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There Is No Cyberwar
crowfeather notes an interview with cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt that Wired's Threat Level conducted this week. "Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing. 'There is no cyberwar,' Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. 'I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,' Schmidt said. 'There are no winners in that environment.' Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage. His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar — and was losing it. ... There's been much ink spilled in recent years over the turf battles in D.C. over whether the NSA (representing the military) or DHS (on the civilian side) takes the lead role in cybersecurity. But... "I haven't seen that tension," Schmidt said. As for which will take the cybersecurity lead, Schmidt simply says it's a shared effort."
... we have always been at war with Eurasia.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
It's not a war if only one side is putting up a fight.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This guy sounds out of touch, like he is more concerned with the politics of appeasing China than the job of securing our country. Can we somehow get this guy removed from office for incompetence?
No, not much. Just a bunch of massive cyber attacks on the U.S. government's websites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare#History_of_attacks
Doesn't really matter if it's China behind any of it to call it a cyber war.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The US owns the sea. the Chinese know this. Their sub technology is borrowed from the Soviets, and the Akula class is a barge underwater and it's all they got, and their Navy sucks.
The US has shown it possess the technology to splice underwater fiber cables and tap them. Google it, they've already done it in the North Sea.
And that is the trump card. China launches a major offensive against the world, they better have routes down through Korea, because every trans-pacific cable leading to the mainland will get cut in minutes.
If it's a war, then the Constitution requires Congress to declare it. We have wars on poverty, drugs, terrorism; why do we need to further dilute what it means to be at war? I find Schmidt's comments refreshing; perhaps we could have a rational discussion about security without needlessly ratcheting up the fear machine. Traditionally wars had beginnings and endings -- that is to say, they had structure (not to be quaint). When we're eternally at war with concepts, it numbs the sentiment.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
From the below article about the 2007 attack on the Pentagon: The Pentagon is exposed to "perhaps hundreds of attacks a day," and the department has back up systems in place, Gates said.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/133301/pentagon_shuts_down_systems_after_cyberattack.html
What would you call a regular series of attacks on our military headquarters using computers, hmmm? A compu-insurgency? Techno-terrorism? Cyberwarfare seems pretty apt to me.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
There is a cyber war, but it's within our own government, and it's over who gets the budget dollars to fight it.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I'd call it "the daily life of a firewall". Seriously, check your firewall logs. Mine are being "attacked" every hour of every day and I'm not a military installation.
IBM has recently started directly laying off American developers and replacing them with Chinese developers working in the "CDL labs". They're doing this for code designed to run on System z mainframes, such as Rational HATS (half the team just moved to China in the past couple of weeks). The main reason why companies use System z at all is because it's supposed to be ultra-secure, and therefore it is used for the most sensitive of processes (like banks, etc...). How unrealistic would it be for a Chinese developer (either willingly, or coerced by the Chinese government) to plant security holes in IBM mainframe products? They did it with Google...isn't it logical that they'd also be trying to target IBM? It scares the heck out of me thinking how many Fortune 500 companies that use System z for their ultra-secure mainframes might be getting exposed to Chinese corporate espionage.
mod parent up please, this is exactly what it's about: budget and turf.
as it stands any cyberwar launched by a government would be missed in the noise due to insignificance next to the legions of botnets, script kiddies, hackers, crackers and miscellaneous.