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US Unable To Win a Cyber War
An anonymous reader writes "The inability to deflect even a simulated cyber attack or mitigate its effects shown in an exercise that took place some six days ago at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel doesn't bode well for the US. Mike McConnell, the former Director of National Intelligence, said to the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee yesterday that if the US got involved in a cyber war at this moment, they would surely lose. 'We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose,' he stated. Three years ago, McConnell referred to cybersecurity as the 'soft underbelly of this country' and it's clear that he thinks things haven't changed much since then."
If you watched the broadcast of this exercise on CNN, you heard many people arguing for things that the government just can't do such as ordering telcos to disable all smartphones, suspending rights, and even nationalizing the power companies.
They spent so much time being told by the simulated AG what they couldn't do, they didn't have time left to discuss what they could do.
That "excercise" was conducted by a bunch of former Bush officials and other neocons. It wasn't a test of our cyber security, it was a propaganda tool designed to embarass the Obama administration and urge a further erosion of our civil liberties.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In this simulations, they weren't. The public cell phone network had a widespread trojan, which went on to attack the public Internet. With phones and data down, they weren't able to respond to simple bomb attacks on a few power locations, and the power grid collapsed.
The threat to the power grid wasn't that that it was cyber attacked, but that a conventional attack was much more powerful when there was no way to direct the repair people. With no way to direct truck drivers or send orders, there was no way to get gas to critical things like hospital and police to run generators.
The team lost the wargame, and was punished by having to be interviewed by Wolf Blitzer.
Have you heard of Infragard?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The military has conducted dishonest wargames before, gaming the rules to prevent the Red team from achieving a politically distasteful victory. Perhaps the parties involved can learn from their loss instead of pretending it didn't happen. Of course, if the Red Team was supposed to win, in order to bolster budget requests and score political points, we're back to meaningless pantomimes.
dont buy this cyberwar bullshit. they are just using it as an excuse to justify internet control schemes they want to bring upon you americans. remember how terrorism was used to bring liberties-infringing 'security' measures in all aspects of life. its the same shit, repeating itself.
do NOT buy it.
From an article about the "mock cyber attack":
"...A bevy of former top US officials were given various roles to play:
The entire scenario was thought up by Michael Hayden, the former CIA Director, and the faux attack began with malware masquerading as a free March Madness application for smartphones...."
Not only the same shit, but the same shit doled out by the same people.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier