global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESinto reporting attack indications that precipitate overreactions?Could such hackers breach the firewalls, the air gaps,and transmit launch orders to launch crews or even to theweapons themselves? What if an insider colluded with themto provide access and passwords to the launch circuitry?Might they acquire critical codes by hacking?Nuclear command systems today operate in an intense informationbattleground. As far back as a decade ago, morethan 20 nations – including China, North Korea, Russia andthe United States – had developed dedicated computer attackprograms for planting viruses to disable, confuse, anddelay nuclear command and warning processes in othernations. 43 Hacking operations of these sorts have since increasedexponentially as the militaries of the world increasinglydepend on computer and communications networks.The number of attempts by outside hostile actors to breakinto U.S. Defense Department networks has surged into thethousands daily in peacetime. In 2012, NATO experiencedover 2,500 “significant cyber attacks” against its systems,none of which evidently broke through. 44At the brink of conflict, nuclear command and warningnetworks around the world may be besieged by electronicintruders whose onslaught degrades the coherence and rationalityof nuclear decision-making. The potential for catastrophicconsequences with computer-launched weaponson hair-trigger is clear. Worse, some of this expanding illicitpenetration involves insiders, creating a whole new dimensionto the “insider threat” to nuclear systems. If insiderswith knowledge of special passwords or other sensitive informationrelated to nuclear weapons activities collude withoutsiders, the integrity of nuclear command and controlsystems and safeguards against the unauthorized launch ofnuclear weapons may well be compromised.Although by design the nuclear circuits are hermeticallysealed off with air gaps and firewalls, evidence is mountingthat they are permeable. They are the Maginot Line of the21st century. Wily and sophisticated cyber warriors can anddo find ways to breach these electronic ramparts. Cracksin the firewalls appear upon close examination. For example,in the 1990s, a congressionally mandated investigationdiscovered an electronic back door to the naval broadcastnetwork used to transmit launch orders to Trident strategicsubmarines on patrol in the Atlantic Ocean. An exploitableopportunity presented itself to outsiders or insiders: hackin and electronically seize and operate remotely the mainradio transmission site (at Cutler, Maine) used for this purpose.The Navy took this discovery so seriously that it thoroughlyrevamped launch authentication procedures so thatsubmarine crews would not immediately carry out launchorders received out of the blue.This principle was not extended to the Minuteman crewsbecause delay in launching the force during a bolt-from-theblue surprise Russian attack would imperil their survival.Such a pre-condition ought to apply to all nuclear forces;procedures for validating launch orders should require forewarningand pre-alerting of the forces. The imperative ofquick launch of vulnerable silo-based missiles has overriddenthis safeguard, however. This is another example of whythese missiles carry relatively high nuclear risk compared tostrategic submarines.In 2010, U.S. Minuteman crews lost contact for an hour witha field of 50 silo-based missiles in Wyoming. Soon after contactwas lost, the normally firewalled command and controlsystem for these missiles was likely breached. In such situations(“LF Down”) 45 , the missiles “assume” they have been cutoff from their primary and secondary underground launchcenters due to an attack that severed the links and destroyedthe centers. After a timer expires a few minutes later, themissiles activate a radio antenna at each of the missile silosto receive launch signals from airborne launch centers sent43 Estimates based upon Adam J. Hebert, “Information Battleground,”Air Force Magazine, Vol. 88, No. 12, December 2005, http://www.afa.org/magazine/Dec2005/ 1205info.html.44 “The history of cyber attacks – a timeline,” NATO Review Magazine,http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2013/Cyber/timeline/EN/index.htm.45 In the lexicon, silos are formally called “launch facilities,” and LFDown is shorthand for the loss of contact between the unmanned silosand their underground launch control centers. This control is normallymaintained by underground cables connecting them. Silos and theirlaunch centers are three to tens of miles apart.30
