All language subtitles for Spycraft.S01E07.1080p.WEB.H264-STRONTiUM_track8_[eng]

[atmospheric music plays]

[narrator] Codes and ciphers
have been used to protect secrets

from ancient times to modern day.

Breaking these codes and ciphers

is crucial spycraft
for successful espionage.

[man 1] And it gave us vital information

that we needed, for example,
around the D-Day invasions.

[narrator] As codes are broken,

more complex systems
are developed to protect them.

[man 1]
They created 11 models of Colossus,

which was the world's
first electronic computer.

[narrator] Nevertheless, advancements
in technology come with risks.

[man 2] But to go into the ones and zeros

and discover a vulnerability
you can exploit.

-That's the next level.
-[narrator] Next level technology

seeks to override the safety measures
of cryptography.

[man 3] Unlike physical attacks,

cyber-related attacks
have a immediate impact.

They don't need to send bombs.

[suspenseful music playing]

How bad can it get?

I've used words
catastrophic and existential.

[narrator] As the threat intensifies,

so does the job of the codebreaker.

They always describe the espionage
as a chess match.

It's the same thing with electronics.

[theme music]

[narrator] Codes and ciphers
have played an important role

in keeping information private
throughout history.

What began with secret writings
to hide information

has progressed
to electro-mechanical ciphers

and then computers to send messages,
and to decipher and break them.

Today, cyber espionage
is used by intelligence agencies

and adversaries alike,

and has proved a useful strategy
in the collection or corruption of data,

stealing technology and patents,
disrupting critical infrastructures,

and allowing for advanced warning
of an enemy's attack.

Every government in history
has prized secrecy,

and has understood the importance
of being able to communicate

among the leaders,
and among their various embassies,

in a way that could not be read
by their opponents.

[narrator] Codes and ciphers
can be used to send messages

that can be communicated secretly,

but the two are often confused.

[Melton] So if you use a code word,
Geronimo,

it may mean we successfully
assassinated Osama Bin Laden.

One word means many things.

A cipher, in the contrast, is a particular
type of code which usually means

that letters had been transposed
or interchanged,

so that a message that had 550 characters

may still again have 550 characters,

but they've been arranged in a way

that they're unreadable
without the key to the cipher.

Ciphers are a form of codes.

Thomas Jefferson,

one of the founding fathers
of the United States,

and a great statesman,

realized the value
of secret correspondence.

And in his papers,

were found the plans for a device
we call the Jeffersonian cipher wheel.

You had a rod,

and you would assemble
the disks in a certain order.

Once they were assembled,

you would adjust each disk
when properly aligned,

here were now
the characters of your message.

You would then arbitrarily pick a number,
let's say ten.

You would then go
to the 10th row of letters above that,

which'll just be gobbledygook,

and you would write down those letters,

and that is what you would send
as your message.

Now the person
with the corresponding piece

had to know the order in which
the rotors would be assembled.

And once they did that,
they would simply align the letters,

so you would read the gobbledygook,

and then they would back off
ten characters,

and there would be the precise message.

In fact, it was so clever

that the U.S. government
found this in his files,

and in 1920,
began producing these for the U.S. Army,

and it was called the M94 Signal Device.

And it was actively used
in the U.S. military

between 1920
and the beginning of World War II.

[narrator] Back in Jefferson's time,

ciphers and secret writings
depended on algorithms

created by the human mind.

But between 1915 and 1924,

things changed with the advent of a device

called the Hebron Electric Rotor Machine.

For the very first time,

it was possible to produce
a stream of ciphers

created by an electromechanical
rotor system

that could not be solved
by human minds alone.

And it was the first
of a series of rotor systems

that would be used over the next 50 years

that would change
how ciphers were created.

[narrator] In 1924,
a man named Arthur Scherbius

took the same basic concept
and created what would be

one of the most important
cipher devices of the 20th century,

the German Enigma cipher machine.

And his idea was

that each machine

contained a series of rotors.

Each rotor had 26 settings

that could be changed,

and in the front of the machine

were a series of Stécker or cords

that was a plug board arrangement.

And the idea was,

it would take two people
to operate the Enigma.

And the first person
would take the clear text message

and he would press the letter A,
for example,

if that's the first letter of the message.

And the message would then go from that A,

down to the plug board,
and the plug board

would route it to a different number
or a different letter.

