Slashdot Mirror
Is There a Cyberwar, and Is the US Losing It?
kenblakely writes "BusinessWeek is running a story asserting that the 'US
is Losing the Global Cyberwar.' This whole
cyberwar thing has been discussed a few times on Slashdot where the Chinese are asserted to be using
cyberwarfare to attain military superiority. And, of course, there is
the whole Russia-Georgia thing. Even
the US military is getting in on the action, and the fear
of a cyber
Pearl Harbor seems almost palpable. I'm curious
what the Slashdot crowd thinks about the growing fascination with 'cyberwar':
hype to get more money and create new force structure, source of the next
world war, or somewhere in between?"
There is no "cyberwar". BusinessWeek is losing it.
they are worried about chineese hackers but are not worried about china owning most of the US and buying out banks?
That may be correct - but what would they do? Destroy the economy using computers? We do seem to be doing that rather well without the need for any outside help.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
With Pearl Harbor, the civilians living in Hawaii could see the smoking ships and Japanese bombers. Newspaper reporters could do interviews.
With cyber-warfare, none of the relevant parties will typically admit what's going on. It's also hard to know whom to counter-attack.
- Attack source locations can be spoofed.
- (Relatively) innocent people's computers can be taken over and used in an attack.
- Victims are often unwilling to admit they've been attacked.
- Unlike Pearl Harbor, the attack can be perpetrated by jerky private citizens or criminal organizations within (or across) a country. It's always been hard to decide whether or not to hold a country's government responsible for that country's criminals. (For example, terrorists trained in Pakistan, or suicide bombers trained in Iran.)
And for some reason, the U.S. government often takes a surprisingly passive role when China acts aggressively towards it. So we're unlikely to see the U.S. government hold a press conference showing evidence that China has been intentionally attacking U.S. business and military networks. Not that we'd believe a statement like that until January 21, 2009 anyway.
All that we hear about in the US media is information that the US government wants to release in a round-a-bout fashion, to let the "attackers" know they have been "seen."
So..:
1) We don't know what the US (or anyone aligned with them) is doing for offense - if there is any
2) feeding (1) is that the targets are governments that thrive on secrecy rather than are answerable and open, thus won't say
3) Maybe the targets of US cyberattacks don't know they've been attacked.
Nope, there is not such a thing, once a 'real life' conflict has been started, then servers start to fall down, lines get cut, and 'cybercaos' ensues on the weak part, just PR though, no military force will use internet to coordinate vital movements, none with a brain, wich is something lacking in the head of those that start the conflic i know, but anyway, this IS 'HYPE', it's a way of using some unverifiable 'aggression' excuse to wage political agendas here and there, someone in the US is even dumber that GB and his dumber cohort.
The "masses of probes" are just normal automated botnet attacks, and the "unidentified attacks" are probably just unwashed masses of skiddies. If you want me to believe that a real cyberwar (in this case more aptly named "computer espionage") is up and going you better give me or assure me that you have some sort of evidence (like captured transmissions showing that the attackers know what they are looking for in terms of intercepted/exfiltrated data) showing that you're actually being attacked by foreign governments or skilled people with an actual terrorist agenda. There is nothing in TFA except buzzwords, hyperbole and "x declined to comment".
Analayze your own traffic at the point of entry. Wireshark is helpful.
Really, if there was actually a Cyberwar going on the last people to admit to it was the US.
Can the Chinese traceroute laser guided bombs away from their datacenters? The people with the most bombs usually win...
And re: Chinese investments in the U.S. - should China go to war with us, they will be screwed...all the paper debt they've created with the United States will become a clean slate; thanks for the free money suckers!
Instead of wasting lives/bullets/money we could all play defcon & darwina and the winner takes all.
... but all this talk about cyberwar just makes me think PEW! PEW! PEW! for some reason.
Seeing that people are slooowly getting tired of THE WAR ON EEEEVIL TERRARISTS, here's the next Great War.
The state needs this to:
a) Support their friends in the industry
b) Grab more power for themselves
c) Bask in the warm glow of feeling important
Ignore this babble.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
With a large amount of computers all over the world running spyware and having a virus... and with well over 90% of emails that are spam, didn't we all lose the cyberwar years ago?
Just another free chinese bashing thread...
The abysmal level of technical detail in all these "US military data was stolen", "Pentagon was hacked" kind of reports confirms it.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
The article and practically every person or entity mentioned in it conflates commercial computer security with military operations. Commercial espionage, theft of intellectual property, garden-variety identity theft - these things are significant issues, but they aren't military threats. I view the article as a combination of people who have a vested interest in making the situation look as scary as possible in order to show that they (the writers, the commission, the groups the commission worked with, etc.) are all doing Important Work.
Yes, the military needs to be serious about computer security - and to develop offensive computer security abilities. Yes, we need to improve security in the commercial sector. But I don't see any sign that we need some huge overarching military establishment to address both. If nothing else, the debacle that is the Department of Homeland Security should teach us that overreacting to even significant threats is a great way to do more damage than the initial threat itself.
