Bruce Schneier: A Cyber Cold War Could Destabilize the Internet

moon_unit2 writes "In an op-ed piece over at Technology Review, Bruce Schneier says that the cyber espionage between the U.S., China, and other nations, has been rampant for the past decade. But he also worries that the media frenzy over recent attacks is fostering a new kind of Internet-nationalism and spurring a cyber arms race that has plenty of negative side-effects for the Internet and its users. From the piece: 'We don't know the capabilities of the other side, and we fear that they are more capable than we are. So we spend more, just in case. The other side, of course, does the same. That spending will result in more cyber weapons for attack and more cyber-surveillance for defense. It will result in move government control over the protocols of the Internet, and less free-market innovation over the same. At its worst, we might be about to enter an information-age Cold War: one with more than two "superpowers." Aside from this being a bad future for the Internet, this is inherently destabilizing.'"

Comments

"cyber cold war"

[logjon]

"Cyber war," "cyber attack," "cyber weapons," cyber fuck yourself. Cyber seriously.

Cold War I was real; so is Cold War II

[hessian]

I must respectfully disagree with Schnier on this one.

A cyber Cold War doesn't come about without another Cold War having occurred first.

In this case, Cold War II is playing out between NATO, the Russians the Chinese.

Just like Cold War I, this one is rooted in a practical geopolitical concern: who will be the ruling superpower for the next century?

Expect a Cold War II, if you're lucky. If not, expect WWIII, which will probably be more limited than the last two but still devastating.

Re:Cold War I was real; so is Cold War II

[Dragoness Eclectic]

"Cold War" is so 20th-century. In the 19th century, they called the same kind of schenanigans "The Great Game" -- it involved Great Britain, Russia, and Germany at the time. I have no idea what they called it in the 18th century, but it involved England and France, and a lot of hot wars between the periods of peace.

Now China is playing the Great Game with us, and Russia is playing it with Europe.

Extension of the trade war

[roman_mir]

This 'cyber-war' is just an extension of the trade war that is really going on now, which itself is the logical extension of the currency war that has been in process for decades actually.

Unfortunately for all, eventually currency wars and trade wars lead to hot wars, and nobody knows what the trigger may be. It may be some half important dude getting slaughtered in a hotel or it may be another round of 'cyber war' (and it doesn't even have to be a real one, all that matters is that news leak out that some important military installation has suffered in a serious cyber attack that 'stole' some heavy military secrets, wouldn't be the first time).

Re:Forcing old world views on the new world?

[vbraga]

Is it not completely possible that one intelligent man, $300 laptop, and an internet connection be just as "deadly" as any country's electronic warfare unit?

A large organization such a national electronic warfare unit is able to perform more target attacks: obtaining information about the target systems using other means such as human intelligence, coordinating a large team with multiple specialists (an exploit guy, a SCADA engineer, ...), being able to use again human intelligence to infiltrate the target, like bribing a guy to run a software from a USB drive or something like that.

While a single individual might be able to pull a highly targeted attack, it is considerably easier to a large organization to have the necessary budget to hire different specialists, coordinate with other agencies to leverage their resources, and so on.

Re:Free-market innovation

[Tailhook]

Profit minded companies

Xerox, Bell Labs, AT&T, Kalpana (later Cisco) all put in huge parts, like Ethernet, switching and UNIX. People like Kevin Dunlap and Paul Vixie out of DEC gave us BIND (DNS)

Here (under 'Affiliations') is a histogram of contributing authors to all RFCs. The title says "companies" but it enumerates non-companies like NASA, Berkeley and MIT. So citing RFCs blows a big hole in your own argument.

Your training as an anti-corporate malcontent has given you some blind spots. The Internet is largely American (Western, if your being diplomatic) and created by for-profit entities. But feel free to continue indulging whatever illusions make you feel good.