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Is Cyberwarfare Fiction?
An anonymous reader writes "In response to calls by Russia and the UN for a 'cyberwarfare arms limitation treaty,' this article explains that 'cyberwar' and 'cyberweapons' are fiction. The conflicts between nation states in cyberspace are nothing like warfare, and the tools hackers use are nothing like weapons. Putting 'cyber' in front of something is just a way for people to grasp technical concepts. The analogies quickly break down, and are useless when taken too far (such as a 'cyber disarmament treaty').'"
I can disable the national power grids of half the countries in the world using nothing more than an iPhone
And you need a guy there to knock out the backup generator.
Please, knocking out the power grid or making all the red lights turn green or whatever they're afraid of is nothing like having a bullet penetrate someone or a bomb going off - it's almost impossible, if not impossible to kill someone by hacking into a computer.
Shut something life threatening down or screw it up by hacking into it? There's backup or work around.
"Cyber warfare" is a small threat and not worth all the time and money spent on it. We should be spending the effort on ground surveillance and other means to reducing life threatening issues.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
They are all FBI Agents.
One of the common claims regarding "cyber warfare" are attacks against the power grid. What I'd like to know is this: why is the power grid accessible to any outside system?
Living With a Nerd
When millions of people in key positions have artificial hearts, limbs, microchips in their body, nanotechnology with RFID in their clothes, then cyberwarfare becomes something physical.
If hackers can stop the artificial heart of somebody important, this is no different than assassinating the person.
It is warfare in the same sense that computers think or ships swim. In other words, it really isn't, but it's a convenient metaphor to use because the truth is too complicated for the average person.
The convenient thing about "cyberwar" as a slogan is how it allows you to extend the notions of "wartime" into virtually every nook and cranny of life and infrastructure.
The term "cyberwar" quietly implies that virtually any net-connected system is a potential or actual combatant. From here, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to applying military/wartime standards for such niceties as atttacking systems, or requisitioning access. Even better, since "cyberwar" is, for suitably nebulous definitions, something that occurs pretty much constantly, among a wide variety of state and nonestate actors, with various levels of covertness, the mandate covers basically everybody, everywhere, and is of unlimited duration(See also: "Global war on terror").
Who needs bullshit like "warrants" or "due process" when any computer system can simply be declared to be an "enemy combatant" or "materially supporting an enemy combatant"? If you think the notion of charging an object in order to avoid procedural restrictions is absurd, be aware that it is already standard practice in the context of "asset forfeiture". (which makes for some rather ridiculous case names...)
Sticking a stupid name on something and overblowing what it means isn't the same thing as it not existing to begin with. Computers are vulnerable. People who don't like us can exploit those vulnerabilities. But this is really just another arena of non-shooting conflict, all under cloak and dagger.
The CIA has a long history of trying this sort of thing, sometimes successfully, many times not. There's directly funding revolutionaries, slipping agents into countries, running guns, sponsoring assassination attempts, economic sabotage, infrastructure sabotage, spying with human intelligence, electronic intelligence, satellite intelligence, etc. The CIA has a history of over-promising and under-delivering but this doesn't mean they won't still try.
The Russians have traditionally been much better at running spy rings. The beauty of hacking is you don't even have to put your own assets in-country and risk their capture.
On one hand, I don't think we'll ever get to the point where it can be Die Hard 4 info-Armageddon with hackers blowing up power plants at will. I think that public screwups will force a higher level of security and more rigorous design so that we are less vulnerable to external attacks. On the other hand, the BP fuckup shows that reason and logic are poor tools for explaining the behavior of large organizations. BP should have taken drilling seriously. They should have realized that they had no good plans for capping an uncontrolled well so if they were going to drill, the only option would be making sure they would never, ever, ever have an uncontrolled well. All the internal warnings they had in the months leading up to the disaster should have been their opportunities to stop the disaster before it happened. And we can see how it turned out.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Putting 'cyber' in front of something is just a way for people to grasp technical concepts
... in bed.
The analogies quickly break down, and are useless when taken too far
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