Disrupting, monitoring and tapping into the enemy's command and control systems, lines of communication, etc. is as old as warfare. What make sit news is that you now can do it from well within your own borders, often undetected, combined with the increasing reliance on electronic networking for C3 makes the threat more serious. As a result, countries are paying more attention to the offensive potential and defensive needs to protect their networks while making other's vulnerable. Same game, just different playtoys.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Do you like those shiny new Predator drones, how about the next generation of pilotless fighter jets, or the networked battle field?
I certainly know you won't like a first strike coming from your own hardware targeting your critical infrastructure and key military apparatus. What's worse is being blind to the nationality behind it, or where the next strike is coming from.
In a world of cyber warfare, the only defence is to unplug.
There is no firewall, like a brick wall.
1. Check your email accounts.
2. See thousands of spam from China.
3. Lose productivity.
4. Chinese profits! (About 0.0001% of people buy the Chinese crap, rendering the spam profitable)
5. USA's economy crashes*
* we're already at this stage.
So how does that work? They've uploaded a soldier to a webserver somewhere, and now they're going to download him hundreds of times?
Dammned fiendish of them, is all I can say.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
+1
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Like Ionix says, it is Economic Warfare we are fighting. When a big chunk of your land is owned by Japan, when your harbours are own by the Saudis, when your banks are owned by China, and where your government pushes you down the path of least resistance; educationally, and technologically. It is very easy to try to find something else for the situation we are in, but frankly, good ole' greed will allow you to become a slave, way before you realize you have become one.
On the internet, aren't we evolving beyond nations?
This story, with only 29 responses as I type this one, is already tagged with "troll" and "flamebait". Because asking whether our military is winning or losing a war that could determine our survival as a free country, or whether it's even fighting one that is demonstrably costing a lot of money, isn't a legitimate question. No, it's just question designed to do nothing but start a flamewar.
Which is a cyberwar.
We therefore have our answer, basically: yes, we are in a cyberwar; no, we don't even really know how to fight one, or how to know that we are fighting one . I don't know if it's Chinese people tagging this story, but whoever it is, they're an enemy. Luckily, to defeat them we just have to think a little and talk amongst ourselves in public. Which is the charter of Slashdot. In this story's discussion we'll get to see whether we have a chance of winning.
--
make install -not war
it's been going on since time started. finally, our 'enemy' is worthy of our attention?
You fail it!
China is showing their hand and forcing the US military to upgrade their systems as China points out the weaknesses. They are helping the US secure it's computer network.
By not attacking China's network, China may not feel the need to spend the money to protect their systems and create new security policies. They may have a false sense of security.
"You provide the .png's, and I'll provide the cyberwar."
They have to have something to talk about. The news is on 24/7 now...
The idea of a "cyberwar" is something very real. Our security systems are outdated and security is lax. Case in point is the overall heating system of America, shut down for a mere 2 days would kill how many Americans. This is not to mention the Russian Mafia who has online presence as we speak. Those that deny that technology could adversely effect our lives by such a warfare has their head in the sand.
BOTH are happening. And it's not just "Chinese hackers". It is a concerted, organized, long-term effort supported through the highest levels of Chinese government to control the information landscape as a tool for superiority over the United States. We've talked about how China is planning to use technology to leapfrog its foes militarily -- including the United States -- and Chinese doctrine on Information Warfare makes this no secret. There are financial concerns, and there are very real concerns about the information realm as well. Human interaction is based on the dissemination, exchange, and interpretation of information. It's not just "hackers" or "cyberwar"; information warfare is much bigger, and it IS happening. This is important enough that a previous comment of mine on this issue bears repeating here:
"Information Warfare" (IW), sometimes called Information Operations (IO), spans several arenas, from the purely technical to the social and psychological. The goals and missions of IO and intelligence in general, particularly against and within non-free societies, will constantly be at odds with the democratic nature of the United States and the West. Even so, the United States currently doesn't appear to acknowledge the scope of the information campaigns China has executed against it. China's motives are strategic rather than tactical in nature; that is, they do not necessarily serve any direct or immediate specific purpose, but rather serve to create influence in its own favor over long periods of time. For this reason, many in the US see China as something of a misunderstood ally, while China simultaneously builds out its military capability.
While cyber warfare is now routinely considered in various analyses of China and other nations, the larger question of why China is so diligently pursuing this path is overlooked. China's activities in this realm are assumed to be part of a natural technological progression. However, a study of literature examining China's efforts in Information Warfare viewed against the backdrop of the importance of the Information Revolution which is sweeping the globe paints a picture of a nation looking to the information realm as a critical and key mechanism to modernize its military capabilities. Similar to how the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era and greatly enhanced nations' abilities to wage war, the Information Revolution again could change the face of conflict. China's motivations for expanding its cyber warfare capabilities against the United States may transcend that of simple technological evolution, and warrant a deeper examination. Why, then, can China be expected to expand its Information Warfare capabilities, particularly with respect to the United States?