That letter would in turn
go to the first rotor,

into one of 26 permutations.

Then it would go into the second rotor,
26 permutations,

the third rotor, 26 permutations,
hit a reflector,

come back times 26, times 26, times 26,

come into the plug board,

and then another light would be lit.

When it had completed its 26 rotations,
which was called a jumbo,

then all of the rotors moved.

And the combination
of the complexity of this device

was greater than human minds
could decipher.

And the advantages of it

quickly were recognized
by the German military.

It was adopted in the early 1930s

as the primary communication tool

of the Wehrmacht, the German military,
the Luftwaffe.

[siren blaring]

[explosions in distance]

[narrator] The Enigma Machine
played a crucial part

in the communication
among the Nazi forces during World War II.

In the early 1930s,

Polish codebreakers had developed
a machine called the Bomba

that had successfully deciphered
some of the Enigma messages,

but the Germans kept modifying it
to make it more complex.

The British and their allies
were determined to break it,

and in 1939,

the British Government
set up a code and cipher school

known as Station X at Bletchley Park
just outside of London.

And it was built around
the Bletchley Park Manor.

That and a large number of huts.

And the huts contained different groups

which were attacking individual

Enigma ciphers.

[narrator] Every message
transmitted by the Nazis

went through British listening posts,

which were copied down
in their code groups

and telegraphed to the secret army
of codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

The British described any intelligence
gained from Enigma as Ultra

and considered it top secret.

[Melton] And it gave us vital information
that we needed, for example,

around the D-Day invasions.

And it helped us understand

the success of some
of our deception operations

and helped us to tweak them
to try to confuse the Germans.

[narrator] But the real game changer
was Alan Turing,

a 24-year-old mathematical genius.

[Melton] Turing, during World War II,
worked at Bletchley Park,

the government code and cipher school,

and spent his time
attacking the German Enigma cipher.

[narrator] Turing came up
with the idea behind Colossus,

a set of computers developed
to help in cryptanalysis.

During World War II,
they created 11 models of Colossus,

which was the world's
first electronic computer.

It was one
of the great accomplishments of the war.

Historians estimate
that it shortened World War II

by between two and four years.

Turing, however, as brilliant as he was,
had a very troubled personal life.

He was a homosexual
at a time that homosexuality

was seen as a disability

and seen as a vulnerability
for recruitment by foreign spies.

His security clearances were revoked
in the early 1950s, and very sadly,

he committed suicide
by biting into a poisoned apple,

and the world lost one of our great minds.

It's very interesting today
and probably only a coincidence,

but if you look at the logo
of Apple computer,

you'll see an apple with a bite out of it,

and though they disclaim
any association with Alan Turing,

it certainly seems, at one level,

someone was paying homage to Turing

and his role in creating
the world's first electronic computer.

[narrator] Enigma's settings offered
158 quintillion possible solutions,

yet the Allies were eventually
able to crack its code.

Thanks to the advances made by Alan Turing
and other codebreakers today,

mathematicians and scientists

are developing next level
quantum computing.

[Bigman] In terms
of espionage collection,

quantum computing just basically
makes cryptography

potentially more difficult,
because now people say,

"Well, you're using algorithms
that are known to be breakable."

Yeah, they're known to be breakable,

but it's going to take you
a long time to break them.

The information
at that point's perishable.

Now we're talking
a different game all together.

So if all the encryption
algorithms we're using

can be broken by the opposition

at the same speed
you're actually using it,

when you're decrypting it with the key

and they're decrypting it
with quantum computing,

ugh, that gets a little difficult.

[narrator] Modern computers,

highly advanced versions
of the ones used in Bletchley Park,

now dominate the world of cryptology.

In an age when billions of people,
governments, and rogue states

are digitally connected,

today's scientists and hackers

have discovered
that it is possible to use malware

to steal data off your digital device

that completely evades the protections
built with cryptography.

Spyware is a software that can be planted

by adversarial parties on your system.

They have the ability
to collect information.

They can collect your passwords.

They can record your conversations.

If you are making webinar calls
or phone calls using your computer,

they can turn on your camera
and record anything that you are doing.

All these are part
of the spyware activities.

And that can be used against the person
or against the government.

Foreign entities can use
this information about people

who have clearances, for instance,
can go and target those people.

