Report: Countries prepping for cyberwar
Countries armed with "cyberweapons," according to McAfee.
(Credit: McAfee)In particular, countries gearing up for cyberoffensives are the U.S., Israel, Russia, China, and France, the says the report, compiled by former White House Homeland Security adviser Paul Kurtz and based on interviews with more than 20 experts in international relations, national security and Internet security.
"We don't believe we've seen cases of cyberwarfare," said Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee. "Nations have been reluctant to use those capabilities because of the likelihood that [a big cyberattack] could do harm to their own country. The world is so interconnected these days."
Threats of cyberwarfare have been hyped for decades. There have been unauthorized penetrations into government systems since the early ARPANET days and it has long been known that the U.S. critical infrastructure is vulnerable.
However, experts are putting dots together and seeing patterns that indicate that there is increasing intelligence gathering and building of sophisticated cyberattack capabilities, according to the report titled "Virtually Here: The Age of Cyber Warfare."
"While we have not yet seen a 'hot' cyberwar between major powers, the efforts of nation-states to build increasingly sophisticated cyberattack capabilities, and in some cases demonstrate a willingness to use them, suggest that a 'Cyber Cold War' may have already begun," the report says.
Because pinpointing the source of cyberattacks is usually difficult if not impossible, the motivations can only be speculated upon, making the whole cyberwar debate an intellectual exercise at this point. But the report offers some theories.
For instance, Alperovitch speculates that the July 4 attacks denial-of-service on Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea could have been a test by an foreign entity to see if flooding South Korean networks and the transcontinental communications between the U.S. and South Korea would disrupt the ability of the U.S. military in South Korea to communicate with military leaders in Washington, D.C., and the Pacific Command in Hawaii.
"The ability of the North Koreans to disable cybercommunications between the U.S. and South Korea would give them a huge strategic advantage" if they were to attack South Korea, he said.
There have been earlier attacks that smack of cyberwarfare too. Estonian government and commercial sites suffered debilitating denial-of-service attacks in 2007, and last year sites in Georgia were attacked during the South Ossetia war, orchestrated by civilian attackers, the report says.
The report concludes that if we aren't seeing it already, cyberwarfare will be a reality soon enough.
"Over the next 20 to 30 years, cyberattacks will increasingly become a component of war," William Crowell, a former NSA deputy director, is quoted as saying. "What I can't foresee is whether networks will be so pervasive and unprotected that cyberwar operations will stand alone."
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
America will use the threat of shutting off critical infrastructure of countries if political leaders don't agree to deals that America want to make with others.
This (cyber war / cyber terrorism) is a far more clean cut and covert 'serious consequences' punishment than sending in the B-52's or sending in CIA human assets on the ground to carry out over throw ops against a government not complying with trade and industry deals between governments in the east and west.
This what you see on media outlets is a secret war build up that is due to be played out as soon as U.S intelligence are happy Obama has done enough to secure cyber.
U.S can't carry out the ops it wants to carry out in the cyber domain until its country has met a certain standard of cybersecurity which it is currently not met.
The U.S can only carry out pocket attacks right now on small countries such as Estonia, Georgia etc because U.S isn't fully secure yet to defend a counter attack that would be expected against a cyber offensive carried out by U.S.
The strategy is to make all attacks appear to be coming from Russia or other enemy state of the U.S., the U.S are ininfiltrating computers of those states, as well as covert ops by CIA to physically plant malcode within major defence companies and technology makers.
The U.S are too scared to carry out a major cyber offensive right now cause their cyber infrastructure security is poor, as soon as it isn't U.S plan cyber attacks on major countries.
Because of the poor U.S cyber defense capability right now, U.S only have limited cyber offensive capability, its all U.S have the gutts to do right now until their cybersecurity is shored up.
If China starts something, there will be massive boycotts of Chinese-made products. As pervasive as they are, we can certainly find other sources fairly quickly.
Russia could cause problems, but I'm not sure what they would gain other than pissing many countries off.
For sure these media reports are hype, but the threat of cyber war could become a problem once U.S manages to shore up cyber defenses.
U.S is more than capable of carrying out a cyber offensive on major countries right now, they can't use that capability to the full though without a defense posture to match to fend off a counter-strike.
If U.S hit a major city of a powerful country right now with a cyber attack, the country they hit would take down the U.S cyber infrastructure in no time.
U.S can't afford that possiblity at-the-moment of a counter-strike taking out the U.S., so U.S are playing it cool until the next 5 to 10 years when the political system in U.S has finally got cyber defenses in the private and public sector properly shored up.
The real time people should get worried about cyber war is when there is evidence the white house has managed to get the cyber defenses sorted out then you'll start to see U.S becoming far more agressive in its cyber activities as a political weapon.
In short, you can't go on a major cyber offensive without an adequate cyber defense, thats where we're at right now with U.S
If you need to shut down say weapons production in an industrial area, you may have several choices - maybe sending in a large military presence to fight their way in, or just bombing the heck out of the area. Both costly as far as financially, loss of life, and potential media fallout if there are large civilian casualties. What if you can send in a special forces unit or two to just take out a major component in the power station that feeds the plant that could take weeks or months to repair? Crippling ground communication lines in the first gulf war by special forces units was a major mission objective. Blowing the fiber-optic network lines and then placing mines around the access point for the first crew to respond for repair worked pretty well. Now we are getting to the point where you may not have to drop a bomb, fire a bullet, or risk any troops. If you can cripple the infrastructure of a country with cyber-attacks rather getting into an on the ground war then why wouldn't you?
Nobody cares about web site defacement, thats the least of it. The website defacements are usually carried out by civilian sympathizers not connected or sponsored by government or military.
It's not of interest to a government or military to deface web sites, the units in the government and military don't want you to know they are responsible for anything, they want to remain stealth.
For a government or military to deface a web site would be giving away clues, thats not something they would do.
You'll see website defacement during cyber war although they won't be of the actual unit carrying out an operation, its sympathizers doing it.
Music/movie industry will as well because it will make piracy much harder.
And remember, in this country all you have to do is say its not patriotic or "because of security concerns" and you can have your way of any security policy no matter how ridiculous.
How many telecom companies tear apart their servers and routers to find the purpose of every single chip? Would an AV program catch something that resides at the hardware BIOS level, simply listening for it's coded command to wreck havok?
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39417171,00.htm
And having a separate internet would only create a false sense of security. Somewhere along the line, it would be penetrated. If banks, hospitals, and the military use separate but parallel networks, it's because they want to ensure better speeds for their critical data. They're not blind to the fact they could be hacked.
I mean, the only way to get connected 'safe' is by running a separated net, separated from the internet!
I thought any major government, and especially the military knew this by now...
You think they're not doing that already? Please. Sun Tsu - Art of War, man.
- by nauj_solrac November 18, 2009 10:30 AM PST
- It's good to see Canada is not involved in any of this cyberwar cr@p!
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(22 Comments)We are peaceful and diplomatic. =)