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On the Possibility of Information Warfare?
denisonbigred asks: "With all of the talks about disarming Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and all of the news coming out about Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups use of technology, I tend to wonder what is being done about the possibility of informational warfare. There must be a few geeks over in Iraq, and angry, subversive, geeks must be at least as dangerous as Iraq's rag-tag army. Is this a legitimate concern, and does anyone know what, if anything, is being done to address it?"
While 'information warfare' is important and all, I am far more worried bout regular warfare with guns, bombs, gas, and viruses than a couple downed routers. While the Iraqis could do damage, I do not think they could do anymore damage than any other enterprising cracker, hacker, or DDOS kiddie. Unless they are developing all new exploits that are 100% unknown by anyone else, the amount of damage they could do is not anything unusual compared to any other malicious group of people. I think people should focus on filtering out biochemical weapons and such from entering our country than a couple rouge packets. When all is said and done, security is in the hands of the adminstrators who are hopefully competentant to do their job if anything happens.
Its a matter of simple math for priorities:
DDOS attacks and such : Millions/Billions of dollars lost, productivity set back by several days, economy wobbles a little.
Chem/bio/nuclear weapon goes off in USA: thousands/millions killed, economy enters danger zones due to intense fears, world economy really shakes, martial law, major restrictions in freedom.
Personally, Id rather we loose millions/billions of dollars than see thousands/millions die. Keep in mind though, attacking (with real weapons) information-routing centers is a whole other matter and could be just as bad.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Unfortunatly, InfoWar isn't just hacking. According to the RAND publication "Strategic Information Warfare" ISBN: 0833023527
It deals with the various aspects of InfoWar and their implications. Your oversimpilification simply assumes that the worst possible thing would be a DDOS attack. Whereas you compare that to NBC (Nuclear,Bio, Chem) Weapontry.
InfoWarfare is roughly equivilent (in a strategic and policy sense) to terrorism mainly due to the fact that it does not recognize a "theatre" of war, and simply has the ability to target everything and everyone.
Like Intelligence Data, InfoWarfare is best used in conjunction with other avenues of attack. An attack on the communications infrastructure of our country (Disabling large chunks of the 'net and phone systems) with subsequent action to gain control of TV stations would have the same effect, in modern day terms, as the Dolittle raids. There, besides the staggering financial implications, would be little direct economic damage, but people would see that they could be hit that they are not invulnerable. This effect would be disasterous on the morale of this country and potenally adversly effect the poll standings of Bush. I say potentially becuase the Brittish, in the Battle of Brittain had much worse done to them and it only stiffened their resolve. But I digress.
Infowar is everything from hacking, propaganda, some aspects of intelligence gathering, to actually hurting people (If you can hack into a power/water plant and make it not be happy, life becomes very bad.) Also imagine if an Infowar attack disrupted the transportation mechinisms in this country for a week -- stores would start running out of food, mail wouldn't be delivered, people would absolutly panic.
The most dangerous aspect of InfoWar is the fact that it is the most easily done (You can be in a diffrent country and attack us) and most direcly reaching of attacks (Each person is directly confronted by the knowledge that they have been attacked.) While it cannot hold territory or cause enemy soldiers (unless of course one breaks into the C4I net) to break their positions, it becomes a fascinating secondary line of attack to break the morale of the country.