Cyber Operations

17Strategic Cyber Technologies – ICS/SCADA, Election Machines, and Crypto Currencies

17.1 Strategic Cyber Technologies

Strategic cyber technologies include critical infrastructure, election machines, and currency whose manipulation or denial can result in a nation‐state changing is way of life. As discussed in Chapters 10 and 11, strategic cyber effects include affecting a national defense program (e.g., STUXNET), denying critical infrastructure, or influencing elections. Due to the breadth of strategic cyber technologies, it is a challenge to defend them. In addition, due to the widespread use of computing technology, the supporting supply chains are only becoming larger and more complicated.

17.1.1 Software Supply Chain

Along with the physical supply chain, we have a software supply chain that is used to provide software components for increased application functionality. And adversaries are adept at attacking the software supply chain. In Chapter 5, we saw an example of the Russian SVR using a supply chain attack on SolarWinds, infecting over 30,000 users across government and industry.

Similarly, mobile apps for the U.S. Army were recently using “PushWhoosh” software that ultimately comes from a Russian company. The PushWhoosh code is for software developers to profile smartphone app users based on their online activity. In penetrating the supply chain, several towns across Illinois used the PushWhoosh code in the development of their “Gov 311” code to help them access ...