles: A single instance of counterfeiting cost the Missile Defense Agency $4 million last year. And bogus wares have already been found in dozens of military systems and aircraft, including Lockheed Martin’s C-130J transport plane and a Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
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A scene of stomach-clenching gore confronted the special operations troops: the shredded remains of a suicide bomber, scattered around the checkpoint.
But the blood and body are fake, like the Hollywood-style explosion that began a classroom exercise designed to teach these students to look past the grisly mess for the evidence that could lead to those who built the bomb.
Fort Bragg’s Special Warfare Center shows how the U.S. has turned hunting terror networks into half-science, half-art-form since the al-Qaida attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Forging lessons painfully learned in the decade since into a formal curriculum, the training is intended to help elite military units track militants across international boundaries and work alongside sometimes competing U.S. agencies.
The coursework is similar to the CIA’s legendary spycraft training center called The Farm, and is at the brainchild of Green Beret Maj. Gen. Bennet Sacolick, a veteran of elite special operations units, and a long stint on loan to the CIA.
Among the students at the CIA-approved Fort Bragg course are U.S. Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and Marine Corps special operators. As in the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, everything from computers to fingerprints can be retrieved from a raid site and quickly analyzed. In some cases the analysis is so fast it can lead to several new targets in a single night.
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Pentagon-supported physicists on Wednesday said they had devised a “time cloak” that briefly makes an event undetectable.
The laboratory device manipulates the flow of light in such a way that for the merest fraction of a second an event cannot be seen, according to a paper published in the science journal Nature.
It adds to experimental work in creating next-generation camouflage – a so-called invisibility cloak in which specific colours cannot be perceived by the human eye.
“Our results represent a significant step towards obtaining a complete spatio-temporal cloaking device,” says the study, headed by Moti Fridman of Cornell University in New York.
The breakthrough exploits the fact that frequencies of light move at fractionally different speeds.
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China-based hackers for months have been targeting federal agencies and contractors through infected emails apparently to spy on the Pentagon’s drone strategy and other intelligence matters, according to Internet security researchers.
The reported espionage employed a tactic known as spear-phishing where infiltrators, operating under the guise of a legitimate sender, email specific victims a virus-laden file or link. In this case, the hackers used email addresses from military and other government organizations, Jaime Blasco, manager of AlienVault Labs, said Tuesday.
Some emails went to employees at U.S. military contractors, he said, but declined to discuss any information related to specific victims.
The lab traced samples of the malicious software to network addresses in China, AlienVault disclosed last month.
Blasco has since discovered from the same spies separate malware that is capable of overriding Pentagon smart card credentials, known as the Common Access Card, to get into protected resources, he said Tuesday. In addition, the intruders have been pursuing other government organizations with information of interest to Chinese intelligence operations — including the General Services Administration, the U.S. government’s buying arm, and the Central Tibetan Administration.
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The year has been a rollercoaster ride for the CIA–incredible highs coupled with significant lows. But those dramatic ups and downs also underscored how intelligence is evolving and the agency is changing to keep pace. Keeping secrets is becoming more difficult and what the agency now does is sometimes more visible. And– the enemy is getting better.
On the critical counterterrorism front, 2011 was a momentous year. The crowning moment–maybe of even the last decade–was the CIA finally pinning down the location of enemy number one, Osama bin Laden, and then overseeing the raid by Navy special forces on a safehouse in Pakistan which led to his death, bringing an end to the nearly ten year pursuit of America’s most wanted terrorist.
The raid is a prime example of the new warfare the CIA is engaged in. The counterterrorism battle is frequently being waged by CIA officers and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces working side by side. Former CIA Director Mike Hayden said “it’s clear the Agency and JSOC are now in a privileged position in terms of how we want to fight this war.” The retired Air Force general referred to the CIA today as looking more like the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War two-era intelligence service that had a more operational, paramilitary role.
That type of warfare is heavily dependent on the use of unmanned, armed aircraft.
Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born propagandist and operator for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was blown apart by a CIA operated drone attack while driving in a remote area of Yemen. Al Awlaki had been tied to the attempt by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the so called underwear bomber, who unsuccessfully tried to blow up a passenger airliner on its way to Detroit on Christmas day two years ago. And alleged Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan had been in communication with al Awlaki before his shooting spree that left 13 dead at the Texas U.S. Army post.
