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."

Comments

All this cyberwar bullshit

[sopssa]

I have actually always wondered about this. I remember how we had to write a school subject about "chinese superhackers" newspaper article in the early 2000's. The Google thing was also showed off to be a work of amateurs, not some Chinese superhackers working for their government. For me it just starts to look like trying to put fear into people for whatever personal reason. "Chinese hackers working for their country to break into US systems" sure sounds cool and creates fear in people, but is there any actual truth behind it? As it is now it's almost like cold war carried over to new technological area. It also looks to be a common thing here on slashdot too - without actually even questioning if theres any truth behind it.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[Jurily]

Chinese hackers are indistinguishable from Chinese bored teenagers. Or American bored teenagers. Seriously, who cares where they come from?

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[oodaloop]

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.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[HungryHobo]

Ah a prime example:

In 1991, it was reported by somebody in the air force that a computer virus named AF/91 was created and was installed on a printer chip and made its way to Iraq via Amman, Jordan.[24] Its job was to make the Iraqi anti-aircraft guns malfunction; however, according to the story, the central command center was bombed and the virus was destroyed.[25] The virus; however, was found to be a fake.

of the others they mostly sound like boring old botnet activity or media sensationalism.

Sorry. No real "cyberwar" here.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[oodaloop]

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.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[ArsonSmith]

There is a cyber war, but it's within our own government, and it's over who gets the budget dollars to fight it.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[HungryHobo]

seriously: have you ever been an admin for any internet facing server?
Hundreds of attacks a day is nothing amazing.
That's background noise.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[CodeBuster]

mod parent up please, this is exactly what it's about: budget and turf.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[jank1887]

possibly a lot of funding for the civil side (FBI) but not for the military side. Hence the power struggle over definitions.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[bsDaemon]

I would probably lump it in with signals intelligence, or perhaps counter-intelligence as well. While disabling infrastructure and/or command/control is definitely attractive, it may or may not even be advantageous to do so. These days, just for example, America and China are so co-dependent on each other economically that blowing up a factory or even disabling the electrical grid would actually end up doing reciprocal economic damage to the perpetrating party by taking out part of a market and closing off cash flow. It's b.s. but there it is.

However, gathering information (intelligence) as well as poising the well (counter-intel) by corrupting databases, etc, would be incredibly useful. Knowing what data the other side is making their decisions on, as well as being able to make change to that data to give your opponent a false impression in order to gain the upper-hand in trade negotiations or raw diplomacy would be friggin' awesome.

Of course, there are countries with which we don't have such strong economic ties to preclude an actual "military" type attack, or even an actual war. However, between the big players (and frankly, even our "allies" -- Israel is notorious for spying on its so-called friends, and god only knows what MI6 is up to, for instance) the likelihood for big-time industrial espionage against the US, from the US, or between each other, I would suggest it still high.

Assuming this, I suspect that top targets would really be Commerce, Treasury and State and that those are the locations which need to be hardened more. No one is going to seriously suggest the NSA itself is going to be attacked successfully. The Pentagon, maybe/maybe not. However, those are where the expertise in defense and attack lie Civilian departments are more vulnerable and sweeter fruit to most foreign countries anyway.

I could be wrong though, but I think that's a fair appraisal of the situation.

Re:All this cyberwar bullshit

[HungryHobo]

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.

There is no cyberwar...

[H0p313ss]

... we have always been at war with Eurasia.

And he's right.

[ScrewMaster]

It's not a war if only one side is putting up a fight.

Re:And he's right.

[jimbolauski]

So that explains why the whitehouse banned the term war on terrorism.

Re:And he's right.

[DIplomatic]

I definitely agree. I make sure my house and car are locked and secure but I wouldn't say that I am waging a war against burglary.

So, wait...

[Androclese]

Are you telling me I planted my Cyber War Victory Garden and bought Cyber War Bonds for nothing?!

Re:So, wait...

[maxwell demon]

So tell me, who the hell do you have buried in the tomb of the Anonymous Soldier?

An Anonymous Coward, of course.

***Hand Waive***

[bobcat7677]

There is no Cyber-War ...and these are not the droids you are looking for.

Re:***Hand Waive***

[Itninja]

Don't waive your hand! You're going to need it someday!

Re:This guy sounds out of touch

[jimbolauski]

Incompetence has never been a reason for dismissial in government why start now.

Meh

[Dracophile]

There is no spoon.

CyberWar becomes Fiber War

[GPLDAN]

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.

Re:CyberWar becomes Fiber War

[HungryHobo]

http://www.rense.com/general64/fore.htm

There was an interesting war game played a while back: essentially it was nothing more than showing off how the US tactics couldn't ever possibly be defeated... which they proved by resetting the game after the opposing general "sank" most of the US fleet using nothing but a hodgepodge collection of small civilian boats.
Seems save scumming is fine even in war games.
The result was of course that the general playing the US side "won" since anything else would look bad.

...and at the same conference, FBI director says:

[daveschroeder]

FBI director warns of 'rapidly expanding' cyberterrorism threat

This "there is no cyberwar" business plays right into Singel's agenda that anything related to cyber war is really a conspiracy to kill the open internet.

All the "cyberwar" stuff may be overplayed, and no, we're not in a "war", per se, at the moment, but we are most certainly unprepared, as are many open, information-dependent societies...

Aptly?

[ink]

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.

Re:This guy sounds out of touch

[Chris Burke]

I don't see how emailing your post to the white house could fail to do the job. I mean "sounds out of touch"? How can anyone read that and not know he's not suited for the job?

Seriously, focusing on online crime and espionage without re-engineering the internet to eliminate anonymity, instead of focusing on a Cyber-War buzzword with all the "but we're at war!" excuses for doing whatever they want? That's no way to exercise executive power! You're so right; how incompetent can you get?!

War on X

[S77IM]

We had a War on Poverty, and poverty increased.
We had a War on Drugs, and drugs increased.
We had a War on Terror, and terror increased.

So, yeah, let's have a War on Cyber, and maybe cyber will increase too. Cybernetics? Cyborgs? Cyberspace? Cybering? I guess you take the good with the bad.

  -- 77IM

Yeah, right

[DoofusOfDeath]

The First Rule of Cyberwar is...

Let's see ...

[khasim]

What would you call a regular series of attacks on our military headquarters using computers, hmmm?

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 layoffs and coporate espionage

[FriendlyPrimate]

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.

Re:This guy sounds out of touch

[Chris Burke]

The curent attacks on the US infrastructure are simply finding our many weaknesses and no matter of sticking our heads in the sand will stop it. The only way to stop it is to start taking a proactive approach, shoring up our weaknesses, and start doing the same to our enemies.

Huh, that sounds like a familiar sentiment. Where have I heard it? Oh yeah, TFA!

"We can't sit there and be waiting for the next intrusion attempts to take place," Schmidt said. "We need to become stronger in what we are doing so we are better able to resist the things that are being thrown at us."

Get it? "Shoring up our weaknesses" is exactly what he's talking about. What he's also saying is that you don't have to cry "Oh my god we're in a CYBERWAR!" and then use that to justify destroying privacy on the internet like McDonnel wanted to do.