Communications and Information Infrastructure Security

John G. Voeller

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781118651971
• eBook ISBN: 9781118651834
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Sicurezza informatica

Communication and Information Systems Security features articles from the Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security covering strategies for protecting the telecommunications sector, wireless security, advanced web based technology for emergency situations. Science and technology for critical infrastructure consequence mitigation are also discussed.

1 Telecommunication: Critical Infrastructure Protection

Ted G. Lewis

Center for Homeland Defense and Security, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California

1.1 Introduction

The telecommunications sector is a complex adaptive system exhibiting self-organized criticality (SOC) suggesting its vulnerability to systemic failure. Over its 100-year history, the architecture of the telecommunications sector in the United States has evolved into a scale-free network with critical nodes located in a small number of major telecom hotels, that is, buildings containing a high concentration of switching equipment, storage, and interdependent connections. These hubs were formed by economic, regulatory, and technical forces operating over four historical periods: an unregulated beginning, the telecom war years, the regulated vertical monopoly period, and the current deregulated competitive era. This chapter briefly traces the evolution of telecommunications in general and telephony in particular. Using network science theory, we show that hubs and betweener nodes are the most critical components in the national system. Furthermore, these critical nodes are the direct result of regulatory forces shaping the industry, which have had major impact on telecommunications. Because of economic, regulatory, and technical forces ever-present in the industry, the telecom sector has evolved into a state of SOC. Although the industry has not experienced a calamity on a scale similar to the 2003 Eastern Power Grid Blackout, I believe that the two networks have evolved to a similar state.

1.2 Overview

Telecommunications infrastructure became the first critical infrastructure sector in the United States following the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The confrontation between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev of the former Soviet Union, eventually led to the NCS (National Communications System) and the formation of the NSTAC—National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee—created by President Reagan (EO12382–1982) to advise the President of the United States on matters pertaining to the security and well-being of telecommunications. The first critical infrastructure sector was renamed the Communications Sector by the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 [1]. Regardless of its name, telecommunications security has always been on the forefront of homeland security even before the creation of the US Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

The communications sector, like many other fundamental infrastructure sectors, has a long and rich history of evolutionary change. Generally speaking, power, energy, telecommunications, and other interstate commerce sectors such as transportation have emerged as complex adaptive systems, becoming very large, complex, and malleable networks with both strengths and weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses are a by-product of technical, economic, social, and regulatory policies of the United States, which have shaped these industries for over 100 years. Generally, it is believed that these forces are responsible for the current state of SOC for this sector.

This chapter develops a framework for understanding this complex adaptive system. Note that it is a system, which is more than merely a collection of components. Network modeling is a natural way to simplify and understand the rudiments of complex systems, and in particular the architecture of such systems. A network represents a system as a collection of nodes connected by links. For example, a social network is a collection of people, represented by nodes, and their associations, represented by links. A telecommunications network may be modeled at several levels: the physical level model uses nodes to represent switches and links to represent wires. A telecommunications network model might also equate nodes with buildings containing thousands of switches, and links with thousands of fiber optical cables. Networks are abstract mathematical objects that serve only to represent what is of most interest to the study of a system.

Determination of individual asset security has very little payoff for homeland security. For one thing, it is too expensive to protect every asset, and for another thing, it is not necessary. Knowing that a transformer in a power grid or a telephone pole in a telecommunication system is vulnerable to a terrorist attack or natural disaster such as a hurricane, tells us very little about the vulnerability of the larger system. Because of the complexity, interdependencies, and varying criticalities of large and complex systems that span the entire nation—or major portions of it—we must understand the system's architecture. Network models allow us to study large and complex system architectures as evolving systems so we can understand system vulnerabilities and derive strategies to deal with them. The immediate objective, then, is to protect the entire telecommunications infrastructure by judicious selection of critical components. A longer term, more ambitious objective is to suggest measures that cause wholesale restructuring of the telecommunications sector such that it is intrinsically more secure.

1.3 Evolutionary Forces That Shape the Sector

In some sense the communications sector has come full circle: from digital to analog, and then back to digital. Its creators envisioned a system somewhat like today's Internet, that is, a global broadcast network that connected everyone to everyone else. But their vision was limited by available technology going back over 200 years ago. Samuel Morse (1791–1872) perfected the first commercially successful digital system called the Telegraph, and demonstrated it in 1844 by transmitting Morse Code (dots and dashes are equivalent to the binary 1s and 0s of today) from Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Western Union transmitted digital messages much like today's e-mail from coast to coast in 1861. Thus was born the first electronic communication network for transmitting disembodied messages between a pair of humans. Technology was the limiting factor, but profitability would soon motivate rapid advances in technology, obsolescing digital telephony almost immediately.

