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Collateral Damage From Cyber Warfare?
theodp writes "If you're thinking about applying for that open US cyber warfare czar position, Robert X. Cringely points out that you will have to effectively function as a world cyber warfare czar, a fact that neither Republican nor Democratic Administrations have yet been willing to embrace, at least in public. The international nature of today's outsourced-and-offshored IT business has big implications for US security. Try to do a security audit of your company's technical resources in Argentina or Bangladesh, suggests Bob, and see what nightmare is unveiled. Toss some random Code Gods into the mix, says Cringely, and it's really too tough to predict who might win in a game of US vs. Albania."
Maybe it is time to end this man-made idiocy of nations and borders?
I'm tired of the resources of my nation being used to protect the world. I would really rather see our Cyber Czar take the opposite approach:
Secure our stuff, and let the rest of the world deal with their own problems in the way they best see fit.
This would require a moderate paradigm shift, to be sure, for example:
1) US-based corps that choose to outsource will need to factor this into their costs. Perhaps a US-based callcenter, backed by our security efforts, would be a better investment.
2) The original concept of the 'net would need to be reinstated - where if one or many nodes go down, the bulk of it remains functional.
3) Vendors inside the US would need to be encouraged to step it up and provide equivalent IT products to those available overseas. ...and so on, and so on...
I propose we look at the US in much the way any Security Pro looks at his sponsoring company. I can't be concerned with securing everyone on my same internet subnet. That's their deal. I wouldn't propose to use services and resources on those (presumably unsecured) nodes. Only my own IP's are my concern. The opposite is insanity, and is simply not in the best interests of those paying my paycheck. Same for our government, IMHO.
Likewise, where exactly in the Constitution is 'policing Pakistan's internet' supported? Are we still talking about the Commerce Clause? Because at some point it is going to logically fail. You can't just keep expanding power without putting paper behind it, unless we're ready to scrap the whole notion of a common set of national guidelines for what our government should and should not be.
1.) Nationalism is an invention of the rich intended to make the poor support the interests of the rich. To the poor, one lord is much the same as the next, why should they care who rules them?
2.) Ah, I see. Rules on paper make a free market. Rules that let the rich move their business wherever labor is cheapest, but does not let labor move where the pay is the best.
3.) You've just described how the free market is supposed to work.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If you haven't seen Die Hard IV: Revenge of the Nerds, you should. It's a great nerd movie (at least, the unrated version is, the theatrical release was more like a censored for TV version).
Almost all the characters except John McClain are nerds. "Freddy", AKA "W4rlock", is the stereotypical uber-nerd, living in his mom's basement. In the movie, America's infrastructure is attacked programatticaly. As McClain and Farrell (a former black hat who has turned white hat) are flying the helicoppter over the darkened city (the bad guys have killed all the electricity) trying to find w4rlock, McClain asks him how they're going to find his house. "Easy, it'll be the one with the lights on".
The premise of the movie is a "fire sale" - everything must go. The bad guys turn all the traffic lights green, causing massive traffic accidents, then have the stock market boards show losses in all stocks, causing wall street panic, kill the electricity, etc.
It's great mindless fun about cyber-warfare. From the wikipedia article about the film
Free Martian Whores!
"The internet is a bunch of insecure nodes"
No no no. It's a series of tubes, powered by hampsters running in rotating wheels. You're right about these microkernels you speak of--we must "embrace" them, for they are the food that power the hampsters. With the power of the microkernals, these super hampsters can then secure the internets from "enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material," and soon the internet will become a big truck that you can dump anything on.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
The man is a tremendous douche who always writes ridiculous articles so that people get their dander up and drive traffic. He's nothing more than a journo-troll.
And this whole cyber-crap thing misses the mark. First off, nix the cyber. Nothing makes you sound less knowledgeable than using cyber when talking about computers. Second off, computer warfare is just another way of fucking with the enemy's infrastructure. If anything, you could classify it a subset of cold warfare. That's anything that's indirect, doesn't involve the acting killing of others, but is a true struggle between nations. Economic warfare is the usual manifestation with trade wars, resource wars, and political maneuvering. It's not some crazy new thing that's all black leather and sexy computer chicks.
Did you steal info from a poorly-secured computer system? Great, that's just digital espionage. You could have sent a guy in with a camera to photograph stuff 30 years ago but you did it with a computer now. Same idea, different tools. Did you crash his telcom system? Great. Could have been done with a saboteur 30 years ago (generally poor luck with that sort of thing) but you managed it from your desk. Excellent.
While there will always be security holes in software, most of this exposure can be mitigated against with simple, sensible procedures. The thing we tend to forget is real life ain't like Hollywood. It may be cool in Chuck to think that a guy with a supercomputer armband can hijack a Predator whenever he feels like it but that's not reality. It may be cool to think that a hacker could pick any target he wants and break in but it's usually more a matter of running scripts and finding holes where you can get them, very luck of the draw.
