FBI Defends Cyber Investigation Capabilities

Exclusive: An FBI official argues that an audit finding insufficient national cybersecurity investigation skills doesnt reflect current expertise and results.

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The FBIs field offices lack the skills and expertise that they require for investigating national cybersecurity intrusions, with many field offices facing a shortage of forensic investigators and intelligence analysts, as well as tactical intelligence for guiding investigations.
Those are some of the top-level findings from a Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
audit
of the FBIs computer intrusion investigation capabilities, released last week.
The audit, started in 2008 as an assessment of the FBIs
computer intrusion investigation
capabilities, grew to encompass the bureaus ability to investigate national security computer intrusions by the audits completion in 2010. The audit also assessed the effectiveness of the FBI-led, multi-agency task force known as the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). Created in 2008 when President Obama established the
Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative
, the task forces job is to coordinate intelligence and investigations into national cybersecurity intrusions across 18 intelligence and law enforcement agencies. For the report, auditors interviewed personnel at FBI headquarters, in 10 field offices, and at the NCIJTF.
According to the audit, 36% of FBI of cyber agents thought they lacked the necessary IT expertise for handling national security intrusions, and five out of 36 agents interviewed told the auditor that they didnt think they were skilled enough to investigate national security intrusions. In addition, the audit found that sharing intelligence information between agencies could be challenging, with the reasons for withholding information not always being clear to all participants. Finally, it questioned the FBIs approach to rotating cyber personnel to new offices every three years.
But in an exclusive interview, Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director of the FBIs cyber division, largely disputed those findings. On the skills front, for example, he said the audit paints an out-of-date picture of the bureaus cyber-investigation capabilities and results. We have a very limited sample size of data thats years old, thats going down to the individual level of five agents, that ignores the fact that these agents were in training, and that these agents work in an environment thats conducive to success, he said in a telephone interview.
The FBI has been heavily adjusting its approach to cyber investigations over the past few years. In particular, the bureau has created a cyber-focused training program that mixes real-world experience with classroom learning. Some of these situations youll never be able to learn in a classroom, because some of our adversaries are using zero-day exploits which by definition youve never seen before, said Chabinsky. Agents are also part of a squad of experienced personnel, and backed by FBI agents with extremely specialized knowledge who are part of a cyber-action team that can quickly deploy to assist with investigations onsite.
Hence, instead of focusing on the subjective opinions of interviewed agents who were in the process of being trained, Chabinsky said that observers should examine the FBIs results, which he said the report largely ignores. Case success is relegated to a footnote that said there have been some successes which are beyond the classification level of the report, he said.
Praise For The FBIs Cyber Unit
The FBIs cyber unit and the NCIJTF have received praise for their results, notably from the Office of the Directorate of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees the NCIJTF and evaluates its performance on a quarterly basis. In August 2009, the ODNI praised the task force for having been the driving force behind the transformation of cyber threats from a fragmented and reactive individual agency response, to a unified and highly successful proactive national effort that established itself as a national center of excellence.
Industry experts have also lauded the NCIJTF. It is the best interagency cooperation program anywhere in cybersecurity--with every key agency actually helping on real cases, hunting down the attackers, said Alan Paller, director of research for information security training company SANS, in an email interview. They are also effective in finding evidence of actual attacks and warning corporations and agencies that those organizations have been penetrated and data has been stolen. Along with the [National Security Agency vulnerability analysis and operations group], it is the best cybersecurity program we have.
If theres a shortcoming of the NCIJTF--or the FBIs cyber unit--its that they have too many cases for the number of people they have, but that brings us around to the problem of skills, said Paller. The colleges are graduating people who can talk about security, but have no forensics or intrusion detection or exploit skills.
What will help, he said, are internal agency training programs, as well as
outreach efforts
, such as the U.S. Cyber Challenge--championed by Shawn Henry, executive assistant director of the FBIs criminal, cyber, response and services branch, said Paller--which focuses on fostering high-schoolers and college students interest and expertise in information security.

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FBI Defends Cyber Investigation Capabilities