Western Union enjoyed a brief monopoly of the electronic communication business until 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) successfully transmitted his voice over an analog channel to Mr. Watson, his assistant. Bell filed his “telephone patent” only a few hours ahead of Elisha Gray (1835–1901) of Western Electric. (Western Electric made the telephones and switching equipment for exchanges.) He founded the Bell Telephone Company and quickly built the first telephone exchange network in Hartford, Connecticut in 1877. Bell later purchased Western Electric from Elisha Gray in 1882, and proceeded to create one of the largest of many vertical monopolies of the twentieth century. Bell Telephone linked two cities (New York and Boston) together in 1883, but it would take the company nearly another 60 years to subscribe 50% of the population. The first mobile telephone did not appear until 1946! Compare this to the rate of adoption of the video tape recorder in the 1980s (12 years to reach 50%), and the rapid adoption of most new technologies today, such as the iPod, Internet e-mail, and cellular handsets.

Historically and politically, it is important to note that the first cellular telephone network (1979) was built in Japan rather than the United States. Through most of the twentieth century, communications in the United States consisted mainly of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) owned and operated by AT&T. This slow pace of technology innovation by a vertical monopoly led to radical changes in the industry, primarily to stimulate innovation and rapid adoption of new technologies. Slow adoption of new technology would become one of the factors leading to deregulation of the communications industry in 1996.

Patent litigation in 1879 separated voice and data: Justice allowed Bell Telephone to operate voice networks and Western Union to operate data networks (basically stock market quotes). This artificial separation between voice and data would become a barrier to advancement of telephony until invention of the Internet in 1969, and its commercialization in 1998. Even today, the network neutrality movement is about content, that is, whether voices, dates, pictures, etc. should be priced separately or not. The network neutrality advocates rightly claim that all information is digital, so how can telephone and telecommunications companies charge separate rates for different encodings of ones and zeros? So far, the network neutrality advocates have won, and this has not become a force shaping the sector.

1.3.1 Unregulated Beginnings

Table 1.1 lists major events in the evolution and shaping of the telecommunications sector. This timeline has four distinct periods: Unregulated, Telecom War, Regulated, and Deregulated. From 1877 to 1898, the industry was mainly unregulated. During this period, a large number of local companies emerged to serve local customers. This produced a large number of isolated and heavily connected networks characterized by dense wiring clustered around a small number of central switching offices. Even after consolidation set in, the resulting networks were clustered and highly focused on local calls. (Highly clustered networks are more resilient and less vulnerable to failures and attacks than today's national-scale communication networks).

Table 1.1 Major Events in the Evolution of Telecommunications Regulation

1837–1873 Telegraphy was first digital communication system

1866 Western Union becomes first telecom monopoly

1876 Bell demonstrates first operating telephone

1878 5600 telephones in use

1882 109,000 telephones in use

1885 AT&T incorporated for long-distance service

1894 Bell's patents expire

1898 Telecom War begins… through 1934.

1899 AT&T reorganized as an IP holding company

1903 Telephone industry dominated by independents

1907 AT&T reorganized and controlled by J. P. Morgan

1911 AT&T vertically integrated: Western Electric, Long Lines

1913 US DOJ sues AT&T claiming violation of Sherman Antitrust Act.

1924 AT&T owns 223 of 234 independents!

1934 Telecommunications Act of 1934

1934–1974 Vertical Monopoly Period

1974–1984 DOJ suit leads to breakup of AT&T

1996 Telecommunications Act of 1996

1996 LECs win court battle establishing states right to set retail prices

1.3.2 The Telecom War

A “telecom war” broke out among competitors after Bell's patents expired, prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to step in and enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. While the case against AT&T was very similar to the Sherman Antitrust Act case against Microsoft, the action against AT&T was much more severe. The government forced AT&T to stop buying independent telephone companies without their permission; it required AT&T to interoperate with its competitors [the local exchange carriers (LECs), in today's language]; and required AT&T to divest its control of the Western Electric Manufacturing Company whereas Microsoft was merely fined and allowed to remain intact after being found guilty of violating the 1890 Act.

While the action against AT&T may have seemed severe, AT&T owned 223 of the 224 independent companies within a decade of the 1913 ruling! This illustrates one of the primary factors affecting and shaping many infrastructure systems: increasing returns. Increasing returns in economics says the more a certain commodity exists, the more valuable it becomes. In this case, increasing returns drove AT&T toward a monopoly: the more customers connected by the AT&T network, the more valuable the network became. The more valuable it became, the more customers wanted to subscribe. This spiral ended up with AT&T in the monopoly catbird seat.

Increasing returns accelerates the adoption of one technology and service over another, because it standardizes the user interface, exhibits the compounding network effect of being able to communicate with more people over a large network versus a small network, and motivates the owner operator to amortize fixed costs over an ever larger customer base.

In network terms, increasing returns is a kind o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• 1 Telecommunication: Critical Infrastructure Protection
• 2 Strategies for Protecting the Telecommunications Sector
• 3 Wireless Security
• 4 Detection of Hidden Information, Covert Channels and Information Flows
• 5 Inherently Secure Next-Generation Computing and Communication Networks for Reducing Cascading Impacts
• 6 The Sensor Web: Advanced Technology for Situational Awareness
• 7 Consequence Mitigation: Current Research and Future Trends
• Index