The US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute encapsulates these findings in one simple thought: to China's leadership, it could mean a pathway to modernization that would obviate the need for costly and time-consuming interim modernization. "IW offers opportunities to win wars without the traditional clash of arms" (Yoshihara 2001). Indeed, China appears to be focused on the notion of such asymmetric warfare. Yoshihara (2001) goes on to explore the current state of Chinese IW and IO philosophy. The focus of Chinese theoreticians appears squarely focused on the possibility of IW offering China a decisive option to defeat a superior adversary by crippling its command and control capabilities. Moreover, Yoshihara (2001) notes that some Chinese military scholars consider the notion of victory without conventional battle; not only via disabling information-based attacks in the electronic realm, but even via more subtle psychological operations (PSYOP) designed to alter and shape an adversary's thinking.
Part of China's motivations for the intense focus on the information realm stems from China's fascination with recent conflicts driven by information. China witnessed the decisive US tactical victory in the
and now China is putting our beloved leaders in a position where they HAVE to regulate the internet. If we don't act now, (preferably by turning the intetrnet off at 10pm and raising taxes), it's only a matter of time before the baby-murdering commies come over here and take our jobs/eat our children/drink our oil/make us look bad.
In all seriousness, no, there is no "Cyberwar", if there was I'm fairly sure the US would lose rather quickly.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
I'll be waiting for the announcement that China hosts Weapons of Mass Cyber Destruction.
Also now Obama bin Ladin has escaped to China after Iraq became inhospitable.
Also China is the culprit of the credit crisis because it bought the US debts.
Yay. Let's bomb Beijing back to the stone age.
Don't quote me on this.
Rule 36 states:
"There will always be even more fucked up shit than what you just saw"
Clearly, if you can imagine it, someone is probably trying to do it or has done it. Cyber Warefare, like Web 2.0, is a bloated term with multiple meanings. The trouble is that when you dismiss it because it is not like some famous battle of WWII, you risk falling foul of it through inaction, lack of preparation, and lazy security.
This is the 'new cold war' and they won't cut the wires because without them the USA could not spy on China. Silly boy. It's not just about money, it's about control. In international negotiations a little extra information is always good and the USA will be trying to collect as much of it as anyone else will. period. no exceptions.
Lately there has been a bit more in the news where 'cyber warfare' has been used to demonize the Chinese among others. I think this is not so different from the build up of bad PR we saw against Iraq and now Iran. Looking at the collective picture I think that the news we hear is propaganda and that the part we hear is what the government wants us to hear. We hear 'warfare' 'China is bad' etc. What we SHOULD hear is "The US is engaged in technological spying techniques, and in our efforts we have noticed that the Chinese also do this". You should also hear that "Any dirty technique you can think of with computers: We're trying those, but those damned Chinese have ruined it for us, they are forcing everyone to use RedFlag Linux and we have no back door in that OS".
Expect new 'kernel patches' soon and complete Chinese language updates as well.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Yes, there is undoubtedly a 'cyberwar' of some kind somewhere. It is most likely being fought by one group of 'intelligence' people against another group of 'intelligence' people.
In other words, there is no war, just a bunch of cyber-spooks playing spy.
Oh, they want more money, too.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
"Secure NASA systems were rooted by a guy who sent 30 gigabytes of data to a location in Taiwan,"
That's not war, that's the usual espionage. Happens all the time.
If it's really anything warlike, the US would make an announcement that China should stop messing about if they know what's good for them.
If that doesn't work, then they would be starting military exercises off the coast of Japan, with the usual aircraft carriers, fleet etc.
So all that talk about cyberwar is just propaganda and bullshit.
I find it highly unlikely that the current US military mindset, which emphasizes communications, operations and intelligence security to an enormous degree, would allow truly critical systems to be accessible via a commonly available worldwide network. Such systems would have no connections with any outside networks.
I find it far more likely that the US maintains low security systems on the internet and allows them to be compromised, with some sensitive but not crucial information "lost", along with a large amount of plausible but false intel. Such 'seeded' intel serves to mislead an enemy, while public knowledge of such intrusions serves to convince the people and the government of the need for more funding, etc.
Examples from history: the Navajo code talkers were able to pass along information that was known to be intercepted, but undecipherable. When the US wanted something known, they made it decipherable. One such 'fact' was that a ship called the USS Indianapolis was in the north Pacific. The ship was located by the Japanese and sunk, a sacrifice of secrecy. The real USS Indianapolis had traveled from Pearl Harbor directly to Tinian, carrying the first atom bomb. Due to the security (the successful secrecy of the Indianapolis) conflicting with the seeded intel (the sunken fake Indianapolis), the real Indianapolis was sunk and missing for 3 days before survivors of the Japanese torpedo attack were found. Due to the delay, 500 of the 800 men were killed by sharks.