[Gosler] It's not just a normal level
of technical sophistication

that gives you this kind of capability,

but to go into the micro-electronics,
and go into the ones and zeros

and discover a vulnerability
within that system that you can exploit.

That's next level.

There are multiple definitions
for cyber warfare,

but they generally all come down
to the same thing.

It's using techniques

to attack another country

over an electronic or cyber means,

without resulting to physical warfare,

but you're still causing
significant damage and harm to the target.

[narrator]
Between 2000 and 2003,

a series of widespread
cyberespionage attacks

code-named Titan Rain

were launched against
the American defense infrastructure,

targeting high-level organizations like
NASA, Sandia, and Lockheed Martin.

[Melton] The longest running attack

against the United States
has been Titan Rain,

which targeted specifically
at our intelligence services.

[narrator] The cyberattacks
extradited vital information,

and left behind virtually undetectable
beacons on compromised systems,

allowing them to reenter at will.

They averaged approximately
10-30 minutes per attack

and transmitted to drop zones located
in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

prior to forwarding the data
on to mainland China.

And it happens thousands and thousands
of times a day, an hour,

repeated attacks against our systems.

And it's never let up.

[narrator] Investigators discovered
the cyber breaches

were part of state sponsored
cyber espionage attacks

conducted by
the People's Republic of China.

Some of the information exfiltrated
included aerospace documentation,

schematics from the Mars Orbiter,

and flight planning software used
by the United States Air Force.

Another dramatic act of espionage
was discovered in 2010

and involved a multi-nation cyberattack

against Iran's nuclear program.

It was called Stuxnet.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Melton] Stuxnet

exists because it was written

to attack the Siemens 7 operating system

that ran in a Windows environment
in the plants in Iran

where they spun the centrifuges
to enrich the uranium.

[Bigman] The Stuxnet attack,
which allegedly was done by combinations

of Israel, the United States,
western Europe,

as time goes by, the population gets
larger and larger of who was involved,

attacked Iranian development
nuclear production capabilities,

and brought down various systems

basically by being able
to infect them with a virus.

[narrator] Since the Iranian computer
systems didn't connect to the internet,

the Stuxnet virus had to be introduced
into the operating system

through other more clandestine means.

I've heard remote maintenance access.

I've heard the laptop, they walked in,
connected the laptop.

You know, every possible means
will be postulated as an attack.

[narrator] A popular theory

is that the Stuxnet virus
was introduced to the system

through infected thumb drives placed
around the  nuclear facility in Iran.

If you had a very high-grade thumb drive,

and you drop them selectively
in parking lots

or you dropped them from the air,
or you somehow introduced them,

someone's going to finally take
and put that into the machine

to see who it belongs to.

And that's all it takes is one time
to basically infect it.

[narrator] The exact method
of how the thumb drives were introduced

has never been revealed,

but the plan worked

and Stuxnet penetrated
Iran's operating system and attacked.

[Melton] What the system did was,
it went to the Siemens controller,

and it sent a signal then to the operator

who's manning the speed
of the centrifuges that says,

"This centrifuge is slowing down,"

which would mean the operator
would want to turn up the speed

to increase it working.

But that was a fake signal.

And the more he turned it up,
the more it appeared to slow down.

And so the operators kept turning up
the speed of the centrifuges,

and in effect,

they tore themselves apart,

and literally it destroyed
a significant component

of the Iranian system
for enriching uranium.

It was a very, very effective attack,

and the world's probably a bit safer
for a while longer because of it.

[narrator] It's not only
big government installations

and organizations that are getting hit.

Cyberattacks happen
wherever there are loopholes or open ports

that can be exploited,

like our own personal devices.

Today, every person
carries with them a machine

that's more powerful than Enigma,

a cell phone.

[dialing tones, line calling]

So where you're at, you're usually
carrying a cell phone with you.

So all your positioning information,
where you've been, where you're going,

you know, 'cause you've got things
in your calendar,

you've sent messages to people, um…

all that information,
I'm not saying is being collected,

but all that information can be collected.

[Comeleguia] The modern smartphone
as we know today,

has evolved over the decade.

The processing power embedded
in these systems are immense.

They have the ability
to do cryptography on the fly

as a part of the hardware.

This adds significant benefits
for individuals but, for adversaries,

it allows them to capture a great deal
of private information about you.