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A Chinese satellite navigation system began providing services yesterday as the nation seeks to end its “dependence” on the U.S.’s Global Positioning System, or GPS, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
China’s Beidou Navigation Satellite System began providing initial positioning, navigation and timing operational services for the nation and surrounding areas, Xinhua reported yesterday, citing Ran Chengqi, director of the management office of the China Satellite Navigation System. Work began on the Beidou system in 2000 with a goal of creating a global position service by 2020, according to Xinhua.
The U.S.-owned GPS system is the world’s primary source of satellite navigation data that provides directions for drivers, tracking systems for emergency rescue teams and also positioning services for U.S. military vehicles and munitions. The U.S. Air Force operates the more than 30 satellites on which the system is based.
China has already launched 10 satellites for the Beidou system, the most recent of which entered orbit earlier this month, Xinhua reported. Six more satellites will be launched in 2012 to further improve the system and expand its coverage to most of the Asia-Pacific region, Xinhua quoted Ran as saying. The system is compatible with the world’s other major global navigation satellite systems, according to the report.
Civilian service provided by the U.S.’s GPS system is freely available to all users on a continuous, worldwide basis, according to the service’s website. The service is made up of space, control and user segments, of which the U.S. Air Force develops, maintains, and operates the space and control segments.
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Online “hacktivist” group Anonymous claimed Sunday it had stolen a trove of emails and credit card information from US-based security firm Stratfor’s clients, and vowed additional attacks.
Hackers provided a link on Twitter to what they said was Stratfor’s private client list, which included the US Defense Department, Army, Air Force, law enforcement agencies, top security contractors and technology firms like Apple and Microsoft.
They also posted images online claiming to show receipts from donations made by the hackers on behalf of some of Stratfor’s clients by using their credit card data.
The hackers said they were able to obtain the information in part because Stratfor did not encrypt it, which could prove a major source of embarrassment to the global intelligence firm.
“Anonymous hacks and discredits @STRATFOR intelligence company,” Twitter user YourAnonNews wrote on the micro-blogging website. “Maybe they should learn what encryption is.”
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The new year is likely to bring a distinct shift in U.S. national security priorities, as the Obama Administration and Congress sharpen their response to China’s continuous assault on U.S. information networks. Although intelligence-community analysts believe the most sophisticated intrusions are being executed by a relatively small number of agents linked to the general staff of China’s Peoples Liberation Army, the damage they are inflicting on U.S. security and economic competitiveness is judged to be extensive.
Thus far, China’s cyber campaign consists mainly of espionage aimed at stealing military secrets and intellectual property. However, Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the Pentagon’s joint Cyber Command established to counter such campaigns, said in November that, “We see a disturbing track from exploitation to disruption to destruction.” Alexander wasn’t talking just about the Chinese, but there’s little doubt among intelligence analysts that Beijing is the biggest and most persistent perpetrator of cyber crimes.
The question is what to do about it. To date, U.S. cyber efforts have been focused mainly on defensive measures, seeking to repel network intruders in a fashion that Alexander likens to the famously failed Maginot Line. The National Security Agency and other U.S. security organizations are known to have developed their own network-attack capabilities, but former White House cyber-security advisor Richard Clarke has warned that it would be dangerous for the U.S. to step up its own campaign against Chinese networks while U.S. safeguards against retaliation are so weak.
Under the leadership of a few forward-thinking policymakers such as former Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, the Department of Defense and intelligence community have greatly strengthened their information defenses and begun helping industry to protect critical infrastructure. But insiders say the asymmetries between U.S. and Chinese society make it hard to cope with China’s cyber onslaught. Not only is America a much more open and porous place, but U.S. agencies and private companies have a lot more information that’s worth stealing.
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The Pentagon will soon be prying through the personal correspondence and computer files of US military personnel, thanks to a $9-million program that will put soldiers’ private emails under Uncle Sam’s microscope.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has awarded the grant to five institutions led by Georgia Tech to help develop a system of spying on solderis’ Internet and computer habits, a multi-million dollar investment that they say will serve as a preemptive measure to make sure “insider threats” can’t materialize in the military.
The Pentagon is calling the project “Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning,” or “PRODIGAL,” and it will scour the e-mails, text messages and files transfers of solders’ “for unusual activity,” writes Georgia Tech, using “a suit of algorithms” that will be able to weed out any weirdness within the Department of Defense that could become a security threat.
