Advanced Tools for Information Warfare

All modern military and commercial organization rely heavily upon information stored on internetted computers. In the commercial world, protection of this information from electronic espionage has become essential. In the military environment, information defense, exploitation, and attach have become important components of warfare. There is, therefore, a national need to come to terms with Information Warfare (IW) by developing advanced technology that can be used both for protecting and attacking information. ORINCON and Kaman Sciences Corporation propose the development of an Information Warfare system that combines Distributed Intelligent Agents (DIAs) with the leading intrusion detection tool, Ice-Pick. The system, called Distributed Vulnerability Assessment System (DVAS), uses Ice-Pick's ability to identify vulnerabilities and distributes network penetrations using ORINCON's DIA technology. DVAS will permit distributed coordinated attacks on network systems instead of being limited by the current localized approaches. Our knowledge-based approach facilitates continuing upgrades to DVAS as new vulnerabilities and new systems are encountered. In addition, it will accept products and data obtained by other information system sources (spin-on), thus keeping the system current as new information becomes available. This powerful system provides tremendous potential for spin-off to other sectors, including commercial and other government systems.