The Cyber Shadow

For most, it's known as "the Cyber Cloud" or simply "the Cloud." It's somewhere never seen and presumably impenetrable. But it's really not a cloud, it's more like a shadow-your shadow. It's always connected to you and carries with it all your data, your secrets. And like your shadow, people can pass through it or they can linger in it, often unobserved. Your only real security is to sit in the dark casting no shadow, but who can live life that way? You, like the bank, the business, or the government are vulnerable and someone is out there exploring that vulnerability in your Cyber Shadow. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is home for some of the world's most brilliant scientists. A bridge game discussion about larcenous crooks always getting caught evolves into a challenge by physicist Dick Knapp, to design a theoretical experiment in larceny. His bridge partners accept the challenge and enter into a theoretical world of off-shore banking, money laundering, burner phones, and cyber hacking that they hardly knew existed. It fascinates and motivates them to design a seemingly foolproof plan that will avoid detection and make them rich. How far should they go? How far will they go? And will they remember that someone may be watching their moves in their Cyber Shadow? Someone like secret FBI agent Linda Cole?

Cyber Shadows is a tour de horizon of the digital world's dark places, the threats and innovations in cybercrime, espionage, and surveillance - and new attacks moving beyond identity theft to hacking our behavioral patterns, brains, and DNA to buy and sell as lucrative business. The implications are staggering: from coercion to the end of the sovereign self.

"The Code of Shadows" thrusts readers into the electric nerve-center of cyber mayhem. Join Maya, a coding virtuoso, as she becomes NY's beacon of salvation against a crippling and calculated blackout. With a power outage engulfing the city, it's Maya’s digital prowess against the faceless Code of Shadows—a covert group with aspirations to reshape the global order from their digital throne. Together with Ryan, an FBI hotshot, and his cyber unit, Maya battles across a treacherous digital landscape to unmask a syndicate hell-bent on upending the pillars of power. From the tightrope over Wall Street's financial bulwarks to the showstopping moves against an ominous military threat, the Shadow Legion, Maya’s saga is a kinetic race against time. Enter a battlefield where allegiances waver in the cyber-ether, and agents writhe under the vigil of an enigmatic sentinel. With the Grand Master pulling strings, Maya dives into an abyss of cyber warfare, where every keystroke is a move in a grander scheme—a scheme ensnaring even the highest halls of governance. "The Code of Shadows" crescendos with a symphony of intrigue, hacking into the soul of espionage and daring rescues. It’s a pulse-pounding journey where Maya becomes the vanguard of a new world order, balancing on the pixel-thin line between upholding security and preserving freedom. Prepare for a narrative supercharged with the thrill of cyber pursuits—a dive not just into the heart of darkness but into the luminous crusade of those who shape the unseen wars of our times. Be ready; "The Code of Shadows" isn’t just a book—it’s a total-systems immersion into the adrenaline-fueled odyssey of the digital age.

According to the FBI, about 4000 ransomware attacks happen every day. In the United States alone, victims lost $209 million to ransomware in the first quarter of 2016. Even worse is the threat to critical infrastructure, as seen by the malware infections at electrical distribution companies in Ukraine that caused outages to 225,000 customers in late 2015. Further, recent reports on the Russian hacks into the Democratic National Committee and subsequent release of emails in a coercive campaign to apparently influence the U.S. Presidential Election have brought national attention to the inadequacy of cyber deterrence. The U.S. government seems incapable of creating an adequate strategy to alter the behavior of the wide variety of malicious actors seeking to inflict harm or damage through cyberspace. This book offers a systematic analysis of the various existing strategic cyber deterrence options and introduces the alternative strategy of active cyber defense. It examines the array of malicious actors operating in the domain, their methods of attack, and their motivations. It also provides answers on what is being done, and what could be done, by the government and industry to convince malicious actors that their attacks will not succeed and that risk of repercussions exists. Traditional deterrence strategies of retaliation, denial and entanglement appear to lack the necessary conditions of capability, credibly, and communications due to these malicious actors’ advantages in cyberspace. In response, the book offers the option of adopting a strategy of active cyber defense that combines internal systemic resilience to halt cyber attack progress with external disruption capacities to thwart malicious actors’ objectives. It shows how active cyber defense is technically capable and legally viable as an alternative strategy for the deterrence of cyber attacks.

Chapters and essays thinking through both the meaning of, and the mechanisms for achieving, cyber peace.

Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Region faced numerous obstacles to building a stable and prosperous future. The region, which encompasses the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, has been plagued by economic and political uncertainty amidst dramatic shifts in the global power structure. With the pandemic now exacerbating the volatility in this already fragile region, the U.S.'s strategic objectives are rife for re-examination. A complicated stew of factors such as weakening of established governance systems, the emboldening of extremist individuals and groups through advances in digital technology, the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Syria, and the intensification of the great power competition with China and Russia are creating a fertile environment for the growth of violent extremist organizations (VEOs). Such organizations take advantage of vulnerable, aggrieved, and traumatized populations to fuel radicalization, recruitment, and unrest, which further undermine stability and the potential for peace and prosperity. While it is still early to fully understand how the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact U.S. policy, this book provides a timely analysis of relevant dynamics such as popular radicalization, digital information ecosystems, networks of influence, and new capabilities to recognize and prepare for other such black swan events in the region.