[Infowarrior] - Pentagon Searches for ‘Digital DNA’ to Identify Hackers

[Richard Forno]

Pentagon Searches for ‘Digital DNA’ to Identify Hackers
	• By Noah Shachtman
	• January 26, 2010  |
	• 10:40 am  |
	• Categories: Info War

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/pentagon-searches-for-digital-dna-to-identify-hackers/

One of the trickiest problems in cyber security is trying to figure  
who’s really behind an attack. Darpa, the Pentagon agency that created  
the Internet, is trying to fix that, with a new effort to develop the  
“cyber equivalent of fingerprints or DNA” that can identify even the  
best-cloaked hackers.
The recent malware hit on Google and other U.S. tech firms showed once  
again just how hard it is to pin a network strike on a particular  
person or group. Engineers are pretty sure the attack came from China,  
and it sure was sophisticated enough to come from a state military  
like China’s. But it’s hard to say conclusively that the People’s  
Liberation Army launched the strike.

It’s the kind of problem Darpa will try to solve with its “Cyber  
Genome” project. The idea “is to produce revolutionary cyber defense  
and investigatory technologies for the collection, identification,  
characterization, and presentation of properties and relationships  
from collected digital artifacts of software, data, and/or users,” the  
agency announced late Monday.

These “digital artifacts” will be collected from “traditional  
computers, personal digital assistants, and/or distributed information  
systems such as ‘cloud computers’,” as well as “from wired or wireless  
networks, or collected storage media. The format may include  
electronic documents or software (to include malicious software -  
malware).”

Ultimately, Darpa wants to develop the “digital equivalent of  
genotype, as well as observed and inferred phenotype in order to  
determine the identity, lineage, and provenance of digital artifacts  
and users.”

“In other words,” The Register’s Lew Page notes, “any code you write,  
perhaps even any document you create, might one day be traceable back  
to you - just as your DNA could be if found at a crime scene, and just  
as it used to be possible to identify radio operators even on  
encrypted channels by the distinctive ‘fist’ with which they operated  
their Morse keys. Or something like that, anyway.”

The Cyber Genome project kicks off this week with a conference in  
Virginia.