Hello, and welcome to another episode of CISO Tradecraft -- the podcast that provides you with the information, knowledge, and wisdom to be a more effective cybersecurity leader. My name is G. Mark Hardy, and today we are going to discuss how nation state conflict and sponsored cyberattacks can affect us as non-combatants, and what we should be doing about it. Even if you don't have operations in a war zone, remember cyber has a global reach, so don't think that just because you may be half a world away from the battlefield that someone is not going to reach out and touch you in a bad way. So, listen for what I think will be a fascinating episode, and please do us a small favor and give us a "like" or a 5-star review on your favorite podcast platform -- those ratings really help us reach our peers. It only takes a click -- thank you for helping out our security leadership community.
I'm not going to get into any geopolitics here; I'm going to try to ensure that this episode remains useful for quite some time. However, since the conflict in Ukraine has been ongoing for over two hundred days, I will draw examples from that.
The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
That's a little more detailed than the classic Greek aphorism, "know thyself," but the intent is the same even today. Let me add one more quote and we'll get into the material. Over 20 years ago, when he was Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld said:
"As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.
So, knowledge seems extremely important throughout the ages. Modern governments know that, and as a result all have their own intelligence agencies. Let's look at an example. If we go to the CIA's website, we will see the fourfold mission of the Central Intelligence Agency:
- Collecting foreign intelligence that matters
- Producing objective all-source analysis
- Conducting effective covert action as directed by the President
- Safeguarding the secrets that help keep our nation safe.
Why do we mention this? Most governments around the world have similar Nation State objectives and mission statements. Additionally, it’s particularly important to understand what is wanted by "state actors" (note, I'll use that term for government and contract intelligence agents.).
What are typical goals for State Actors? Let's look at a couple:
- Goal 1: Steal targeting data to enable future operations. Data such as cell phone records, banking statements or emails allow countries to better target individuals and companies when they know that identifying information. Additionally, targeting data allows Nation state organizations to understand how individuals are connected. This can be key when we are looking for key influencers for targets of interest. All targeting data should not be considered equal. Generally, Banking and Telecom Data are considered the best for collecting so be mindful if that is the type of company that you protect. State Actors target these organizations because of two factors:
- The Importance of the Data is the first factor. If one party sends a second party an email, that means there is a basic level