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I am working on some research regarding advanced persistent threats. Within this effort, discussion of cyber-warfare started. Looking further into the subject, I have found a plethora of links regarding the US and China when it comes to state sponsored initiatives when it comes to offensive cyber warfare but virtually nothing regarding other states.

Though I would be more than happy for more information regarding any part of this topic, my question is this... What countries currently have cyber security procedures/policies/organizations which address offensive security measures?

Granted there is a bunch of speculation regarding Russia and North Korea, and some information about Israel/Iran out there. I am looking for actual state sponsored activities, not just speculation of them.

This is not specifically IT Security practice, but it is very related, so I felt that it was reliant to this StackExchange.

Mike Pennington
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Ormis
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    You're going to have a very hard time finding any documentation here. Most countries don't want to talk about any offensive work. – Bill Weiss Jun 28 '11 at 16:52
  • I'm aware of that, I'm merely looking for states who have policies or organizations that are either currently in operation or are slated to start up who have the potential to develop offensive practices. I remember reading an article a few weeks back talking about Sweden (i believe) starting up a cyber warfare department which is tasked with defense and offense. I can't seem to find that article again. I don't care if there is not real proof of activity, just the public possibility of offensive activity or development. – Ormis Jun 28 '11 at 17:57
  • since you're basically asking for a list-of-X (very interesting btw), I think this should be comm-wiki. What do you think? – AviD Jun 29 '11 at 09:01
  • @AviD my original thought was that this topic would be better targeted towards a discussion, not really a question here. So, yes, gearing this towards a wiki would be apropos. – Ormis Jun 29 '11 at 13:29
  • Thanks guys, This info defiantly has assisted my research and increased my interest in the topic (cyberwarfare in general). – Ormis Jun 30 '11 at 18:48

5 Answers5

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There are no actual citations in the article, but according to the Guardian the UK is developing a cyber-weapons program. From the article (emphasis added):

Military to gain a new range of offensive options to defend critical installations around the country from cyber attacks

The article does directly quote a few high level officials (including one member of Parliament), so it should be fairly easy to find out if it's been refuted.

Bill the Lizard
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USA has been active in offensive measures for long - and it's not that well hidden - and of course UK has been expanding lately with a huge pile of money reserved for cyberwarfare and GCHQ. Also China is probably the first in the 'game' - it has whole universities training people and elite hacking units for over 5 years now.

For the US, one actual official reference is this powerpoint presentation, from 2008, that presents research done at the Idaho Research Laboratory (government lab run by the Department of Energy) http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/01/nstb-2481.pdf

If you go through the slides, towards the end you can clearly see the actually design of Stuxnet...

A lot of other countries have been active or becoming active lately on this field - I don't have the links, but there have been articles on major news networks about Israel, China, Japan, Australia, Germany, Brasil - at least those I remember.

john
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You mentioned these in the question, but these are not just speculation:

AviD
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Consider buying a copy of this book:

Cyber Warfare and Cyber Terrorism

Authors: Lech J. Janczewski, University of Auckland, New Zealand Andrew M. Colarik, AndrewColarik.com, USA

Also try to get a copy of this paper : Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation. Exceptionally good when it comes to cyber warfare.

Sirex
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RudraK
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2

At this year's Centre of Excellence in Security and Cybercrime Symposium in Edinburgh, Phil H Cox, from the OCSIA (Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance), gave a talk on The UK Approach to Cyber Security – National and International contexts.

Check out his presentation here.

Rory Alsop
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