The Pentagon is developing cyber weapons that are extremely lethal

(Cyberwar.news) The Pentagon has undertaken a half-billion dollar effort to develop cyber weapons – computer code that will be capable of killing adversaries, should it become necessary to deploy them, say contractors who are vying for the work, as well as former Pentagon officials, NextGov reported.

Officials familiar with the development of such weapons said that U.S. troops will possess the capability to launch logic bombs instead of traditional ordnance, aimed at an enemy’s critical military and civilian infrastructure, causing it to self destruct.

“Lethal cyber weapons have arrived,” NextGov said.

An upcoming $460 million U.S. Cyber Command Project will outsource to the private sector all command mission support activities like “cyber fires” planning, as well as “cyberspace joint munitions” assessments.

Unlike previously developed offensive espionage malware like the Stuxnet virus that sabotaged and disabled some Iranian nuclear centrifuges nearly five years ago, cyber fires will have a massive impact on human life, say former Defense officials and a newly released Defense Department Law of War Manual [PDF].

Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are among the major defense firms expected to compete for the CYBERCOM contract, NextGov reported.

Using cyber weapons offensively essentially means “defeating the interaction between a processor and its software” in order to serve a mission, said Bill Leigher, a recently retired Navy admiral with decades of warfighting experience who now runs Raytheon’s government cyber solutions division.

“Combatant commanders choose weapons that they know will further their course of action,” he told NextGov.

The former Navy admiral said there will be a variety of uses for the new cyber weapons.

Perhaps the target, he said, would be a maintenance facility on an airfield. By launching a cyberattack, a commander could shut down the power grid of the facility, and then “you’ve degraded the enemy’s ability to repair aircraft,” Leigher said.

As Cyberwar.news reported recently, the upgrading of the U.S. “smart power” grid, ironically, will mean that more of it could become vulnerable to precisely the kind of weapons CYBERCOM is attempting to develop.

Also, we noted recently that the growth in cyber weaponry – a sort of cyber arms race, if you will – is brewing, as the U.S. and a raft of other nations around the world seek to upgrade their cyber warfare capabilities (and defenses).

“Cyber weapons are advanced cyber warfare tools that are powered with weaponized zero-day exploits or vulnerabilities in software primarily aimed for launching an effective cyber-attack on enemy networks,” reports MarketWatch.

“Hackers and cyber professionals are increasingly focused on developing cyber capabilities to infiltrate into enemy networks in order to violate confidentiality of the target. Additionally, cyber weapons are capable of data theft, espionage, and destruction of equipment and other critical systems such as industrial control system and national defense system,” the web site said.

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See also:

http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2015/11/lethal-virtual-weapons-real/123417/

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2014/0225/Exclusive-New-thesis-on-how-Stuxnet-infiltrated-Iran-nuclear-facility

http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/law-of-war-manual-june-2015.pdf [PDF]

http://www.cyberwar.news/2015-11-03-irony-as-u-s-upgrades-to-smart-power-grid-the-threat-of-cyber-attack-looms-larger.html