Holes in NATO’s Cyber Defense Pledge

The Holes in NATO’s Cyber Defense Pledge by William A. Blunden / September 4th, 2014 NATO members are currently meeting in Wales to consider a joint defense agreement which stipulates that a cyberattack on one member would represent an attack on all of them.1 Though the concept of international teamwork may seem appealing at the outset there are at least a couple of issues that officials are [intentionally] neglecting. High-End Anti-Forensics For instance, how can countries mobilize to fend off a cyberattack when they can’t even tell who launched it? Deception is an age-old instrument of spy tradecraft and the Pentagon has been actively working on developing Internet stealth technology for decades. [ ...] Folks, it’s anarchy. Until we mobilize and get our political leaders to outlaw covert ops the government and corporate spies show no sign of letting up. In all probability, as things progress the whole clandestine scene is just going to get worse. This past April Obama openly bragged to China’s leadership that the U.S would be devoting $26 billion to the Pentagon’s cyber trough and expanding the U.S. force to 6,000 so-called “cyberwarriors”.15 Guess where all of that funding goes to? The moral of the story is this: when high-level Pentagon types and think tank pundits start yammering about cyberattacks from Russia or China keep in mind that our security services are neck deep in deception ops directed against their alleged allies. History shows that the American Deep State is constantly in search of new enemies, even if it has to fabricate them,16 and our corporate rulers have no scruples about launching attacks that kill untold thousands of innocent people so that they can boost quarterly profits. [... EXTRACT - FULL @ SOURCE ] http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/09/the-holes-in-natos-cyber-defense-pledge/

This article is a wealth of information.  Everyone gets a mention:

Tor, Ntrepid, WikiLeaks, TAO, GCHQ

Check it out.

What's happening?

What's happening? Discovered that a couple of my images got removed or blocked on one of my pages. Don't know which.  Images just weren't showing. Whatever happened to 'fair use'?  Replaced the images, but it's a pain to have to reconstruct something that was like a stream of consciousness at the time (rather than a plotted out and carefully recorded project).  It's also a pain to have to keep checking that the links all do their thing. Had deserters on Twitter.  It was quite funny. Compared to some of the stuff I've seen on there, my occasional outbursts are on the lame end of the spectrum of 'radical', so those followers must have been buttoned-up ultra conservative types. What's happening? There was a 'ceasefire' that wasn't a ceasefire because the Ukraine government are a pack of liars. The Frenchies are untrustworthy:  Mistral delivery up in the air.  One minute it's on & the next the French are bailing.  One minute it's a case of Hollande's 'personal opinion' the next it's a case of Russians have held up their end of the contract.  Remains to be seen, I guess. Obama had his Estonia visit & everybody's at the NATO summit.  Russia excluded, of course.  Not like they'd be welcome when they're the target. Putin's been to Altai Republic making post flood arrangements, I think. NATO's sent war ships to the Black Sea.  Done that before, so it's just more of the same. McCain and Lindsey Graham - Republican senators - are lobbying for war and pressuring Obama, I guess.  Typical republican.  Also McCain's state (Arizona) is home to military producers and Graham is Republican, Baptist, lawyer, military (rank Colonel under George W Bush), so their agenda is hardly surprising. Looks like John Kerry and other secretaries of state are at the NATO summit. Hollande's ex has put out her kiss-and-tell.  But it's dead boring.  Maybe it's those crappy French privacy laws.  The juiciest bit of info is that he represents the working classes but calls them toothless.  Geez, where's all the sleaze I was expecting? Tony Abbott's not going to export uranium to the Russians and is sending troops to Ukraine (& anywhere else the US wants), the last I heard.  Total ass-kisser. Radicals have kidnapped a heap of people.  Think that was Iraq. Truck bomb went off there as well.  Outside the secret service and military base, I think it was.  Recent car bombing there, I think.  So they're real keen on targeting that spot. Hackers are intent on targeting the Pakistan government.  There's been demonstrations and there's civil rights abuses, I think.  So it's politically motivated. UK's GCHQ are on some kind of recruiting drive - for cyber-security types.  Sounds more like they just want to identify a bunch of people who are handy with a computer.  Didn't know that hacking involved gadgetry.  Thought it was just a matter of keying crap in to get access to things.  Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff that's sold quite readily (in China, I think it was).  The more expensive stuff was for phone hacks.  The phone hacking thing is big, apparently.  It's money motivated. The Serbs anticipate more EU pressure on them to abide by anti-Russian sanctions if things hot up some more in Ukraine -- or if EU and crew decide they're revving up the sanctions. The creepiest thing I came across was black people being killed in Libya.  Didn't even know there were black people in Libya.  That probably explains the boatloads of people trying to get across to Italy. Despite my awe of ancient civilisations in the region and love of falafel, humus humous, belly-dancers, camels, Bedouin attire, Bedouin drums etc, I find the Middle East that's in the news rather scary and surprisingly alien. The religious aspects are curious.  Is it about religion really or is it more about some form of identification that's merged with religion? Even though I've taken to pointing the finger at the imperialist West or the totalitarian West, I am sooooo happy being a Westerner. The worst thing that happens to me is maybe getting stuck in a traffic jam or the annoyance of crowded parking lots. Hard to reconcile.

BILL BLUNDEN on NATO BANDING AGAINST CYBER-ATTACKS

To the Editor: Re “In New Pledge, NATO Nations Would Band Together Against Cyberattacks” (news article, Sept. 1): You report that NATO leaders plan to update their collective defense policy to include a contingency for cyberattacks. The caveat of an agreement like this is that it assumes that NATO members are capable of identifying the actual source of an attack. Leaked documents reveal classified government programs like Hacienda and corporate services like Ntrepid’s Internet Operations Network, which are leveraged to reroute network traffic and undermine digital trails. Furthermore, logistical signatures can be faked and forensic artifacts can be forged. In other words, when facing off against an organized, well-funded adversary, attribution is largely a lost cause. Both national governments and private sector companies have made investments to ensure that this is the case. False flag attacks are as old as espionage and relatively simple to execute on the Internet. BILL BLUNDEN San Francisco, Sept. 1, 2014 The writer is the author of “Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation and the Malware-Industrial Complex” and “The Rootkit Arsenal.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/tracing-cyberattacks.html?_r=0

Trouble understanding what's going on.
If proper state-funded cyber-attacks aren't traceable, then why go through this farce?

Would that mean the NATO big banding together isn't really about defence against cyber-attacks? 

 Does that then mean this is just about collective, large-scale surveillance of the population/s?

Don't understand 'false flag'  attacks.  What, they're going to make out they were attacked to justify a cyber-attack or hostility on some other government?

What I don't understand is why national governments & private sector agencies would want to reroute traffic to undermine digital trail.  Unless they reroute to spy and thus undermine trail as the cost of being able to spy?

Very interesting.

*Digital Trail - lost.
*Logistical Signature - can fake.
*Forensic Artefacts  - can forge.