Deterring Malicious Behavior in Cyberspace

Recent incidents reveal cyberattacks are being employed and honed in a systematic, coordinated fashion to achieve the objectives of malicious actors. Deterrence of the wide array of actors in cyberspace is difficult, since deterrence has to work in the mind of the attacker. Each attacker will weigh the effort of the attack against the expected benefit under their own criteria or rationality. This article analyzes whether the contemporary and complementary deterrence strategies of retaliation, denial, and entanglement are sufficient to deter malicious cyber actors or if the alternative of active cyberdefense is necessary and viable

A Comprehensive Approach to Multidimensional Operations

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18754112-01902008.Peacekeeping and crisis response missions face novel challenges in the modem era. Disruptive changes, including economic globalization, mass communications and access to information, and the emergence of powerful and Influential non-state agents require a better understanding of the mission space and the political, economic, and social conditions that impact stabilization efforts. The comprehensive approach is among the most recent functional models for coordinating the efforts of the broad assortment of actors involved In addressing complex crises or conflicts. The principles of a comprehensive approach are widely accepted, but mechanisms for practical application are still evolving. Moreover, the benefits realized through coordinated efforts maybe limited by organizational constraints. In some cases, mission conditions may also restrict comprehensive approaches. For example robust military engagement In conflict zones may compromise humanitarian access to vulnerable populations; or neutral administration of aid to factional groups might run counter to military actions against named threats. Despite these challenges, mission leaders agree that a comprehensive approach is vital to mission success. Multidimensional peacekeeping. campaigns to combat piracy, and energy security provide useful models for achieving better situational understanding and mission effectiveness via a comprehensive approach. Each of these examples demands political leadership, protection and advocacy for affected or underserved populations, enhanced development, and military Intervention to guarantee security

Russia and Ransomware: Stop the Act, Not the Actor

The problem with defeating cyberattacks is that speed and number of threats outpace human-centered cyber defense. That is why a new approach to cyber defense is needed

How the Biden administration is making gains in an uphill battle against Russian hackers

The article of record as published may be found at https://theconversation.com/how-the-biden-administration-is-making-gains-in-an-uphill-battle-against-russian-hackers-174199On Jan. 14, 2022, the FSB, Russia’s domestic intelligence service, announced that it had broken up the notorious Russia-based REvil ransomware criminal organization. The FSB said the actions were taken in response to a request from U.S. authorities. The move marks a dramatic shift in Russia’s response to criminal cyberattacks launched against U.S. targets from within Russia, and comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries

Russia’s Ultimate Weapon Might Be Cyber

A recent report prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unveiled President Putin’s motivations for an Asymmetric Assault on Democracy in Russian and Europe. His asymmetric use of covert means for political ends became evident in Ukraine. Cyber operations employed together with information operations across conventional, economic and political sectors have created a societal siege mentality for Ukrainians. Yet Kremlin interference also threatens the peace and stability of the United States and Europe. Given the potential impact of cyber operations on the international community, are their use by Russia rational or irresponsible

The 5×5 -- Russia's cyber statecraft

17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under review.The article of record as published may be found at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-5x5/the-5x5-russias-cyber-statecraft

Faces of NPS: Capt. Scott Jasper, PhD (Ret)

Faces of NPS features Interviews spotlighting the students, faculty, staff and alumni of our Nation’s premier defense education and research institution.Retired U.S. Navy Captain Scott Jasper is a Senior Lecturer at the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, specializing in defense strategy, hybrid warfare, and cyber policy

Learning Latent Permutations with Gumbel-Sinkhorn Networks

Permutations and matchings are core building blocks in a variety of latent variable models, as they allow us to align, canonicalize, and sort data. Learning in such models is difficult, however, because exact marginalization over these combinatorial objects is intractable. In response, this paper introduces a collection of new methods for end-to-end learning in such models that approximate discrete maximum-weight matching using the continuous Sinkhorn operator. Sinkhorn iteration is attractive because it functions as a simple, easy-to-implement analog of the softmax operator. With this, we can define the Gumbel-Sinkhorn method, an extension of the Gumbel-Softmax method (Jang et al. 2016, Maddison2016 et al. 2016) to distributions over latent matchings. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by outperforming competitive baselines on a range of qualitatively different tasks: sorting numbers, solving jigsaw puzzles, and identifying neural signals in worms