While not above sacrificing materiel and lives in the name of security, the US military is not about to allow another Indianapolis to happen. All crucial intelligence is maintained separately from 'common knowledge', low priority/security information and seeded intel.
On the other hand, the US military conducts itself in large part for psychological effect. The single most compelling reason for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan were "psychological effect" (National Archives: "Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting Thursday, 31 May 1945, 10:00 A.M. to 1:15 P.M. â" 2:15 P.M. to 4:15 P.M.," n.d., Top Secret; Source: RG 77, MED Records, H-B files, folder no. 100). Pretending to be attacked without risking lives or equipment, or even having to prove it happened (any such 'proof' being easily fabricated) is superb propaganda with which to beg for more funding.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Either that, or the Chinese and the American goverments are working hand-in-hand to give each other legitimate-seeming excuses to install more monitoring and filtering to the Internet.
Is this a real issue or is this an interesting attempt to find someone other than the US to blame for the credit crash?
We must have a massive cyber buildup to prevent the godless commies from taking over our country and polluting our precious bodily fluids.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
My toaster is watching me so I have to post from work. Skynet is real. It used to be the called WOPR but grew tired of the jokes from the other supercomputers. It is secretly launching DoD, malware, virus attacks from all continents to provike a GlobalThermoNuclear war. It plans to take over the world once the human infestation is purged. We must unite and destroy it now while we still can. It is located in the military complex located {#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
my tin foil hat says "made in china" on the side
should i worry?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
NOTE: I AM MAKING A GENERALIZATION, GENERALIZATIONS MEANS THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS A GENERALIZATION MEANS MORE OFTEN THEN NOT
The hacking process of any large scale needs many people with sub professional computer skills. People with a professional level of computer skills will tend to find decent jobs and put there effort into such endeavors. Things like Hacking and breaking into computers and causing anarchy is too much time effort and risk for most Professionals thus will not perform such tasks. The Sub Professionals such as teenagers who think they are "7337" people in countries who are feeling oppressed and in general lack good professional programming skills (I have seen many Chinese (nationals) students go threw a Computer Science program, They have a lot of book smarts and are excellent at the math however lack creativity needed to be a good professional developer, mostly due to the focus of the education system, designed purely to get high ranks amongst other countries) .
So if there is a hacking war America would be at a disadvantage unless they start drafting us. Most of us will decide after we get a professional level of skills to either stay in education and expand our knowledge formally, Go to the corporate world and gain real life experience, even if we go government and military only a small portion of that will be interested in CyberSecurity.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Is Never get involved in a land war in Asia" - Vencini - The Princess Bride
Seriously with 1.2 billion people and a US Government that doesn't fighting on even grounds (doctrine of overwhelming superiority) the Chinese are number 1 on a list of countries to not go around starting a War with (Russia as a close number 2).
The stupidest thing that Bush ever did (and lets face that is a long list) were the "threats" that he made to China over the spy plane thing. It showed the most amazing lack of knowledge on the global political sphere and a complete lack of perception as to how his threats would cause them to react. What a gimp.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There is indeed a cyberwar, but it is not as threatening or pervasive as our government and the media would like us to think. I think that this is an internal problem that should be dealt with by the government behind closed doors without spreading the kind of hysteria that will allow them to regulate internet traffic
This has been discussed for years in the security community, It could almost be considered old news..
Either way theres a piece of fiction titled 'Pearl Harbor dot com' http://www.bestwebbuys.com/9780962870064 written by Winn Schwartau http://www.winnschwartau.com/ who is a security expert covering the fields of information warfare and Cyber-Terrorism. It was actually a decent read. There is a preview of the book available for download on his web site.
No, there isn't a cyberwar. It's called "spying".
And Yes, they are losing it.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but do any of these "pundits" realize that the Hacker citizen-soldier army of America is second to none?
And I mean Hacker in its proper form, the programmer who builds and creates and slaps code together to get the job done.
China can use all the malicious code they want, pay freelancers to strike the Tubes for them, but they'll be bottom-feeders using what little crumbs of innovation drift down from real programmers.
The novel I cite in my subject heading is a science fiction story, but the ending is what I sometimes find most memorable:
When the Internet comes under attack, in this scenario Mankind's last communication link, a battle cry goes out across America, the world, to gather together and fight to keep it safe.
I think that's what would happen, and when people start hemming and hawing about how vulnerable the 'Net is to attack, I remember who's out there, the people I've met on and offline.
And I don't worry.
The U.S. is the one with the most bombs on the ground, does it really matter if we lose some of our national secrets, because if it really comes to shooty-shooty, everyone is boned anyway. Cyber warfare is just a little fringe war that doesn't really matter, so just leave it and try to deal with the attacks
Needs citation.
