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?"
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.
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".
There is no cyberwar.
For the first time in human history a situation where people benefit from what is essentially anarchy has appeared in the form of the internet.
Despite the spam, the hackers and the botnets the internet has functioned extremely well without governments sticking their noses in. In the case of the hackers it's often the guys who were hacking in 10 years ago using the same knowledge to keep the next generation out.
The internet is not perfect but that's a technical problem to be solved by technical means.
Now that more people use it however governments around the world are trying to stick their noses in and so we need RULES and REGULATIONS and CONTROL.
If it ever came to any kind of digital attack on the US from china that went on and on and on and on and outweighted the financial benefits of having the connection to china at all it could all be solved by having a few hundred guys with axes knock out the various data pipes.
But it doesn't. We make more money by having a connection to china than we ever lose from attacks a hundred times over.
It's not war. it's petty theft/extortion and companies trying to get one up on each other.
"governments around the world are trying to stick their noses"
... so how long before the companies start offering to sell governments "solutions" to this problem. Then they can all get rich quick, setting up new government departments and expanding others etc..
I totally agree with this. The governments are stoking fears and the media are playing along, as they can use fear stories to sell more media. This Cyberwar story has been brewing for months in the media, now the governments are brewing it up to the point they can start to bring in controls, to help save us all from this "growing problem", as they so often call these kinds of manipulation stunts.
Its not so much the governments and media are working together. Its more a symbiotic like relationship, where media and governments both feed us with the same stories, for their own gain. The media gain attention and so more sales with fear stories, while the politicians gain greater power, to control others. Of course, the extra control we are told, is to help us all escape the fears they keep telling us about.
Its a disturbingly insidious feedback loop thats emerging between large scale corporate media organizations and ever better political manipulation techniques
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
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
"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.
There's a reason why you run two networks in a location. You have an isolated from the Internet network which all your classified/important info is kept on, and the "public" network which has access to the Internet for those reference purposes. There's no circumstance that would warrant connecting those Top Secret servers to the Internet, patches can be downloaded and places on removable media (the need of patches is debatable anyway if most patches are just addressing security flaws). You put in and enforce a policy of disabling removable media on all machines connected to the private network.
Simple, secure.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork