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Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency） |
, 联合报道 2013年03月13日
华盛顿——美国军方新成立的网络战司令部(Cyber Command)司令周二告诉国会，他正在组建13支由程序员和电脑专家组成的小组，他们可以在美国的网络遭受重大攻击时，向其他国家发起进攻性网络攻击。这是奥巴马政府首次公开承认开发此种武器以备战时使用。
美国国家安全局(National Security Agency)局长、新近成立的网络战司令部司令基思・亚历山大将军(Keith Alexander)告诉众议院军事委员会(House Armed Services Committee)，“我希望说明，这支队伍，这支保卫国家的部队，并不是一支防御性的队伍。这是一支进攻性的队伍，如果美国在网络空间遭受攻击，国防部会用这支队伍来保卫这个国家。在我们正在创建的这些队伍中，有13支就是专门用于执行这一任务的。”
在亚历山大将军发表这番证词的同一天，国家情报总监小詹姆斯・R・克拉珀(James R. Clapper Jr.)警告国会，针对美国的重大网络攻击可能严重破坏这个国家的基础设施与经济，他指出，这种打击如今对美国构成了最危险的直接威胁，甚至比国际恐怖主义组织的袭击还要紧迫。
周一，国家安全顾问托马斯・E・多尼隆(Thomas E. Donilon)要求中国当局调查此类攻击事件，并就制定网络空间行为的新规范展开对话。
亚历山大将军一直是美国在此问题上主要的战略制定者，但是在本周二之前，他总是从防御角度来谈论此事。他通常会回避有关美国进攻能力的问题，会把这些问题转化成有关防御的讨论，例如如何抵御来自中国和俄罗斯不断加剧的计算机间谍活动，以及公用事业、手机网络和其他基础设施遭受致命性攻击的可能性。在近年由美国支持的一次针对伊朗核浓缩设施的大型电脑攻击中，他也起到了关键性的作用。他在听证会上公开发言时并没有讨论那次高度机密的行动。
国家情报总监克拉珀告诉参议院情报委员会(Senate Intelligence Committee)，在情报机构看来，美国在未来两年遭受重大计算机攻击的“可能性很小”，他将这种重大攻击定义为“可导致长期的、大范围的公用事业服务中断，如地区性断电”的行动。
和克拉珀一同出现的还有其他几家情报机构的负责人，包括国防情报局(Defense Intelligence Agency)的迈克尔・T・弗林中将(Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn)、美国联邦调查局(FBI)局长罗伯特・S・穆勒三世(Robert S. Mueller III)以及中央情报局(CIA)局长约翰・O・布伦南(John O. Brennan)。他们共同发布了一份对美国所面临威胁的年度报告。克拉珀首度在对国会的报告中将网络攻击列在首位。情报官员没将国际恐怖主义列为美国面临的首要危险，这在2001年9月11日的袭击之后实属罕见。
克拉珀在他的证词中说，“在一些情况下，我们的世界应用数字新技术的速度超过了我们对其相关安全影响的理解和对其潜在风险的控制。”他认为，俄罗斯和中国不太可能在近期对美国实施“摧毁性的”网络攻击，但他说外国的间谍人员已经攻击了政府部门、商业部门以及私人企业的计算机网络。
克拉珀列举了两个具体的攻击案例，2012年8月对沙特阿拉伯国家石油公司（Saudi Aramco，简称“沙特阿美”）的攻击，以及去年对一些美国银行及证券交易所的攻击。美国情报官员认为这些都是伊朗所为。
亚历山大将军在作证时选择了同样的主题，他说，他正在新增40支网络小队，其中有13支的重点是进攻，其他27支的重点是培训和监控。在被追问时，他表示，最好的防御有赖于通过私人“互联网服务提供商”监督进入美国的信息流，这些提供商可以在有关信息传播的几毫秒内向政府就潜在的危险攻击发出警告。不过，这种监控肯定会在隐私权的支持者中引起更多争论，这些人对政府监控大多数电子邮件和其他计算机信息交流的定位数据和地址数据感到担忧。
克拉珀证词的主要篇幅还是留给了传统威胁。美国情报官员再次强调了朝鲜的核武器和导弹计划构成的危险，据称，朝鲜的导弹计划首次“对美国构成了严重威胁”，也对朝鲜的东亚邻国构成了严重威胁。克拉珀在事先准备好的证词中指出，在第三次核试验后，朝鲜最近发出了一系列挑衅性声明，还展示了一枚能够通过公路进行转移的洲际导弹，在去年12月在“大浦洞-2型”(Taepodong-2)运载火箭上加载一枚卫星，并将其成功发射。
克拉珀在和一名议员交换意见时说，“朝鲜的声明充斥着宣传口号，不过，它也显示了他们的态度或意图。”他补充说，他担心朝鲜“会发起一场针对韩国的挑衅行动”。
在讨论恐怖主义时，克拉珀指出，虽然基地组织(Al Qaeda)在巴基斯坦的核心“很可能不具备在西方实施复杂、大规模袭击的能力”，但其大量分支依然构成威胁。位列威胁首位的是它在也门的分支机构阿拉伯半岛基地组织(Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula)，克拉珀称，该分支保留了攻击美国本土这个目标。他还指出了在其他六个国家仍构成地区性暴力威胁的一些激进组织。
克拉珀以指责决策制定者造成目前的预算僵局作为他的开场白，他说，被称为“自动减赤”(sequestration)的预算削减方案会迫使美国的情报机构大幅削减保密计划、给雇员放假。过去十年，保密情报预算有了大幅增加，克拉珀把目前这一轮的预算削减与20世纪90年代的削减相提并论。当时，冷战的结束导致中情局的预算大幅降低。
