Forgotten History of Cyberwar

Presented at CarolinaCon 13 (2017), May 21, 2017, 1 p.m. (60 minutes)

In 1981 the French Directorate of Territorial Security (DST) flipped the high ranking KGB agent Colonel Vladimir who provided invaluable intelligence such a list of Soviet agents operating within the United States borders along with their intelligence targets. Control software for gas pipelines was found to be on the list and as a result the CIA set out to leak a tampered version of the software to one of the newly discovered agents. Then in 1982 the software, which was deployed on a Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, triggered a colossal explosion and "was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space". This and other interesting stories are the focus of this talk about the forgotten history of cyber warfare.

Presenters:

• Sean Pierce
  Sean Pierce (@secure_sean) is a Red Team Lead for Target. Sean currently specializes in Threat Emulation (Threat Modeling/Purple Teaming) and in the past has dabbled in Reverse Engineering (Malware mostly) Incident Response, Botnet Tracking, and Information Security Economics. Prior working at Target he worked as Chief Threat Emulation Engineer at iSIGHT Partners who was later acquired by FireEye. Prior to that he was an academic researcher and part time lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington where he earned a Bachelor's of Computer Engineering with a minor in Math.

Links:

• https://infocon.org/cons/CarolinaCon/CarolinaCon 13 2017/Forgotten History of Cyberwar - Sean Pierce (@secure_sean).mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/CarolinaCon/CarolinaCon 13 2017/Forgotten History of Cyberwar - Sean Pierce (@secure_sean).srt (subtitles)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aniRxovrAiE