Operation Eligible Receiver
Operation Eligible Receiver, an interesting attempt by the DOD to show how easily our military computer systems can be hacked into. This exercise was first run in 1997, the intention was to see exactly how vulnerable our military computer systems actually were and “if” with tools readily available on the open internet to accomplish this task, short answer yes. As it turns out there were numerous systems hacked during those two weeks in June 1997. It was a group of National Security Agency officials, which played the role of hacker it was determined that they “could have shut down the U.S. electric-power grid within days and rendered impotent the command-and-control elements of the U.S. Pacific Command” (Gertz). This is the least actually of the concern, if they had truly wanted to they could have disabled computer systems responsible for controlling approximately 100k military troops. The attackers were also able to cover their tracks for the most part, only one of the teams involved was discovered. Most noteworthy would be that the invaders were able to able to “breach the Pentagon’s unclassified global computer network using Internet service providers…” (Gertz). What seems interesting is that there were no special tools used to accomplish any of these breaches. The exercise was handled with standard internet practices and there was nothing released ahead of time. That is what makes these breaches so troubling. Any hacker from any location at any time could have done the same type of damage that the NSA agents did in 1997. Specifically, “their targets included: the National Military Command Center (NMCC) in the Pentagon, USPACOM, USSPACECOM, USTRANSCOM, and USSOCOM” (globalsecurity.org). Given these targets and that they were able to gain “superuser access to in over 36 computer systems which meant they could create new accounts, delete accounts, turn the system off or reformat the server hard drives” (globalsecurity.org), is troubling. It is understandable that there are people in the world who want to see the United States suffer and it is understandable that at the time of this exercise this was a new concern for all involved. The outcome of this exercise showed the flaws in the United States military security structure. A prime example of this is the fact that the common security password for U.S. military systems was “password”. John Hamre, former Secretary of Defense 1997-1999, said in an interview with PBS that “cyber security awareness today is thousands of times stronger than it was five years ago, when we first conducted Eligible Receiver...”. He is right, since the initial exercise, we have learned quite a bit and we now take cyber security much more seriously. Given that the United States is a leader in many arenas on the world stage it stands to reason that we learn from our mistakes at least in this area. Seeing firsthand how vulnerable we truly were at a core level has afforded us an opportunity to tighten up and take much more seriously our cyber security. Reference

Eligible Receiver. Retrieved from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/eligible- receiver.htm

Hamre, J. Eligible Receiver. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/interviews/hamre.html

Gertz, B. April 16, 1998. NSA's Operation Eligible Receiver. The Washington Times. Retrieved from http://www.infosecnews.org/hypermail/9804/0217.html