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESto their airspace during an attack. During such a blackoutof underground launch control and switch to airborne control,the opportunity exists for hackers to transmit signalsdirectly to the missile receivers. If they are able to replicatethe necessary codes (a tall feat that presumes insider collusionand/or other prior deep penetration of the computersused in nuclear command, control, and communications),then outsiders could hack into the circuits to inject the threeshort radio signal bursts needed to fire them – the target,arm, and launch commands. Another potential entry pointto leap the air gap is the underground cabling network thatinterconnects the unmanned missile silos with the mannedlaunch control centers. It may be possible to surreptitiouslytap into these cables laid in trenches with a length of thousandsof miles and thereby gain access to the actual conduitsused for controlling and firing the missiles.Very little is understood about the cyber threat to nuclearcontrol. A group of top U.S. technical experts recentlymet to review nuclear safety and concluded “cyber securityof nuclear command and control networks in the UnitedStates, Russia, and other states is of critical importanceand warrants attention.” 46 A report by the Defense ScienceBoard warned recently that the vulnerability of the U.S.nuclear command system to cyber attack has never beenfully assessed. 47 Two years ago, the head of all U.S. nuclearforces acknowledged that a comprehensive review of thevulnerability of the U.S. nuclear command system to cyberattack still needed to be done, noting, “we don’t know whatwe don’t know.” 48 A recent report by the director of oper-46 Pierce Corden, et al., Summary Report: Workshop on U.S. NuclearWeapons Safety and Security, December 12, 2012, Post conferencereport of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’sCenter for Science, Technology, and Security Policy and Union of ConcernedScientists, September 2013, http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/nwgs/nuclear-safety-security-workshop.pdf.47 U.S. Department of State, Task Force Report: Resilient Military Systemsand the Advanced Cyber Threat, report of the Defense Science Board,Washington, D.C., July 2013, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ResilientMilitarySystems.CyberThreat.pdf,p. 42.48 Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Strategic Command andU.S. Cyber Command in Review of the Defense Authorization Request forFiscal Year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program: Hearing beforeational tests and evaluation found in fiscal year 2014 thatalmost every U.S. weapons program tested showed “significantvulnerabilities” to cyber attacks. 49China and Russia undoubtedly have similar cyber vulnerabilities,but we know even less about them. Could thesecountries prevent a cyber attack from launching their missiles?The U.S. general in charge of Strategic Command testifiedthat he didn’t know. 50In all likelihood, cyber warfare in this domain mainly threatensto cause massive disruption. It seems more plausiblethat cyber attack could shut down computers and turn theweapons into “bricks,” preventing authorized launch ratherthan triggering unauthorized launch. But given so manyunanswered questions and our weak comprehension of thiscyber threat, we have yet another reason for concern aboutstrategic missiles on high alert and about trends among theother nuclear weapons countries toward increased attackreadiness of their nuclear forces. If we cannot fully assessthe risks, it would seem prudent to keep nuclear missiles offof high alert status at all times. This would be a sure-fire wayto mitigate foreseeable risks as well as those that have not yetbeen imagined.the Committee on Armed Services, 113 th Cong., 1 st sess., March 12, 2013,p. 202.49 Andrea Shalal, “Nearly every U.S. arms program found vulnerableto cyber attacks,” Reuters, January 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/01/20/technology/20reuters-cybersecurity-pentagon.html?_r=0.50 Col. (Ret.) Valery Yarynich, the lead systems integrator for theRussian “Perimetr” (Dead Hand) system that partially automatedRussian strategic retaliation to an attack that decapitates the Russian topleadership, reviewed the main Russian strategic nuclear command andcontrol networks and raised dozen of questions concerning avenues forunauthorized launches by insiders or outsiders. He recommended thatU.S. and Russian experts dig into these issues in a track II non-governmentalcollaboration that would hopefully evolve into a track I governmentalprocess. Cohesive and invulnerable nuclear command systemsimmune to cyber attack are critical to preventing the accidental, mistaken,or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. Therefore, a full-scalethorough review of the cyber security of all nuclear networks to identifyand remove cyber threats that could compromise the integrity of thesenetworks is absolutely essential.31
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