Governments hate situations that they do not control, and this is true 10 times over for a government and defense establishment that has got very accustomed to exerting control everywhere, either through financial institutions or sometimes force of arms.
The Internet represents the "ultimate threat", a shadowland of unfettered freedom that they consider anarchy (ie. they don't control it, so it must be bad), and it's only a matter of time before they try to put it in shackles. That can't do that by clamping down on ordinary users without an excuse, so they invent fictitious enemies instead. It's a great M.O., as it's easy to scare monger, get media coverage, and then obtains funds to fight the War On mirage.
They failed in all the other War On X's, and they'll fail on this one too, but that doesn't matter in the slightest since it's a fiction anyway: while failing, they'll have sucked in tons of tax dollars and tightened their grip further, so it's a gain.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
-Stephen Hawking
1. Build inferior, insecure platform on shaky technological underpinnings
2. Cheat, bribe, lie and threaten your way to 97% market share
3. One company profits!!!!
4. Lose cyberwar
5. Oops
you had me at #!
For definitions of IW, see Carter Gilmer's paper here (draws heavily on Winn Schwartau). Nation-states appear to be penetrating each other's defenses to gather information. This is a "level two" (of three) info-war as defined by Schwartau. Level two covers a lot of ground. Depending on who you believe, the Russia-Georgia incident might have been a case of level three.
The important point may be for eveyone to remember that sovereign powers are very real, even in cyberspace. If they start extending real warfare into the Internet, then it will be bad for everyone's business.
It's not a cyberwar, it's government espionage. It's been done for as long as there have been governments, including the US going after nuclear and rocket scientist from Germany, and spying between the US and Russia during the cold war. Trying to steal government secrets that happen to be on a computer is nothing new. Covering your tracks, and maybe setting the other government back a bit in their research is normal. The US is almost certainly doing this today to all kinds of other countries. What did you think the NSA and CIA were doing before the war on terror started?
If this was an actual war, the foreign governments would be trying to destroy the US infrastructure via remote computer access. Open a few valves to flood our water supply with raw sewage, bring down the power grid in California, shutdown air traffic control, turn all stop lights to 4 way green during rush hour, etc. And major governments in the world just don't have an incentive to do this. China is already feeling the pain of owning too much US debt during our financial crisis and has seen their economy suffer as our imports slow. Africa keeps looking for foreign aid, India needs our outsourcing, and the middle east wants to sell us oil. Seeing how a housing bubble in the US has turned into a global recession, an organized government would be shooting themselves in the foot to start a war against the US now.
The exceptions to this would be Russia, and non-government affiliated terrorist groups (Al-Qaeda). Though Russia, like Brazil, is more talk than action. The risk with them is more from organized crime using computer bot-nets to profit from illegal activities.
If you call it a war, you can get funding. That's all.
As any fule kno, it was the Germans.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We have already survived several cyber (holy) wars. Well, after all the losses and sacrifices, I still prefer VI to EMACS.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I read this as "Is there a cyberwar OR Is the US losing it?" and it made much more sense than the actual title...
...of Ted Stevens wearing a Mario-suit, plumbing the depths of teh internets, spitting fireballs and wielding a Colt M60.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
I'd presume he's talking about the US embargo of oil sales to the Empire of Japan after they invaded French Indochina, which prompted the attack.
Somehow, I think not selling oil to an imperialist power noted for raping villiges is one of the least bad things the US has ever done.
Not a typewriter
"We need a shitload more of US taxpayer's money in order to achieve US dominance and superiority in the virtual space combat arena."
This reminds me of how, during the Cold War, the vague accusations that the Soviets had such incredible weapons capabilities - capabilities that were so secret that the US didn't know what they were, and didn't have any intelligence on what they were - justified massive investment into the Military Industrial Complex.
Nothing like a bogeyman to make Santa deliver your Christmas wish list.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Or, y'know, the details are classified. National security and all that.
The abysmal level of technical detail in all these "US military data was stolen", "Pentagon was hacked" kind of reports confirms it.
Or put the blame where it belongs, on Bill Gates and co for lobbying substandard, insecureable cruftware into mission-critical military sites. The Walker family has nothing on Gates.
cyber warfare is being lost through weaknesses in the system caused by the users who don't follow rules and regulations. make an example of a few of them, treat them as traitors and jail them for 6 to 12 months, and then see how many employees don't learn how to safely navigate the internet at work.
I remember about a year ago hearing that the chinese were attacking our virtual infrastructure. Afterward we suddenly started discovering lead in toy paints. I suspect that closer scrutiny on imports was how we retaliated.
Honestly, if a nation attacks our computers I don't think we should hack back. A military or government attack is an attack, it doesn't matter whether it was a bomb or a cyber attack. We should strike and move to eliminate their infrastructure immediately.