When it comes to infrastructure attacks, I'm far less concerned with computer attacks. Throughout this country, we have a number of single points of failure that would be difficult to replace. Any civil engineer could draw up a hitlist in five minutes far more knowledgeable than I'm going to suggest here.
1. Long-haul transmission lines. It wouldn't take that much explosive to bring a tower down and they're often running through isolated areas. Knock a few towers down, then we're stuck spending billions to guard the rest.
2. While everyone is preoccupied with towers, hit the ...crap, I'm forgetting the name. My memory is wonky here but there's some expensive stuff used in electrical distribution that has very long lead times for ordering replacements. Blow up one of these, it could be a year before the new one arrives.
3. While everyone is preoccupied with that, send a few Lee Malvo teams to randomly snipe people around the country. Doesn't matter that the average commuter is ten times more likely to die in a crash that day than get sniped, everyone will panic.
4. While everyone is preoccupied with snipers, one of the other soft targets can be hit. Seriously, one electrical line failing took out New York. Making that happen again would have to be easier than plots like blowing up tanker trucks in the tunnels.
By all means, let's protect the computers but it's attacks like I've outlined above that I think would prove far more deadly. Of course, if I were the terrorist, I'd rather fart around with computer attacks from the safety of my cave than risk entering the target country but that's just me. I think people should be ridiculed for their political views, not killed. I'd make a lousy terrorist.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
lol!
nationalism is in fact a corrosive force in the world. i share your hatred of it. i share your hatred of the rich too. but at least i understand what nationalism is and what the rich aristocracy is a hell of a lot better than you do. the notion that it is invented by the rich is retarded
nationalism is really just a form of tribalism, extended over a broader area because of commonalities of ethnic allegiance and shared language. it requires a modern media to drive it, and this explains why and how modern european nationalism arose after the invention of the printing press
but it's all self-emerging, it requires no force to drive it. there is no funding needed to create nationalism, it is just something that appears amongst passionate nationalists, most often the poor middle class, in fact: study the history of any nations nationalistic heroes
in fact, much of the agenda and interests of the rich and the aristocratic classes throughout history is diametrically opposed to nationalistic forces, and the rich have frequently succumbed to populist nationalist uprisings throughout history. the aristocracy was and is often described by nationalist narratives as sell-outs ready to betray their own people
not that plenty of rich in many countries are often enthusiastically nationalistic, but this not a cause-effect relationship, in either direction. just look at the history of communist china or communist russia if you want to see a better example of the rich being skewered in the name of populist nationalist uprisings, nevermind the fact that nationalist instincts in those countries are still continuously manipulated propagandisitically according to governmental instruments- not the rich
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Funny how none of your examples ended up benefiting the poor, and simply ended up trading one set of oppressors for another. But that couldn't have been on purpose, nope.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Cooperation is no less natural than domination. What's your point? Tribalism evolved from peeing on bushes?
There are two cultures in the world. The culture of feast and the culture of famine. You don't even know what the first one looks like, do you? Read 'The Continuum Concept' for a look at what non starvation oriented human societies look like. Look at the bonobo chimpanzees of South Africa for an animal example.
Everything does NOT try to get as big as it can. The universe is NOT total war of all against all, that is a culture of famine concept. And it is a self reinforcing, self fulfilling concept.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
What worries me is an attack that takes Wall Street down for three weeks. When it comes back up, the US will no longer be the financial center of the world. Singapore, Beijing, and Dubai will have taken up the load.
That wasn't possible in 2001, by the way; the other trading centers didn't have the capacity or the capital backing. Now they do.
Then again, Beijing is going to displace New York within a decade anyway. The US is now a debtor nation, and trading moves away from debtor nations.
Nothing can possibly be unnatural. It is important to remember that there is more to nature than competition. Cooperation is at least as important (although some would argue that cooperation is simply a competitive strategy.) Altruism is real, and genetically selected for, because it provides clear benefits to organisms that practice it.
Human nature is complex, and can not be defined outside of the environment humans are enmeshed in. If everyone has the means to punish unfairness and selfishness in others, and cooperation is rewarded, most people will be cooperative. On the other hand, no one likes being taken advantage of, so if people see unfairness and selfishness going unpunished, they will be selfish and unfair themselves.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is the logical outcome of outsourcing technology. In the USA, we have given our expertise away. After energy shortages, I would have to assess this as THE security risk for us. We won the first Iraq war on our technology. We will lose the next one on our technology, wielded by others. And of course it was all done to make profits look good for the next quarter so some managerial technopeasant could get their bonus. Indirectly, we were sold out by Wall Street MBAs and a business culture that thinks money is *magic*, and damn the consequences.
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