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Military Asserts Right To Respond To Cyberattacks
Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that National Security Agency director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander says the US should counter computer-based attacks swiftly and strongly and act to thwart or disable a threat even when the attacker's identity is unknown. 'Even with the clear understanding that we could experience damage to our infrastructure, we must be prepared to fight through in the worst case scenario,' wrote Alexander in a 32-page Senate questionnaire he answered in preparation for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to head Cyber Command. Alexander offered a limited but rare description of offensive US cyber activities, saying the US has 'responded to threats, intrusions and even attacks against us in cyberspace,' and has conducted exercises and war games, adding that it is unclear whether or not those actions have deterred criminals, terrorists or nations."
Let them respond to cyber attacks today and tomorrow they'll be asking if they can defend against physical attacks. I don't think we can afford to go down this road.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Why are essential systems connected to the internet?
... will we realize that we should maybe consider possibly not putting nearly all of our business there?
I realize we need china to support American materialism/consumerism. A cultural revolution could change that, though. I would much rather buy less, but of higher quality, as produced by my fellow citizens -- keeping the dollars in our own country and filling the bank accounts of people who otherwise wouldn't have had a job and would want my dollars anyway.
Something to think about... When you buy American, you reinvest in your fellow citizens. I'm not a champion of nationalism, but we are far from world unity and the last thing our country needs is to keep sending our dollars elsewhere.
When the one-world utopia happens, I'm all for it.
Well, yeah, but it's more of a question if it'll hold our attention long enou- ooh, Entertainment Tonight is on!
I'm concerned that Reader and Flash will facilitate making my PC part of that attack on the government. And if Joshua taught me anything it was to instead play a nice game of chess. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
Buying cheap was the only way a lot of people could have all the things they were told they needed by the marketing industry.
There is an article related to this on TechDirt: Here. Basically everything from vandalism to espionage is being lumped under "Cyberwar." With vandalism being much the more prevalent. The issue of "Cyberwar" itself is mostly made for good talking points in the media, after all anything that drives readership drives advertisers and funding. Think you can actually get at a GPS satellites operating system over the internet?
Shh.
...but *why* are you USAers, as a people, worth saving?
Oh, you mean *cyber* attack. Duh.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Perhaps the most wise thing Richard Nixon ever said:
This kind of attack can happen really fast, too fast for a human to respond to. Perhaps a machine would respond. While we're at it, why limit ourselves to fighting them in cyberspace? Let's take out their physical infrastructure. We don't want to put human soldiers in the way so let's use robots and drones. We'll need to control it all with good sight lines. Let's control them from the sky with a network.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
While I don't argue against the fact that the threat of a cyberwar is overestimated, the Internet is an integral part of many important systems now and will be even more in the future. Taking out these systems is the threat of a cyberwar and just because it hasn't happened (publicly and in a large scale) yet doesn't mean countries shouldn't assess the risks and prepare for it.
As was stated above, its stupid that so many key systems are connected to the Internet (i.e. why power stations aren't mandated to have a separate network for critical computers to their word processing/Internet browsing computers is beyond me), but that is the way it is.
The U.S. Military has extremely expensive equipment. How hard would it be to isolate their infrastructure on something not available on the World Wide Web? They Have SATELLITE NETWORKS! Put the public stuff on the world wide web, and keep the MILITARY INTRANET cord free from the web!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Actually, what he said is that he'd respond to attacks in cyberspace by counterattacking in cyberspace. No suggestion at all that we'd respond to cyber attacks with bombs/missiles/guns....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Clearly what is needed is a coordinated network of computers and physical warfare technologies that can detect these threats and determine the proper course of action. I suggest we name this network Skynet.