A spokesman for DARPA deferred to answer to the Army Times how, exactly, they plan on conducting the surveillance over the correspondence. Wired.com’s Danger Room writes, however, that every keystroke, log-in and file upload initiated over DoD networks will be under strict scrutiny in hopes of breaking up any more Bradley Mannings from making their way into the military.
Rep. Peter King (Rep-NY) said at a hearing earlier this month that “The Fort Hood attack was not an anomaly.” According to the congressman, the shooting spree carried out by Nidal Hasan in 2009 “was part of al-Qaeda’s two-decade success at infiltrating the US military for terrorism, an effort that is increasing in scope and threat.”
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The government finished making its case against accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning Thursday morning with a 60-minute closing statement that piled on new details and exhibits, including snippets of 15 pages of chats allegedly between the Army intelligence analyst and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The prosecution flashed three chat logs onscreen that purportedly show correspondence between Manning and Assange discussing uploading so-called JTF-GITMO documents — classified assessment reports about Guantanamo Bay detainees. The chats also refer to two U.S. State Department cables about Reykjavik, Iceland, as well as a request from Manning to help him crack a password so that he could log onto his work SIPRnet computer anonymously.
Manning’s attorney David E. Coombs opened the morning stating that the Army was overcharging his disturbed but idealistic client and exaggerating the impact of the leaks in order to strong-arm Manning.
Coombs said the government wants to force his client into making a plea deal and turning evidence against Assange, whom the Justice Department is investigating in a criminal case stemming from the leaks allegedly provided by Manning. Coombs asked the court’s Investigating Officer to drop the charge accusing Manning of aiding the enemy and to consolidate some of the charges, saying that many were redundant and that Manning shouldn’t be facing 100 to 150 years in prison.
“Thirty years is more than sufficient punishment,” Coombs said, expressing outrage that the military also included a count of “aiding the enemy,” which carries a possible death sentence — though the military has said it is not seeking the death penalty.
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Troops’ emails will be under surveillance as part of a new Defense Department project to help detect potential “insider threats,” or potential traitors or terrorists inside the military.
A new project backed by the Defense Advanced Research Agency aims to create “a suite of algorithms that can detect multiple types of insider threats by analyzing massive amounts of data — including email, text messages and file transfers — for unusual activity,” according to a statement from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which is helping develop the system.
The aim is to identify threats similar to that posed by Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist who allegedly leaked thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, or Nidal Hasan, the Army major accused of killing 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood in November 2009. Authorities say Hasan had contacts with Islamic extremists overseas before the shooting.
DARPA describes the project, officially known as the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales program, as “insider threat detection in which malevolent (or possibly inadvertent) actions by a trusted individual are detected against a background of everyday network activity,” according to the agency’s website.
A DARPA spokesman said he was unable to provide further information about the project, to include whether the tracking will be limited to official government computers; when such monitoring could begin; or how many troops might be monitored during the development phase, which is slated to take two years.
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The troops have come home, the flag has been been lowered, and the Iraq War is officially in the past for the U.S. military. But the military is holding on to a major souvenir of the war: a massive database packed with retinal scans, thumb prints and other biometric data identifying millions of Iraqis. It will be a tool for counterterrorism long after the Iraq War becomes a fading memory.
U.S. Central Command, the military command responsible for troops in the Mideast and South Asia, confirms to Danger Room that the biometrics database, compiled by U.S. troops over the course of years, will remain U.S. property. “Centcom has the database,” says the command’s chief spokesman, Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, who says it contains files on three million Iraqis. The U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government, in other words, doesn’t control a host of incredibly specific information on its citizens.
For much of the war, U.S. troops carrying viewfinder-like scanning devices kept digital records of the Iraqis they encountered. Some Iraqis got their unique identifiers recorded because they were suspected insurgents on their way to detention centers. Residents of violent cities like Fallujah would only get to return home from travel if they showed U.S. troops an ID card complete with biometric data. Iraqis underwent iris scans when they wanted to join the police. So did Iraqis who worked on U.S. bases.
It was all part of an effort to answer the war’s most vexing challenge: distinguishing insurgents from Iraqi civilians. And that effort isn’t going away, even after the war technically ended. It’ll be part of U.S. counterterrorism missions for a long time to come.
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