Page 1366 - (ISC)² CISSP Certified Information Systems Security Professional Official Study Guide

used to reach the real victim, making the trail harder to follow back to
the true attacker.

Military and Intelligence Attacks

Military and intelligence attacks are launched primarily to obtain
secret and restricted information from law enforcement or military
and technological research sources. The disclosure of such information
could compromise investigations, disrupt military planning, and

threaten national security. Attacks to gather military information or
other sensitive intelligence often precede other, more damaging
attacks.

An attacker may be looking for the following kinds of information:

Military descriptive information of any type, including deployment
information, readiness information, and order of battle plans

Secret intelligence gathered for military or law enforcement

purposes
Descriptions and storage locations of evidence obtained in a

criminal investigation

Any secret information that could be used in a later attack

Because of the sensitive nature of information collected and used by
the military and intelligence agencies, their computer systems are
often attractive targets for experienced attackers. To protect from
more numerous and more sophisticated attackers, you will generally

find more formal security policies in place on systems that house such
information. As you learned in Chapter 1, “Security Governance
Through Principles and Policies,” data can be classified according to
sensitivity and stored on systems that support the required level of
security. It is common to find stringent perimeter security as well as
internal controls to limit access to classified documents on military
and intelligence agency systems.

You can be sure that serious attacks to acquire military or intelligence
information are carried out by professionals. Professional attackers
are generally very thorough in covering their tracks. There is usually
very little evidence to collect after such an attack. Attackers in this