How deep does the cyberhole goes

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones

Einstein

What is a cyber kill chain?

In military parlance, a "kill chain" is a phase-based model to describe the stages of an attack, which also helps inform ways to prevent such attacks. These stages are referred to as: find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess.

The cyber kill chain is a similar idea, which was?put forth by Lockheed Martin, where the phases of a targeted attack are described. Likewise, they can be used for protection of an organization's network. The stages are shown in the graphic below.

The deep divide

It is evident that when it comes to cyber security of public IT infrastructure, and election machinery to be very precise, the stakeholders are split among two camps, those who believe that all IT infrastructure is innately untrustworthy and hence it should not be deployed for delivery of crucial and impactful public services, and those who contest that there are enough checks in place and IT skeptics are up to nothing more than fear mongering.

The IT skeptics

The IT skeptics have pointed out that the public IT infrastructure is never, and not just regularly or frequently, audited or vetted by trustworthy and competent public authorities for their reliability, integrity and probity. Neither do public authorities conduct a priory or a posterior forensics on public IT infrastructure. Further, the claims that most of the high impact, sensitive, and crucial IT infrastructure is not even connected to the internet is bogus because all electronic machines are either connected to a master machine which in turn is connected to the internet or connected to a local area network. In the light of the massive and supper sophisticated cyber attacks like STUXNET and Mirai. Also, often sensitive information is passed among various arms of public administration and also, within public instructions in unsafe portable plug and play drives.

In 2005, using only memory card, Hursti demonstrated how easy it is to change votes on a digital voting machine. This is featured in detail in a 2006 documentary "Hacking Democracy". This not only proves that IT infrastructure used by public institution is not only available in the market but also open to manipulations. Unfortunately, the only response this documentary could instigate from the manufacturer of the machine was a war front attempt at stopping the distribution of the documentary, defaming the cyber security expert, and maligning the reputations of other parties involved. This has had a chilling effect on the scrutiny of public IT infrastructure.

It is common knowledge that IT infrastructure is susceptible to glitches, and unfortunately, procedures to set apart a spontaneous performance glitch from a deliberate hacking have not been put in place. Moreover, the impunity with which the law enforcement agencies come down upon anyone who exposes the susceptibility of IT infrastructure, be it through verified government reports leaked in public or demonstration of hacking public infrastructure, has something to say about the fragility of the public IT infrastructure. However, none of this qualifies as a definitive reason to put down all IT infrastructure as useless.

A short trailer

Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections (2020) | Official Trailer | HBO

The status-quoist

On the other hand, the others argue that most of the objections raised by the IT skeptics are based on unqualified, vague, inconsistent and inflated claims of manipulations of IT infrastructures, which amount to nothing more than conspiracy theories. For starters, there is no uniformity in the IT hardware or the software used in the IT infrastructure across geographies, time and levels of administration. Hence, there is no one silver bullet against the public chaotic and idiosyncratic IT infrastructure. Further, the information on the kind and specifications of IT infrastructure used by any public authority is kept secure, also the manufacturers take great care of not making the same machines available in the market for anyone to get hold of them, The manufacturers of IT infrastructure as well as software have often and consistently exposed the misinformation spread by IT skeptics and even tired to contain the spread of misinformation.

Although, any forensics are not conducted on IT infrastructure, all of it is thoroughly reprogrammed for integrity, revalued for performance, and for retested for reliability before deployment. The IT skeptics have been accused of labelling spontaneous glitches in systems as deliberate hacking without supporting evidences. Furthermore, it seems imperative that those spreading panic and anxiety with regards to public IT infrastructure must be dealt with the full force of the law.

The only thing that both the camps seem to agree upon is that Russia and Israel are the epicenter of cyber threat manufacturing and deployment!

Cyber Security to the rescue

As a cyber security enthusiast, I am convinced that there is truth to be found in some claims from both the sides. Furthermore, since the inception of the internet, cyber security has remained the most neglected and least thought about aspect of the IT industry. The fact that most coders, including some of those working for IT giants, do not even know the basics of writing a safe codes, and neither is their work tested or evaluated for integrity and probity, is a well known dark secret of the IT industry. However, discarding or minimizing the use of IT is not a solution to this problem. In fact, any aversion to IT driven solution in general and in public administrations in particular is only going to exacerbate problems. A right balance is to be struck between convenience and safety. Cyber security is that right balance.