[narrator] Not only are adversaries able
to exploit information stolen from you,

they can also benefit
from some of the same applications.

[tense music playing]

In late November 2008,

the Lashkar-e-Taiba,

the Pakistani terrorist group,

launched a sophisticated
coordinated attack

against the city of Mumbai.

It was so effective

that it's the first attack
that used cell phones

as weapons of mass disruption.

[narrator] Ten individuals armed only
with cell phones, small arms,

and hand grenades were able
to paralyze Mumbai,

one of the largest cities in India,
and capture the attention of the world.

And it showed
how useful cell phones can be

to disrupt communications,
to plan an attack.

The Lashkar-e-Taiba layered 16 levels

of commercial off-the-shelf technology,

and enabled the terrorist
to communicate secretly,

and to be controlled in real time
by their handlers back in Pakistan.

In the same way that our U.S. military
has the advanced technology

that we can have cameras on a helmet,
or can have an earphone,

and you can talk to your command
structure back thousands of miles away

using only commercial technology,

the terrorists were able
to do the same thing

from their control points in Pakistan.

By swapping SIM cards, by swapping phones,
by taking phones from victims,

they were able to completely
confuse, confound,

and befuddle the Mumbai authorities.

They had no idea how many people
were attacking them.

Estimates were, it was between
one and 200 people.

In reality, it was ten lone individuals.

[narrator] Seven years
after the Mumbai attacks,

terrorist attacks on the cafés,
soccer stadium,

and Bataclan theater in Paris
showed striking similarities.

[sirens blaring]

[Melton] It was all coordinated by a cell

that was in Paris and in Brussels.

And they had known each other for years.

There was no advanced chatter
detected on the internet,

and they kept their communications
point-to-point encryptioned,

using systems

that were encrypted the entire way,

so there was no way
to get any advanced warning of it.

And it has to be the harbinger
of future terrorist attacks.

And it's frightening

when we don't have the pre-attack chatter
to help us be prepared.

[narrator] As our society becomes
more and more dependent on technology,

we also become more vulnerable
to potential attacks.

[Comeleguia] As the cities evolve,
they become smarter.

Today, your phone has the ability
to emit you are a pedestrian

in a smart city environment.

So when cars come too close
to the pedestrians,

the smart cars have the ability
to break and avoid the accident.

But at the same time,

that information can reveal your identity.

Adversaries can utilize that information

and turn car into
assassination device to attack a person.

Instead of stopping,
they can accelerate the car.

[narrator] With billions of people online
and every government sending out signals,

the sheer scale of the codebreakers' job
is mind boggling.

As a result, ciphers have become
increasingly complex.

[Bigman] Chess… They always describe
the espionage as a chess match, right?

You move, we countermove,
you move, we countermove.

Same thing with electronics.

[narrator] A hostile organization
having access to detailed information

about a person
or government is frightening.

But even more daunting are cyber assaults
that have the potential

to shut down a country's infrastructure.

[Melton] The closest we've ever seen
to a country being shut down

was the Russian attack on Estonia.

[Joyal] You have also the hacking
community in Russia who are told,

"You can steal as much as you want,

but when the knock comes on the door
in the middle of the night,

we ask you to do something,
you're gonna do it for us."

[narrator] By all accounts,

the knock on the door came
for The Republic of Estonia,

a tech-savvy nation
of 1.3 million, in April of 2007.

The Russians virtually attacked
the infrastructure of Estonia.

They shut down the newspapers,
the broadcasts.

They shut down Parliament.
They shut down the ministries.

ATMs stopped working.
The internet didn't work.

Their society was dependent on it.

[Joyal] They basically shut down
the e-conomy, electronic-based economy,

for a period of time.

They did not utilize their military
or intelligence assets.

They used the criminal underground

as a… in this covert action that was
obviously sanctioned by the government.

[narrator]
Cyberattacks on Estonia

targeted websites
of Estonian organizations,

including the Parliament, banks,
ministries, newspapers, and broadcasters.

They used ping floods and botnets
usually used for spam distribution.

Estonia had just rebuilt,
coming out of communism,

so everything was relatively new.

They had new infrastructure,
but they were dependent on the internet.

Everything was on the internet.

Suddenly that goes down, and they're
quickly thrown back decades almost into a,

not the stone age, nothing worked.

You couldn't draw money out.
You couldn't get gasoline.

