30 November 1998. Thanks to SH.

    http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html?2276100

    (UK) The Sunday Times

    'Logic bomb' arms race panics Russia

    by Matthew Campbell
    Washington

    FEARING it has slipped behind America in an arms race involving
    secret weapons of the future, Russia is proposing an international
    treaty to control "information warfare", an invisible but deadly
    threat that could be used as effectively as missiles and bombs.

    It may sound like science fiction, but around the world military
    planners are acknowledging that "cyber warfare" will play an
    important role in future conflicts. Not since the advent of nuclear
    bombs half a century ago has the world confronted weapons with
    such potential for altering the way in which warfare is waged.

    Already secret army research departments in Russia and America
    are racing to perfect "logic bombs" and computer viruses
    designed to create havoc in an enemy country by destroying
    computer networks controlling weapons systems, financial
    transactions and even traffic.

    Igor Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, wrote to Kofi Annan, the
    United Nations secretary-general, last month warning that the
    effect of information weapons "may be comparable to that of
    weapons of mass destruction".

    In another development the Russians presented a proposal for
    "international legal regimes to prohibit the development,
    production or use of particularly dangerous forms of information
    weapons" to the UN.

    According to Peter Feaver, an information warfare expert at Duke
    University, North Carolina, the secrecy and lack of official
    guidelines surrounding the research are reminiscent of America's
    early years as a nuclear power "before the political leadership
    understood what nuclear weapons could do". A military official
    once told him: "If we waited around for political guidance, we
    wouldn't be able to do anything."

    The full extent of America's information warfare capabilities is a
    closely guarded secret. According to some reports, the American
    military has been developing ways of implanting "worm viruses"
    in foreign computer networks to spread confusion. The Pentagon
    fears that Russia, China, Iraq and Libya have similar programs.

    An announcement by President Bill Clinton in May of measures to
    build ramparts against the threat of a "digital Pearl Harbor" made
    no mention of America's capacity to conduct its own attacks. But
    George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
    has told Congress: "We're not asleep at the switch in this regard."

    He testified last year that information warfare techniques were
    already being deployed in the battles against terrorism and
    drugs. Computer hacker technology, he said, had been used to
    disrupt international money transfers between Arab businessmen
    supporting suspected terrorists.

    Clinton has pledged to make America safe within five years from
    "asymmetrical" threats, a term used by experts to describe the
    theoretical danger of a relatively weak and insignificant adversary

    taking on - and defeating - a superpower with a few taps on a
    laptop computer. America's extreme dependence on computer
    technology makes it the most vulnerable nation on earth. At the
    same time, however, its technological advantage renders
    traditional adversaries wary.

    Russian anxieties about being left behind in the information
    weapons race have been heightened by reports that the CIA has
    sabotaged some computer systems exported from America to the
    former Soviet Union. This involved putting "bugs" in computers
    that could be activated by CIA hackers thousands of miles away.

    The Russians are pressing for a UN debate about information
    warfare, urging Annan to submit a report at the 54th session of
    the general assembly next year.

    "We cannot permit the emergence of a fundamentally new area of
    international confrontation, which may lead to an escalation of the
    arms race based on the latest developments of the scientific and
    technological revolution," Ivanov wrote to Annan.

    With its political instability, low military morale and lack of
    resources, Russia is in no position to compete with America in the
    field of high technology. It has already fallen behind in tackling
    the "millennium bug", expected to cripple computer systems at the
    start of the next century.

    Russia's ineffectiveness in making its imported computer systems
    immune to the bug has raised fears in the White House that the
    Kremlin might misinterpret any disruption over the millennium as
    an information warfare attack and retaliate with nuclear weapons.

    A US defence department report earlier this year described how
    an information warfare attack might unfold. It starts with an
    unexplained power blackout in a large city. Telephone systems
    across the country become paralysed. Freight and passenger
    trains collide. Civilian air traffic control systems go haywire.
    Malfunctioning pipeline-flow control mechanisms trigger oil
    refinery blasts.

    As alarm spreads, "logic bombs" disable the financial system,
    disrupting money transfers and causing stocks to plunge on world
    exchanges. Automatic teller machines randomly credit or debit
    customers' accounts. Sensitive weapons systems malfunction.

    "[An] information war has no front line," says the study. "Potential
    battlefields are anywhere."

    In a military exercise involving senior Pentagon and intelligence
    officials last year, a scenario was mapped out in which India and
    Pakistan were on the verge of using nuclear weapons.

    The participants were asked whether America should interfere,
    using information warfare techniques to alter the capability of
    both countries so that neither had a clear picture of the battlefield.
    The debate was inconclusive.