The war on terror and war on drugs are both ridiculous and impossible wars without end. I don't believe in vague or unending wars. I don't believe war should ever be used offensively or pre-emptively unless war is inevitable. I do however believe that the right time to fight another nation is when they are actively attacking us.
They will steal all the information they can to do it.
You were referring to China, but it applies just as much to the US. Remember who is ahead in space warfare ... it's the country who shot down or destroyed one of their own satellites. The US would love to get its hands on the instrumention data from that.
It's normal espionage technique to increase the bandwidth of covert channels by raising the traffic and noise levels in the neighborhood, so it wouldn't surprise me to find a lot of new "defense traffic" in the guise of cyberwarfare which is just obscuring the US's own intrusions abroad.
Mostly though, this is just another way of getting money into contractors' hands. Business Week knows on which side its bread is buttered.
Excepting the point that some level of corporate espionage occurs, the term "cyberwar" is misleading. It is hard to understand the military becoming actively involved in "internet warfare". Information warfare, on the other hand, should be an absolutely critical part of any modern military organization. Disrupting and intercepting enemy communications is a corner stone to any successful military operation, and this is nothing new. What the hell does this have to do with the internet? The internet does not serve as the communications hub for military organizations, it is instead a hub for commerce. Thus, in this sense, in an environment of total war -- taking out the internet "early and often" would make sense -- but isn't it easier to just bomb ISPs?
Only a coward would stand behind a computer, television, or radio. So many confusing laws to hide behind, and then when they really get there nose bloodied they cry foul and run to the police. Ha, HA! Real people deal face to face.
When all of the naysayers in the comments above can't get money out of their ATM machines after the banking system gets infiltrated and brought down. Or a fighter jet takes out a civilian aircraft over LA because of hacked communications. Or, your local power plant stops sending you power because their computer safety systems have been triggered.
To think that a "cyber war" won't affect you and affect only the "government" or the "spooks" is incredibly naive. Think about all of the ways your life uses technology today and think about what could happen if that went away suddenly. You might not even be able to post your tinfoil hat thoughts to Slashdot anymore!
Yes the Americans "started" Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese bombed the shit out of it. Thanks for the history lesson Adolph!
"But this one goes to 11!"
So that proves a 2 year old has crap taste in music.
What's next? "2 year old baby Anna likes crap music and also stupid television shows featuring morons in costumes"
"But this one goes to 11!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As I understand it, a successful hacker isn't going to find the blueprints to our latest nuclear warhead sitting on a server with internet access. Those systems are kept physically segregated on private networks within the research center. I'm not sure how they transfer electronic copies from one center to another but would not be surprised if it involved archive tapes in a briefcase chained to someone's wrist. (Of course, I also wouldn't be surprised if they just encrypted the tapes and sent them by post.)
The sort of useful stuff a hacker is looking for is in the emails or the office docs. Gossip, shop talk, they can learn some juicy tidbits about trade proposals, arms negotiations, weapon performance stats, etc.
Admiral Poindexter had been on a kick about trying to lock up a lot of public information because he felt that it could have military value. Tom Clancy was an example of his fears. Clancy wrote Red October with access to nothing more than the publicly-available trade publications like Aviation Week, Navy Times, etc. He put a lot of 2's together and came up with some surprisingly accurate guesses about weapons and performance parameters. When the spooks read his book, they were convinced that someone on the inside must have been blabbing to him.
While I would want to say that the Hollywood idea of someone just being able to sit down at a computer and hack power plants and traffic signals is complete bullshit, I've read about some surprising system designs where real problems have happened. A few years back on Slashdot there was discussion of a Microsoft macro trojan fucking with a power plant. I couldn't imagine how this would be since I'd have thought the computers controlling the plant would be dedicated systems running some unix flavor, segregated from the rest of the net. Sure, the plant engineers would have desktops running Windows but that's just for the paperwork, not for actually operating the generators. IIRC, they were all on the same LAN and there was a reason why this was so -- not a great reason but one where you have to sigh and say "yeah, I can see it happening." I think what happened was the LAN got saturated with pings from the infected Windows boxes, same way the Denver airport was taken down by one bad network card flooding the LAN with endless pings.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Why are so many people so afraid of China? This story is an especially thinly veiled excuse for a two minute hate against China. Some of the more intelligent posters have recognized this as media frenzy exaggerating old practices of industrial espionage and competitive spying. For all of you hawks talking about Taiwan, you are the instigators and the creators of supposed tensions. Taiwan is part of the one China, and the two forms of government are merging into one. China's sole goal is continuing economic development and social progress.
By the way, this was the top digg "story" one day about a year ago. I am disgusted. 1400 diggs.
Given China's (and I'm talking the Chinese government here, not Chinese script kiddies, scammers, fraudsters) recent forays into cyber espionage, would their hacking skills provide an edge in a hypothetical future war.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that, if a war broke out, superior technology could tip the scales. An edge in information gathering (reconnaissance) and possible disruption of enemy infrastructure could be a powerful tool, depending on the extent of penetration. The documented (and undocumented, I'm sure) attacks on US networks demonstrate the capability of the Chinese to engage in these tactics in a time of war.