You couldn't get food.

Cities were very vulnerable.
They taught that.

The Russians have a very effective
cyber warfare capability.

[narrator] Estonia was one victim
of cyber warfare by the Russians.

Then in 2016 Crimea,

a disputed territory under the control
of the Russian federation became another.

Then you see the culmination
of all of this with the Crimea invasion

in which we see
the so-called hybrid warfare,

little green men, electronic attacks.

Some of the first targets of the Spetsnaz,

special forces of the Russians
working undercover in Crimea

with a… telephone switching stations
because they took over those

and they started sending malware
into the broader cell phone networks

of Ukraine,

shutting down the ability of legislatures

to use their cell phones,
or government officials.

[narrator] Many believe
Russia's attack on Crimea

is only the beginning of what's to come.

[Joyal] Today, the war
that's going on in the Ukraine,

this is the testing ground
for electronic warfare,

for information warfare, for hacking.

They've used malware
to shut down the electrical systems.

This is a laboratory

that they are using
to perfect their science of new,

integrated, or hybrid warfare.

[Melton] Cyber warfare is a form
of asymmetrical warfare,

in that it enables a smaller actor
with smart people

to use a bunch of computers
and an internet service,

and essentially attack
a much larger opponent very effectively.

So at times,
depending on the size of your country,

it can be a very good response.

North Korea, Pakistan, China,

they have effective,
very effective cyber warfare capabilities.

So, many countries see it as very useful.

Of course, the allies, the U.S.,
Great Britain, Canada, Australia,

we have very effective
cyber warfare capabilities ourselves.

[Comeleguia] Unlike physical attacks,
cyber-related attacks,

because of the interconnected world,

can have immediate impact
on the performance of a city.

So with attacks
in critical infrastructure,

cities can be disabled
in a matter of minutes.

They don't need to send bombs.

[narrator] A city's critical
infrastructure might include

its power grid, water supply,
communications, transportation systems,

food supplies, financial services,
and nuclear power plants.

A cyberattack on one or more of these
systems could render a city helpless,

while a sustained attack
could have devastating consequences.

[Melton] If you stop ATM machines working,

you stop gas going into a city

and deliveries of food
in every major city,

within seven days it's expected
you'll have full all-on riots.

So the ability to launch a coordinated
attack against our infrastructure

could potentially be far worse
than Pearl Harbor.

[Gosler] One of the questions that I'm
frequently asked is how bad can it get,

and I've mentioned, I've used the words
catastrophic and existential

relative to the loss of everything

electrical, computer, power, et cetera.

[alarms blaring]

There's no comms, there's no--
cars are not working,

there's no power to the houses,

that means refrigeration doesn't work,
your cooking utensils don't work,

nothing works, and no one knows why.

Most everyone can survive a day
or a few days

based upon the supplies they have at home.

When you start getting to a week
it starts getting harder,

especially, you know,
there's no running water, right?

Very low likelihood
that this would happen,

but low likelihood catastrophic impact
that's worth thinking about,

so I would recommend
that everyone do that.

[Bigman] Anytime now something happens
in the world,

you know, an airplane loses power
in mid-air,

or something happens
to a communications network,

God forbid a local ISP
goes down for five seconds,

somebody will be writing,
"Oh, this is a potential--

possibly a hack from Iran."

Well, I don't think so.

You know, these networks are,
believe me, are--

they have some degree of reliability,

but they're sensitive to perturbations
of their infrastructure, so…

and lots of moving pieces
and things do go wrong.

[Joyal] First of all, the future is here.
The future is here.

This is going on,
and this is a challenge the U.S. has.

We got out of the business years ago

in electronic warfare,

because we did not believe
at the end of the Cold War,

that we would face Russia as a…

in a conventional
military setting in Europe.

Now, that has all changed.
We have to be concerned about that.

[Gosler] You basically have to deter it.

You can't defend against it,
so if you're a target,

if you would be a target of interest
of Russia today, or China today, they win.

You lose.

It's best not to be their target.

[Melton] Codes and ciphers are essential
for businesses to survive and exist,

for money to be transferred,
for our economy to work.

What we're struggling with is,

how do we see that
it's available for good use,

but don't have it available
so that the bad guys

can exploit it and do bad things?

And we haven't solved that question yet.

[atmospheric music playing]