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The Hysteria of the Cyber-Warriors
Willfro sends in a piece by Evgeny Morozov at the Boston Review about the hyperbole and the reality of "cyber war." Quoting:
"At the end of May, President Obama called cyber-security 'one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.' His words echo a flurry of gloomy think-tank reports. Unfortunately, these reports are usually richer in vivid metaphor — with fears of 'digital Pearl Harbors' and 'cyber-Katrinas' — than in factual foundation. So why is there so much concern about 'cyber-terrorism?' Answering a question with a question: who frames the debate? Much of the data are gathered by ultra-secretive government agencies — which need to justify their own existence — and cyber-security companies — which derive commercial benefits from popular anxiety. Journalists do not help. Gloomy scenarios and speculations about cyber-Armaggedon draw attention, even if they are relatively short on facts."
Unfortunately, these reports are usually richer in vivid metaphor -- with fears of 'digital Pearl Harbors' and 'cyber-Katrinas' -- than in factual foundation. So why is there so much concern about 'cyber-terrorism?'
Because no one fully understands it. And not understanding something can easily lead to fear. And those standing to make money off that fear (journalists, contractors, agencies) are unashamed to exploit it.
... and that's easy to turn into fear when you're talking to the people who are in charge of protecting us from threats. And the potential mitigation techniques are another endless myriad of complex software/hardware. All I can say is that it is highly unlikely that a Live Free or Die Hard 'fire-sale' scenario will happen. I can't in good conscious tell you it's impossible. I can tell you that the probability of it happening within a year would most certainly be dealt with in multi-digit negative powers of ten. Then there's the possibility of lesser attacks which are highly probable but I feel that the cost-risk ratio is all messed up. Again, I believe this is due to ignorance.
I'm a computer scientist and I don't even understand or know about every potential vulnerability. It's simply too complex
You get into a weird sort of emperors-new-clothes kind of situation when the only people who understand your problems are also the ones trying to sell you a solution. And they're just not being openly honest nor realistic with you.
My work here is dung.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the face of meatspace terrorism, meatspace liberties can be curtailed. That's why there's "concern" over cyberterrorism. Because the internet is not healthy for the establishment. It can spread both truth and propaganda, but currently, it tends too much toward truth for the establishment. If that sounds crazy to you (nothing on the internet but lies and pr0n!) then you haven't looked around.
FTA:
Yes, this same thing keeps happening, where a (possibly) real world problem is used to justify a curtailing of freedom, consolidation of power, and serving various agendas of people in power at the time. A cynic might say it's planned, but we're not cynical, are we?
I suggest we give it a name. Let's call it Problem-Reaction-Solution.
Billy Brown rides on. Yolanda Green bypasses Gary White.
Look, for the first round of clean up no "cyberwarriors" are needed. We just had yet another article about how single city, for a single Windows worm, lost millions due to clean up. In that case it lost over $2.5 million, including rewarding the designers of the security flaws to the tune of $1 million. Knocking down a water tower would probably cost less to repair. So why are not the defense and law enforcement agencies stepping in here?
It's not a nameless or faceless "terrorist" group that is costing our businesses, shutting down our infrastructure, tangling our air traffic control, our power grid, or our hospitals. The people promoting Windows and Microsoft technologies have real names and faces and walk among us every day. Take them out and we've won the first round. It could be as simple as organizing a large scale round up under the RICO Act.
From there we can go on to hardening the net with IPv6 and dealing with the usual intelligence / counter-intelligence activities. But the first step, before we can stop the economic bleeding is to deal with the cause of the problem: the people who promote and profit from known defective technology.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yeah, but it's not cyber-"terrorism;" nothing is going to blow up. It's just espionage.
Plus, I've got to wonder how much of this is truly "hackers" from the outside, and how much is just the result of employees taking data with them -- whether they're just being sloppy, or actually malicious (e.g., ethnic Chinese with misplaced loyalties (god do I hate nationalism)).
Whatever the case, without disclosure for each "incident" of what actually happened in technical terms, we the public will never understand what's going on at any level besides "OMG HACKERS" -- which can mean anything.
The U.S. no longer has to worry about nuclear war? Probably. However, those nice N. Koreans are about as well adjusted as a squirrel after his third cup of coffee. Want to bet that even knowing full well they'd get annihilated, they wouldn't lob one in our direction if they started something they couldn't win? How about Al Qaeda and those gentle Islamic fanatics. Care to guess what they'd do with one of Pakistan's nukes if they were to, I don't know, maybe get one slipped to them as long as no they didn't ask questions?
Yes, DoD is expensive, losing a war is vastly more expensive. Let's talk some numbers, shall we. The U.S. DoD recurring budget (forgetting about Iraq and Afghanistan) is roughly $600 Billion/yr. Our recurring budget deficit is over $1 trillion. So even halving DoD's budget won't put us in the money. That doesn't count the Me Generation demanding their slice when they start retiring because there's nothing worse than a Baby Boomer who isn't made to feel the center of attention. Deficits from those nutjobs are well north of several trillion.
So no, there's isn't plenty of money to go around. Also, before you hop on the disarmament wagon train, you might want to consider that other countries reactions to the loss of the U.S. nuclear umbrella are probably not what you'd like them to be. First off, if Iran goes nuclear and the U.S. isn't around to back up the Arabs that hate us, the Arabs will want theirs too...of course they could rely on the Europeans...bwahahaahahaha...seriously, no one relies on those jokers. Hell, the U.S. is allied with them and knows better than to rely on them. Then there's the Asian countries who dearly love their Chinese brothers...as long as the their Chinese brothers don't have designs on their land, raw materials, etc...which they do. They will likely demand a nuclear counterpoint to China, Japan will find their pacifist notions are mere indulgences they can ill afford with China pushing them around, not to mention those nice well-adjusted N. Koreans.
Everybody, governments, companies, content creators, privacy advocates, have the same problem: digital information is cheap to disseminate.
If somebody breaks into a library of secret documents, there's a limit to how many copies they can make and take out. Even if they were to scan and store every page in every folder in every cabinet, it's still extremely time-consuming.
If somebody breaks into a computer full of secret documents, it takes seconds, maybe minutes, to copy the whole thing. And, the person doesn't have to be physically located by the computer. The person could be halfway around the world, or just right next door but seem halfway around the world.
What it amounts to is that secret-keeping is becoming more and more difficult. Actually, this isn't true. The difficulty of secret-keeping hasn't changed. But society desires convenience. And little do people know, these two concepts are mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, while convenience is individual, keeping secrets is communal. "Secret" is a term that only has meaning within the context of systems, i.e. only people inside the system know the secret, while people outside the system do not know. The problem is when one individual wants convenience and compromises secrecy for it, then the secret is effectively compromised.
Everybody just wants to have their cake and eat it too. That kind of logical impossibility will not happen, no matter how much we might desire it.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."