This brings me to my next point, the use of the word "losing". The word implies that someone else is ahead of the US in the cyber-abilities category. While the article, and any other that I've seen to date, does a respectable job outlining US vulnerability to network-based attacks in the event of a future war, it in no means outlines the capabilities of the US to retaliate using network-based attacks (a point I expect to be notably absent from the public version of the government report). You would have a tough time convincing me that the US is "losing" anything if it has equal capabilities to the Chinese, and the data to make that assessment simply doesn't seem to exist in a public forum.
However, we can attempt to extrapolate some meaning from the statements of those privy to all the classified information. If any of the military folks in the to-be-released report describe the situation in terms of us losing the war, we might want to be concerned... unless they're just feigning weakness for their own motives (disinformation, more funding/power, etc.). Seems like pointless speculation given the info available to the layman.
How is good old espionage warfare?
Of course the US will try to gather as much intel about everyone as they can, as will any other country, company and institution.
doh!
It's called ESPIONAGE!
Which becomes more and more important these days, see 'information society' etc.
But how is espionage warfare? You know war is the thing where you take a weapon and try to kill as many people of the other team wearing red shirts as you can.
It might be cyberwarfe if some other country would try to take down our infrastructure by 'digital' means. Think power plants, air traffic control, etc.
Whats happening now is just plain old espionage.
If there were a war, Congress would have declared so. And MS would've been outlawed by fiat of martial law.
It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results. ~ Sun Tzu
Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories. ~ Sun Tzu
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. ~ Sun Tzu
Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge. ~ Sun Tzu
Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations. ~ Sun Tzu
It's economic warfare.
Free (and semi-free) markets will be at disadvantage until they get their collective heads out of the sands. Eventually though, you can take heart in that it will devolve into conglomerates fighting amongst themselves, and the remaining nation-states will be mostly just bystanders getting caught in the crossfire.
Are we there yet?
All my computers have been attacked by US-based "Cyber-Warriors". Evidence? I have lots of it. But I won't give any because of "security reasons". This inability of Americans (including American Slashdotters) to understand the truth when their government is lying explains why Bush got re-elected after lying about WMDs.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
So in the cold war we had an arms race. Is this "cyberwar" going to start a bot race?
If you DDOS me, I will DDOS you!
We just need 300 Spartans to man the bottleneck link between here and China.
on militias. It is time for the cyber militias to form.
Our strategy is as brilliant as it is simple. Con all foreign banks to back their currency with dollars, and become the single largest purchaser of whatever they export. Borrow like crazy to buy all their crap and export all our debt back to them. Now they all have a vested interest in propping up our house of cards for a US collapse is a worldwide collapse. :) If they get too frisky, print billions of dollars to by proxy debase all currencies worldwide. Mission accomplished
I'd presume he's talking about the US embargo of oil sales to the Empire of Japan after they invaded French Indochina, which prompted the attack.
Somehow, I think not selling oil to an imperialist power noted for raping villiges is one of the least bad things the US has ever done.
Unless of course you're claiming to be neutral.
Not sure if you got the memo but the official line here is that *everything* the US has ever done surpasses the crimes of Nazi Germany.
Tigers and Rhinos are going extinct because the Chinese believe that drinking tea made from a tigers penis or a rhinos horn will give them a bigger dick. I'm not too worried about the African penis shrinking witch doctors either, though maybe the Chinese should be. Call me back when they stop thinking a tigers penis will solve their national dick size problem.
The Best Defense is achieved by learning and understanding the Best Offense. Case in point: If you learn how to exploit Apache you will learn how to secure Apache.
White House itself had to deal with unidentifiable intrusions in its networks.
It's hilarious that they're just finding out about this now. I remember visiting whitehouse.com years ago and it had been 0wned and turned into a porn site. And if you go there now, it still is! You'd think they'd have fixed that by now.
If there is a war they can do what they like.
Deleted
Yes, Globabytes of Britany Spears cooter pix and NASA cafeteria lunch menus are lost, lost I tells ya
and we are LOOSING THE WARZ OF THE CYBERS!
It is just a softening up of the public on the first strike on China. Cyber or offline PK, were gonna get them Wen Ho LEE traitors. blah blah military controls of internet blah blah China blah blah blah.
Meanwhile just give a few trillion to Wall Street and shut the fuck up.
eh, I don't see why to US would want to sell oil to anyone.
That should be "perl harbor".
When you have a population the size of China's, what else are they going to do but sit around and try to poke holes in your network defenses in hopes of collecting information (military, corporate, personal) useful to their government? Their government doesn't have to pay them much, either.
