Darpa Looks to Make Cyberwar Routine With Secret 'Plan X'

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/plan-x/

By Noah Shachtman
Danger Room
Wired.com
August 21, 2012

The Pentagon’s top research arm is unveiling a new, classified 
cyberwarfare project. But it’s not about building the next Stuxnet, 
Darpa swears. Instead, the just-introduced “Plan X” is designed to make 
online strikes a more routine part of U.S. military operations. That 
will make the son of Stuxnet easier to pull off — to, as Darpa puts it, 
“dominate the cyber battlespace.”

Darpa spent years backing research that could shore up the nation’s 
cyberdefenses. “Plan X” is part of a growing and fairly recent push into 
offensive online operations by the Pentagon agency largely responsible 
for the internet’s creation. In recent months, everyone from the 
director of Darpa on down has pushed the need to improve — and normalize 
— America’s ability to unleash cyberattacks against its foes.

That means building tools to help warplanners assemble and launch online 
strikes in a hurry. It means, under Plan X, figuring out ways to assess 
the damage caused by a new piece of friendly military malware before 
it’s unleashed. And it means putting together a sort of digital 
battlefield map that allows the generals to watch the fighting unfold, 
as former Darpa acting director Ken Gabriel told the Washington Post: “a 
rapid, high-order look of what the Internet looks like — of what the 
cyberspace looks like at any one point in time.”

It’s not quite the same as building the weapons themselves, as Darpa 
notes in its introduction to the five-year, $100 million effort, issued 
on Monday: “The Plan X program is explicitly not funding research and 
development efforts in vulnerability analysis or cyberweapon 
generation.” (Emphasis in the original.)

[...]