Pentagon creating new-generation cyberweapon

A next-generation cyberweapon capable of knocking out enemy networks, even if they're not connected to the Internet - this is a primary goal for the Pentagon's research and development teams.

According to the Washington Post, the US military is ramping up its cyber-efforts in anticipation of a possible showdown with Iran or Syria.
The Pentagon had wanted to use cyber warfare technology during the NATO mission in Libya, but realized that it would have needed at least a year to properly develop the necessary weapon.

The Pentagon is creating a next-generation cyberweapon.

“We weren’t ready to do that in Libya. We are not ready to do that now, either,” the newspaper quoted an anonymous US official as saying.
US military officials are looking to create a weapon capable of targeting “offline” military systems, that would transmit damaging codes by radio. The US’s military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently secured a half billion dollars in funding for such a project.
However, codes disseminated by such a weapon would need to be customized in order to have the right effect on enemy targets.
“Unless you already have a custom-written code for a system, chances are we don’t have a weapon for that because each system has different software and updates,” Joel Harding, an independent military consultant, explained.
The Pentagon is due to spend $3.4 billion on cyber technology in this year alone. The technology in the US military's current arsenal can disable components of an enemy weapons system, but not the system as a whole. Future cyber tools – like those currently in use – are likely to be used in combination with other tactics and arms.
The world’s first digital warhead, the computer worm Stuxnet, is believed to have disabled hundreds of centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility back in 2009 and 2010. Some blamed Mossad for the attack, saying that the US helped to develop the virus. The worm, however, lacked the precision and predictability necessary in a military operation.
The new generation of cyber warfare is thought to be more advanced, using a "fundamentally different approach than Stuxnet,” said an unnamed military official. “If I am trying to knock down an air defense system, I have to know precisely what is going to happen and when it will happen.”
The new weapon should minimize the possibility of collateral damage, for example the disruption of civilian systems. Developers also need to work around the fact that destructive codes could be sent back to attack American targets or used by foreign intelligences for their own ends.
Now, with the Pentagon’s cyber expenditures rising, defense officials are far from satisfied with how things are going. “I am still not remotely satisfied with where we are in cyber,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter said earlier this month. “I dare say we’d spend a lot more if we could figure out where to spend it.”

US launched cyber attacks on other nations

The assumption that the US has the technological know-how to cripple a competing nation has always been just that: as assumption. In a recent sit-down interview, however, a former spy chief confirmed that America has already waged cyber attacks.Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence at the National Security Agency under George W Bush, tells Reuters this week that cyber war is more than a distant possibility. According to the current vice chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton, the US has already launched attacks on the computer networks of other nations.
Confirmed: US has already waged cyberattacks

McConnell did not add any input as to what countries have been hit with American cyber warfare in the past, but he did confirm that the US has already used the ability. When asked by Reuters if the United States had the capability to destroy the computer system of an adversary, McConnell responded “Yes.” When asked if it worked, he confirmed “yes” as well.
"Do we have the ability to attack, degrade or destroy? Sure. If you do that, what are the consequences? That is the question,” added McConnell.
Although the former spy chief neglected to name any countries that have been the target of American attacks, the US is believed by some to be the culprit behind a virus that targeted computer systems in Iran in 2010. Stuxnet, an advanced computer worm discovered in June of that year, impacted the computers used in conjunction with Iran’s nuclear program. In a January 2011 article in the New York Times, an American nuclear intelligence expert speaking on condition of anonymity said that the Israelis were behind Stuxnet, placing the blame on one of America’s most important allies. The expert adds in the article that Israel did indeed work hand-in-hand with the US in perfect Stuxnet before sending it to the Iranian networks, but that Washington wanted “plausible deniability.”
Other sources have since all but confirmed America’s involvement in the worm. German cyber security expert Ralph Langner told National Public Radio last year that the virus seemed like something out of science fiction, but added that, "Thinking about it for another minute, if it's not aliens, it's got to be the United States.” He went on to call the US “the leading force” behind Stuxnet, an assumption that many in Iran believe as well. While the Iranians have never officially recognized retaliation on their part, rumors of revenge via cyberwar have been rampant in recent weeks, particularly after news broke out of Mexico last month that hackers south of the border were being recruited by Iran to participate in an infiltration of American computers.
Before it launched an airstrike` attack on Libya in 2011, a cyberattack was considered as a route to oust Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, an Obama official said to the New York Times last year. In the end, however, America relied on other techniques. “These cybercapabilities are still like the Ferrari that you keep in the garage and only take out for the big race and not just for a run around town, unless nothing else can get you there,” the insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Times.