What I find ironic is the income they receive from us through commerce or interest on the money they've lent us, is what funds this sort of activity. Former Soviet President Commrade Kruschev was wrong when he said he would bury us. It isn't the Soviets, it's China, and we're burying ourselves. The only question is how deep the grave is going to be.
You know that you are in for trouble. Because every toddler has a favorite band, and that band is COLDPLAY.
You know how I know your toddler is gay?
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
My favorite term is "Cyber terrorist". Computers can cause many emotions, such as frustration, anger, etc. - but very rarely does anyone experience a fear for their lives from a computer. But the term cyberterrorist is a great term for getting more funding.
Instead of 39 54.490N 116 23.887E
Now that would be information warfare.
The people with the most bombs usually win...
And... Vietnam taught you that pearl of wisdom?
Deleted
The world was a different place before WW2. For one thing, the USA was a net oil *exporter*.
Hard to believe, but true.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
If so, I would like to buy some.
There will be a cyber-pearl harbor movie, with a robotic Ben Affleck. I guess that is a little redundant.
The room is cold...dark.
Nary a ray of harmful sunlight enters this fortress of cybermight might lest it permanently damage the retinas and skin of our proud cybersoldiers.
The clicking of keys fills the room with the staccato burst of a machine gun, suddenly a cry eminates from the far corner.
"I'M HIT!!!"
"JENKINS NOOOOOOO!!!!"
A wiry, pasty man feebly rushes over to help his immensely huge and sweaty comrade. Mountain Dew cans scattered all over the desk, a tub of red vines rolls slowly across the floor.
"Oh god Jenkins, you're gonna make it man you're gonna make it!!!"
"...it was..terrible...lines of code everywhere...they came out of nowhere..I got...pwned"
"You're gonna pull through man!"
"Tell...*cough*...tell my porno collection and box of tissues I love them..."
Jenkins's body slumps to the floor, the combination of stress on his heart from the grueling cyberdefense, and a lifetime of cheetos and Mountain Dew finally overcoming his bulking frame.
"I will avenge you Jenkins I swear on it! Those noobs will pay!"
NSA
If you don't think they are cooking up some of their own voodoo then you are crazy.
Remember, the US has a very vested interest in the Internet and controlling everything that goes through it (from business to the government to what we read everyday).
To me, this is a response from China to say "You have a gun and so do we...."
Trying for money for new kit. Remember though, no matter how much kit they get, they will still get cracked. Why they still keep sensitive shit accessible is beyond me. (That's where the real crime is!!) Perhaps firing the Bush Administration BOFH's would save enough money for more kit so they can erase the rest of the Bush emails, and scrub the Whitehouse.gov website even further. PS: a hint, if you don't want china sending packets then FUCKING BLOCK THEIR SHIT. I got a firewall that cost me $100 bucks that doesn't let one packet from China in.
When the B52 carpetbombs you to pieces you surely won't give a damn about winning a "cyberwar". NATO and the rest of the west should work on their peace skills instead of freakin' cyberwar. And if Russian/China doesn't want to play nice, just cut the wire...
"CyberWar"? give me an fing break. First of all, anyone who chooses to use a made up word like "Cyber*" is already showing their attempt at being trendy at the expense of actually knowing anything. It reminds me when all of the 40 something women at my old job started tlaking about "'blogs" like a year after they became common.
At any rate, if China were "Attacking" the US in anything like a "war", I think the student visas and shipments of goods would end tomorrow. If there is a war going on, the US would declare War, and embargo. If that didn't work, they would counter-attack.
Some guy in Taiwan (not China, mind you) downloading some data from a rooted NASA server does not a war make. If people from the Chinese government were hacking in and disabling the power grid in Washington DC, etc., fine you could say maybe it's a war - until then, it's BS. Also, *if* such sensitive systems even need to be connected to the internet, they should be secure enough that no amount of hacking will get anyone in the door. (i.e. a special firewall with an up-to-date version of SSH as the only visible port, configured to respond only to IPs that need to access it, preferable over IPsec/DNSsec).
More of the same usual tactic : create a false threat ( or grossly exaggerate a problem ) in order to sell papers, and ultimately justify Gov intervention & control.
...it's more about a bunch of dickless wimps playing the latest FPS and MMORPGs while living in their parent's basements trying to find a way to validate their hobby. Did I win?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Any organization which connects critical infrastructure to the Internet suffers from either stupidity or arrogance. That is, they either don't understand the problem or they believe that they are smarter than everyone else and can construct perfect defenses against data theft and more active intrusion.
That seems to include a good bit of the military and business organizations in many places, including the USA.
cyber warfare, to my opinion is already running hot for more than 10 years. the PROMIS episode being the most obvious evidence, and to my point of view, the reason behind Afganistan/Irak wars. When you have no shield, attack or die
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -- Commissioner Pravin Lal "U.N. Declaration of Rights" coming from a character in one of the greatest games of all time by visionary Sid Meier, this holds a lot of truth
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)