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?"
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.
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.
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make install -not war
These days one may be a victim of war without even noticing it if it is done correctly. For example simply allowing private companies to duplicate software and pumping stolen software onto the market can actually harm the economy of the US.
Conversely the US might be attacking China right now by creating a deliberate economic emergency such that China loses great sums of money and delays military development. For example China has a nuclear submarine base which may be a lot less important to them now that their economy is suffering.
Yay. Let's bomb Beijing back to the stone age.
Yes. But not for any of those ridonkulous reasons mentioned.
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.
You put your patches on removable media and then disable your removable media brilliant!
That way you protect your network from yourself.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz