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The Next Arms Race: Cyberweapons
Harperdog writes "Scott Kemp writes about the similarities between the nuclear arms race and the use of cyberweaponry for offensive purposes. As the article points out, offensive cyberwarfare leaves a nation's own citizenry vulnerable to attack as government agencies seek to keep weaknesses in operating systems (such as Windows) secret. Quoting: 'In the world of armaments, cyber weapons may require the fewest national resources to build. That is not to say that highly developed nations are not without their advantages during early stages. Countries like Israel and the United States may have more money and more talented hackers. Their software engineers may be more skilled and exhibit more creativity and critical thinking owing to better training and education. However, each new cyberattack becomes a template for other nations — or sub-national actors — looking for ideas.'"
The nuclear enrichment site at Natanz was kept offline. That didn't keep stuxnet out of there.
The problem with security in general is that no matter how many protections you put in place humans are still the weakest link. We will always make mistakes.
I interpreted that statement differently: it's not that government agencies seek to keep weaknesses secret in order to avoid being attacked, it's that they want them secret so that they can use those weaknesses to attack others.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'd say this is a bit more like biological weapons, and less like nuclear - more likely to spread, more likely that a single individual or small group can successfully develop and deploy them, some chance that once deployed, it will come back to attack its creator-state, because you can't be completely sure you can control it. (That is to say, once a given nuclear device is detonated, it's gone and can't attack again, but biological can cyber weapons can be harvested, tweaked, and re-deployed against you).