Government-Sponsored Cyberattacks on the Rise

jbrodkin writes "A new McAfee report finds that 120 countries, notably the United States and China, are regularly launching Web-based espionage campaigns. Government-sponsored cyber attacks against enemy countries are becoming more common, targeting critical systems including electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and government computer networks. This year, Russia allegedly attacked Estonian government news and bank servers, while China was accused of hacking into the Pentagon. A McAfee researcher says this trend will accelerate, noting 'it's easier to attack government X's database than it is to nuke their troops.'"

Comments

My biggest concern

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

I think it's quite likely that the threat of these sorts of attacks will be used as justification by the governments of more and more countries to try to wall off their part of the internet, the erection of things like the Great Firewall of China, and so forth.

Gotta stop those so-called terrorists, after all.

Re:No

[Vanden]

Given your assumptions of "correctly set-up network" and "sysadmins have been doing their jobs", I would agree.

However, most of us know that many networks are vulnerable to attack because they're neither correctly set-up nor are their admins doing their jobs. In these cases, even a no-talent script kiddie could break in easier than a government could launch a nuclear attack.