CUBA AND THE THREAT OF ELECTRONIC HIGH TECHNOLOGY WEAPONS (PART I)

By Manuel Cereijo


NOVEMBER 2001

Cuba has worked extensively, with the cooperation of the PRC, on:

DEW- Directed energy weapons

HERF- High energy radio frequency

EMP - Electromagnetic pulse


The potential threat comes from the fact that an attacker can quickly assemble an arsenal of various high-technology weapons to capitalize on the weakness of Information Systems through DOS ( denial of service) attacks-rendering those systems unavailable.

The Information Warfare (IW) attacks on computers can be classified as attacks through legitimate gateways of the computers, such as modems and the keyboard (software attacks), and attacks through other than legitimate gateways (backdoor attacks). At the current technology level, backdoor attacks can be carried out mainly by utilizing radio frequency (RF) technology. Cuba and China are experimenting on these methods in a join effort in Cuba territory, mainly in the Bejucal Electronic Base, the electronic farms in Guines and Santiago de Cuba.

We have, as a taxonomy, the following Table. The Table describes the three main areas: DEW, HERF, EMP. There are those which are directed energy weapons ( DEWs) and those which are undirected (UEWs).


ELECTRONIC HIGH TECH WEAPONS


DEWDEWUEW
DEW DEW       
AIMED/FOCUSED/DIRECT CONNECTIONS/FX SPECIFIC     UNSPECIFIC
LASER BEAM     EMP, RF
PARTICLE BEAM EMPRF RF  
PLASMA BOLTS   LERF HERF  
TESLA DEATH RAY      
THE RAIL GUN      
CATTLE PROD      
STUN GUNS      

UEWs

The UEWs are unspecific, that is they are not aimed or focused. One premise underlies many special applications here. Any wire or electronic component is, in fact, an unintended antenna, both transmitting and receiving.Importantly, every such unintended antenna is particularly responsive to its specific resonance frequency, and to several related frequencies. If an objective is to eavesdrop on the device, then the EM emanations coming from functioning components of the device are received by highly sensitive receiving equpment and processed in order to duplicate information handled by the device. If an objective is to influence the device's functioning, then appropriate RF signals are transmitted to the targeted device.

Probably the best example of UEWs in the EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) are inadvertent problems of natural cause, like a lightning strike. In the case of LERF, we can consider the problems caused by cellular phones when they are close to a local area network (LAN)

( to be continued)



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