Inside the Ring: NSA on cyberwar

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/27/inside-the-ring-nsa-on-cyberwar/

By Bill Gertz
The Washington Times
March 27, 2013

Cyberwarfare is the hot topic in military and intelligence circles at 
the Pentagon amid unrelenting cyberattacks from China, Russia, Iran and 
elsewhere.

But for the super-secret National Security Agency, cyberwarfare is 
nothing new.

The electronic spying and code-breaking agency provided a rare public 
look at its views on cyberwarfare by releasing this month redacted 
copies of its internal newsletter, which show that NSA has been engaged 
in cyberwarfare for more than a decade.

A 1997 article published in the once-classified newsletter Cryptolog was 
written by legendary NSA official Bill Black. He stated that the agency 
received the mission for Computer Network Attack (CNA) — offensive 
cyberwarfare — on March 3, 1997, from then-Defense Secretary William S. 
Cohen.

“This delegation of authority has added a new, third dimension to NSA’s 
‘one mission’ future,” Mr. Black, at the time a special assistant to the 
NSA director for information operations, stated in the spring 1997 
issue. “That is, in the networked world of Cyberspace, CNA technology is 
the natural companion of NSA’s exploit and protect functions.”

Other sections of the newsletter were heavily redacted and labeled “Top 
Secret Umbra,” the code word used to protect electronic intelligence.

[...]

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