“与公园开放时间缩短、机场安检排队时间加长等‘自动减赤’带来的更直观的影响相比，情报力量减少的影响却不那么明显，”克拉珀说，“影响的作用过程是渐进的，也是几乎不可见的，直到我们遭遇一场情报失误。”
按计划，威胁听证会是每年唯一的一项此类活动，情报机构负责人要就美国面临的危险公开向国会提供证词。克拉珀没有掩饰他对这种一年一度的仪式性活动的反对。奥巴马在国情咨文演讲时，保证会对国会和公众提高透明度，但退休的空军(Air Force)上将、71岁的克拉珀明确表示，他看不出更多的公开披露能带来多少益处。
他说，“公开就情报问题进行听证，这根本就自相矛盾。”
Security Leader Says U.S. Would Retaliate Against Cyberattacks
By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID E. SANGER March 13, 2013
http://cn.nytimes.com/article/world/2013/03/13/c13hack/en/
Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
Robert Mueller of the F.B.I., left, and James R. Clapper Jr., of National Intelligence, on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON — The chief of the military’s newly created Cyber Command told Congress on Tuesday that he is establishing 13 teams of programmers and computer experts who could carry out offensive cyberattacks on foreign nations if the United States were hit with a major attack on its own networks, the first time the Obama administration has publicly admitted to developing such weapons for use in wartime.
“I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team,” Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.”
General Alexander’s testimony came on the same day the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., warned Congress that a major cyberattack on the United States could cripple the country’s infrastructure and economy, and suggested that such attacks now pose the most dangerous immediate threat to the United States, even more pressing than an attack by global terrorist networks.
On Monday, Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, demanded that Chinese authorities investigate such attacks and enter talks about new rules governing behavior in cyberspace.
General Alexander has been a major architect of the American strategy on this issue, but until Tuesday he almost always talked about it in defensive terms. He has usually deflected questions about America’s offensive capability, and turned them into discussions of how to defend against mounting computer espionage from China and Russia, and the possibility of crippling attacks on utilities, cellphone networks and other infrastructure. He was also a crucial player in the one major computer attack the United States is known to have sponsored in recent years, aimed at Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants. He did not discuss that highly classified operation during his open testimony.
Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that American spy agencies saw only a “remote chance” in the next two years of a major computer attack on the United States, which he defined as an operation that “would result in long-term, wide-scale disruption of services, such as a regional power outage.”
Mr. Clapper appeared with the heads of several other intelligence agencies, including Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the F.B.I. director Robert S. Mueller III, and the C.I.A. director John O. Brennan, to present their annual assessment of the threats facing the nation. It was the first time that Mr. Clapper has listed cyberattacks first in his presentation to Congress, and the rare occasion since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that intelligence officials have not listed international terrorism first in the catalog of dangers facing the United States.
“In some cases,” Mr. Clapper said in his testimony, “the world is applying digital technologies faster than our ability to understand the security implications and mitigate potential risks.” He said it was unlikely that Russia and China would launch “devastating” cyberattacks against the United States in the near future, but he said foreign spy services had already hacked the computer networks of government agencies, businesses and private companies.
Two specific attacks Mr. Clapper listed, an August 2012 attack against the Saudi oil company Aramco and attacks on American banks and stock exchanges last year, are believed by American intelligence officials to be the work of Iran.
General Alexander picked up on the same themes in his testimony, saying that he was adding 40 cyber teams, 13 focused on offense and 27 on training and surveillance. When pressed, he said that the best defense hinged on being able to monitor incoming traffic to the United States through private “Internet service providers,” who could alert the government, in the milliseconds that electronic messages move, about potentially dangerous attacks. Such surveillance is bound to raise more debate with privacy advocates, who fear government monitoring of the origin and the addressing data on most e-mail messages and other computer exchanges.
Traditional threats occupied much of Mr. Clapper’s testimony. American intelligence officials are giving new emphasis to the danger posed by North Korea’s nuclear weaponsand missile programs, which are said for the first time to “pose a serious threat to the United States” as well as to its East Asian neighbors. North Korea, which recently made a series of belligerent statements after its third nuclear test, has displayed an intercontinental missile that can be moved by road and in December launched a satellite atop a Taepodong-2 launch vehicle, Mr. Clapper’s prepared statement noted.
“The rhetoric, while it is propaganda laced, is also an indicator of their attitude and perhaps their intent,” Mr. Clapper said during one exchange with a lawmaker, adding that he was concerned that North Korea “could initiate a provocative action against the South.”
In his discussion of terrorism, Mr. Clapper noted that while Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan “is probably unable to carry out complex, large-scale attacks in the West,” spinoffs still posed a threat. Listed first is the affiliate in Yemen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which Mr. Clapper said had retained its goal of attacks on United States soil, but he also noted militant groups in six other countries that still threaten local violence.
Mr. Clapper began his remarks by criticizing policy makers for the current budget impasse, saying that the budget cuts known as sequestration will force American spy agencies to make sharp reductions in classified programs and to furlough employees. The classified intelligence budget has ballooned over the past decade, and Mr. Clapper compared the current round of cuts to the period during the 1990s when the end of the cold war led to drastic reductions in the C.I.A.’s budget.
“Unlike more directly observable sequestration impacts, like shorter hours at public parks or longer security lines at airports, the degradation of intelligence will be insidious,” Mr. Clapper said. “It will be gradual and almost invisible unless and until, of course, we have an intelligence failure.”
The threat hearing is the only scheduled occasion each year when the spy chiefs present open testimony to Congress about the dangers facing the United States, and Mr. Clapper did not hide the fact that he is opposed to the annual ritual. President Obama devoted part of his State of the Union address to a pledge of greater transparency with the Congress and the American public, but Mr. Clapper, a 71-year-old retired Air Force general, made it clear that he saw few benefits of more public disclosure.
“An open hearing on intelligence matters is something of a contradiction in terms,” he said.
Scott Shane contributed reporting.
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