Slashdot Mirror
The Real Impact of the Estonian Cyberattack
An anonymous reader writes "News.com offers up an interview with Arbor Networks' senior security researcher Jose Nazario. He takes stock of the denial-of-service attack against the Baltic nation of Estonia, and considers the somewhat disturbing wider implications from the event. 'You look around the globe, and there's basically no limit to the amount of skirmishes between well-connected countries that could get incredibly emotional for the population at large. In this case, it has disrupted the Estonian government's ability to work online, it has disrupted a lot of its resources and attention. In that respect, it's been effective. It hasn't brought the government to a crippling halt, but has essentially been effective as a protest tool. People will probably look at this and say, That works. I think we're going to continue to do this kind of thing. Depending on the target within the government, it could be very visible, or it could not be very visible.'"
What would QoS do at this level except overwhelm your processor? Unicast Reverse Path Forwarding would be the better solution nowadays. Cat 6500 info... If networks were built correctly from the ground up, these attacks wouldn't even happen as much. If three networks were connected and all had uRPF or filtering in place, no three networks would be able to spoof addresses and cause attacks. They'd be forced to attack using a valid address on their network which would make tracking easier...
Infiltrated dot Net
Unless some magical solution presents itself, then cyber-warfare will most likely continue. The difference will be in how we respond. Should starting up your own cyber-attacks be an acceptable form of retaliation? or will more cyber-attacks only lead us down the path to a conventional-attack?
say you had two countries simmering over some stupid feud: land or machismo or even a soccer game. in such a situation, any cross border incursions or launched missiles can get back to a matter of accountabilty: what comes from your territory is your responsibility, and the fact that something came from your territory or not is pretty straightforward. the side where the incursions came from can even make excuses, but the other side can still say: "look, these guys came from your territory. clean it up yourself or we'll clean it up for you." that provides some straightforward safeguards right there
however, things are too nebulous on the web. no accountability. the russians that attacked estonia can not be found by russia and suppressed easily, because no one knows who they are. well, obviously there can be some intelligent detective work done (who purchased the botnets for rent, for example), but my point is, any group of teenage assholes can do this sort of thing, from any botnet in the world, and so it renders obvious lines of accountability all nebulous and unresolved
and so it is sort of like terrorism, in that there is no one easy and big to blame. no state or governmental entity. it's vague and undefined. and in the end, therefore, these sorts of wars/ crimes are really the defining characteristic of conflicts in the 21st century. for the most part, wars of nation against nation and obvious straightforward battlefields seem to be a dead era. today's conflicts are all about shadowy organizations ready to do nefarious things in the name of nebulous agendas, and finding and stopping who or what or how is simply a task without any clear goals or clear yardsticks of progress
some people would use this fact to say that therefore there is no war or conflict at all, that say, the "war on terrorism" isn't real. no, wrong. the threat is still very real. something like 9/11 is not a phantasm of a neocon's imagination
it's just that the enemy is opaque and made of fog. but because the enemy is hard to pin down, does not mean there isn't nefarious intent out there you need to protect yourself from. yes, that vagueness can be used to amp up fear and provoke overreaction. but, in a way, doing nothing is still worse than overreaction (unless overreaction consists of taking the war to targets that should not be targets)
we live in a difficult era folks. do nothing, you're damned. do something, you can be damned worse. you need to be clever and constant and precise in your efforts, and you'll still screw up and get blowback anyways, and you must still soldier on nonplussed nonetheless, against cyberenemies, against terrorism, with no real yardstick of progress, with no real verification of success or failure, with nothing but the fog for miles and for years, and then a plane in a skyscraper, or a bomb in a disco, or a flood of emails, or a DoS for seemingly no rhyme or reason... and then gone again like a fart in the wind, until the next mass murder. it's psychologically debilitating, and yet constitution and fortitude are your best character qualities needed in order to beat back these shadowy enemies
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
According to the site mentioned in the article, Russia comes in at #17 in the attacks by country breakdown at the bottom of the page. It covers scanning, fingerprinted attacks, and DDoS attacks (no spam). The number 1 country is the good 'ole USA. We're #1! We're #1!