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Senate confirmed Bobby Ray Inman's nomination
Ronald Reagan asked Inman who was at the time the NSA director to become the deputy director of the CIA. Inman was able to create joint CIA-NSA teams and boosted both agencies' budgets.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
NSDD-145, "National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security" signed
This prescient document was when the first laptop had just gone on the market and this document stated that these new devices were "highly susceptible to interception, unauthorized electronic access, and related forms of technical exploitation." This document put the National Security Agency in charge of securing all computer servers and networks in the United States.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
Federal office building blown up in Oklahoma City
A small gang of militant anarchists, led by Timothy McVeigh, blew up a federal office building killing 168 people, injuring 600 more, and destroying 325 buildings across a 16 block radius, resulting in $600 million in damage. This led to President Clinton signing PDD-39 (next timeline event).
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
PDD-39, "U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism" signed
Bill Clinton signed a Presidential Decision Directive putting Attorney General Janel Reno in charge of a "cabinet committee" to review and reduce the number of vulnerabilities of "government facilities" and "critical national infrastructure." This was essentially signed because of the Federal office building that was blown up.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
Instruction 3510.01, "No-Notice Interoperability Exercise Program" issued
General John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued the Instruction 3510.01 authorizing and describing the scenario for Eligible Receiver. This was a three-phase scenario that dealt with launching a coordinated attack on the critical infrastructures and also involved a massive attack on the military's telephone, fax, and computer networks.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
Eligible Receiver exercise launched
25 members of the NSA "Red Team" hacked into the computer networks of the Department of Defense, using only commercially available equipment and software. This was the first high-level exercise testing whether the U.S. military's leaders facilities, and global combatant commands were prepared for a cyber attack.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
Critical Infrastructure Protection report released
154 page report of how to move forward. Essentially it stated that "all of us need to recognize that the cyber revolution brings us into a new age as surely as the industrial revolution did two centuries ago."
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
Marsh, R. T. (1997, October). Critical Foundations Protecting America’s Infrastructures. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from https://fas.org/sgp/library/pccip.pdf -
National Plan for Information Systems Protection: Defending America's Cyberspace
President Clinton signed this 159-page document that Richard Alan Clarke had wrote. He proposed that hooking up all civilian government agencies and eventually the critical infrastructure companies to a Federal Intrusion Detection Network (FIDNET). It would ultimately detect an intrusion and automatically send off an alert.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace signed
This 60-page document was signed by President Bush that contained more passages kowtowing to industry. It assigned some responsibility for securing nonmilitary cyberspace to the new Department of Homeland Security. It set a framework for how cyber security would be handled over the next several years and limit the government's ability to handle it all.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
NSPD-54 signed
8 months after McConnell's big briefing, Bush signed a national security presidential directive, NSPD-54 which cited the dangers posed by AMerica's cyber vulnerabilities and ordered Hathway's plan into action as the remedy. Ultimately, the plan's mission was to protect the computer networks of mainly civilian agencies.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
PPD-20, U.S. Cyber Operations Policy signed
President Obama signed the new presidential policy directive, PPD-20, institutionalizing cyber attacks as an integral tool of American diplomacy and war.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. -
"Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity" signed
President Obama signed an executive order that involved setting up forums in which private companies could share data about the hackers in their midst - with one another and with government agencies.This was to beef up the Information Sharing and Analysis Centers that Richard Clarke had set up and established while Clinton was president.
Sources:
Kaplan, F. (2016). Dark Territory The Secret History of Cyber War. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
