Do Nations Have the Right To Kill Enemy Hackers?

Nerval's Lobster writes "Cyber-attacks are much in the news lately, thanks to some well-publicized hacks and rising concerns over malware. Many of these attacks are likely backed in some way by governments anxious to seize intellectual property, or simply probe other nations' IT infrastructure. But do nations actually have a right to fire off a bomb or a clip of ammunition at cyber-attackers, especially if a rival government is backing the latter as part of a larger hostile action? Should a military hacker, bored and exhausted from twelve-hour days of building malware, be regarded in the same way as a soldier with a rifle? Back in 2009, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (which also exists under the lengthy acronym NATO CCD COE) commissioned a panel of experts to produce a report on the legal underpinnings of cyber-warfare. NATO CCD COE isn't funded by NATO, and nor is it a part of that organization's command-and-control structure—but those experts did issue a nonbinding report (known as "The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare") exploring the ramifications of cyber-attacks, and what targeted nations can do in response. It's an interesting read, and the experts do suggest that, under circumstances, a nation under cyber-attack can respond to the cyber-attackers with "kinetic force," so long as that force is proportional. Do you agree?"

Comments

Yes.

[egcagrac0]

A nation should be able to retaliate against attack.

It would be morally wrong to not try a hacking counterattack first, however.

Re:Yes.

[Barlo_Mung_42]

No. There isn't enough transparency to be sure we are killing the right person in such a case. We bomb to many innocent people as it is.

Re:Yes.

[khasim]

The problem is locating the attacker.

Rather than the cracked computer that Grandma hasn't updated since she bought it 8 years ago.

Any cracker should be going through at least 2 levels of zombies he controls that are configured to dump all the logs to /dev/null.

Drone strike on the senior center.

Re:Yes.

[Fluffeh]

A nation should be able to retaliate against attack.

I think the old saying "If you play with fire, you might get burnt..." applies here. Do I think it is right, yes and no at the same time. Just because the hacker is sitting in an office typing on a keyboard doesn't mean he/she isn't inflicting real world harm on others in another part of the world. At the same time, I think it would likely be a huge escalation to go from something being hacked to dropping a bomb - but that's not to say that dumb things don't happen - especially when politicians are involved.

I think anyone who is doing harm to another country, whether it is with a rifle and boots, or with a keyboard and an internet connection is fair game.

Re:Yes.

[PhxBlue]

... Rather than the cracked computer that Grandma hasn't updated since she bought it 8 years ago.

Right, and this is why the DOD hasn't really come down on one side or the other where cyberattack response is concerned.

Re:Yes.

[hedwards]

It makes a huge difference whether somebody is armed or using a computer. So, what's next, we bomb Chinese factories because their goods harm Americans? Because that's about as rational as what you're suggesting.

Taking human life needs to be done thoughtfully, doing it because you can is something that states are supposed to aspire not to do. And really, they shouldn't be taking life over this sort of thing.

Re:Yes.

[sjames]

It does need tio be considered carefully, but a cyberwarfare hacker and facility are every bit as much a legitimate target of war as a central headquarters, signals intelligence installation or codebreakers. However, if a shooting war hasn't (yet) broken out, it is also just as much an escalation as bombing any other military target would be.

Re:Yes.

[bonehead]

I think anyone who is doing harm to another country, whether it is with a rifle and boots, or with a keyboard and an internet connection is fair game.

I agree with this, but it is still a matter of degrees. The level of retaliation should be at least somewhat in scale with the potential damage the hacker could do. Robbing some bank accounts is one thing, disabling the cooling system in a nuclear reactor is something else.

And, of course there's the problem if positively identifying the real attacker. But once that's done with certainty, then yes, they're every bit as fair game as someone charging at citizens with a rifle.

Re:Yes.

[ZombieBraintrust]

Cyber attacks falls under espionage. Nations have been killing spies for thousands of years. There is always a risk when killings spys of killing a civilion. They generally don't use bombs to do it though.

Re:Yes.

[vidnet]

Let's do it. This would solve the growing cost of pensions, and open up lawns for kids everywhere.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we don't bomb enough innocent people.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bombs for some innocent people, chocolate bars for others!

Re:Yes.

[gl4ss]

they don't have the right to just kill random dudes around the world without a trial. where the fuck did you get that idea? obama? bush?

maybe, maybe if they first define that they're in a war with the said enemy country and then start bombing them or invade them and kill the said hacker in battle(just shooting them in cold blood and not taking them as POW would still not be right).

even then it's debatable if they have the right for it. doesn't mean that some countries wouldn't do shit like that without declaring war though. it just doesn't make it right.

where the fuck did you guys learn your ethics for war? from fucking terrorists? what's next, saying it's ok to use mustard gas on suspected hooligans since shop keepers have a right to defend their porch? gunning down someone who stole your wifi is ok?

Re:Yes.

[craigminah]

I've been saying that war is too civil, too precise, and not horrific enough. War has become tolerable with attacks that kill exactly who you want with little collateral damage (usually). If war was more horrible people would do more to prevent it. Reminds me of the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon" which is a great episode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon).

Buildings suspected to harboring haxors should be napalmed (just kidding...we should counter-hack them).

Re:Yes.

[hedwards]

Not really, if your infrastructure is that broken, then perhaps we should be fixing that problem.

Re:Yes.

[tokencode]

You have assumed 2 things... A) we have to get this information the info on who is responsible by tracing the attacker's footsteps, we can obtain this information via old fashioned espionage, say an inside guy B) that we would retaliate against the specific person who performed the attack. If an attack is funded by a nation-state, the proportional response can be against that nation-state, not the individual. If China were to take out our electrical grid, the proportional response is to take out theirs, by whatever means we want to, not kill the guy who did it.

Re:Yes.

[dnorman]

the difference is that a spy is traditionally on enemy soil, so are likely considered more fair game. a hacker is likely operating from a basement bunker in virginia etc...

Re:Yes.

[erroneus]

Sorry, but what's a proper counter-attack?

What if the first attack disabled banking services while the response disabled all power to all hospitals?

One is more likely to cost lives than another.

I think it's better to just say "yes" and be done with it. The fact is these rules are set to convey what an actor should expect in retaliation. If is is expected that a bombing attack or a sniper's bullet may be the return for engaging a target (because let's face it, the attack may have been enough to disable hacking options) then so be it.

But we can be guaranteed one thing. In a world where the US thinks copyrights are a national security concern, nothing will be understood or interpreted in any sensible manner.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes a huge difference whether somebody is armed or using a computer.

NO. It makes a huge difference whether somebody is *acting as an agent of the country's government (military or intel agency)* or not.

If you are a hacker, in the employ and uniform of your nation's military, then you are a legitimate target in a state of war. If a military truck driver in a military convoy is a legitimate target, then so is a military hacker. If not in a state of war, and you are captured as a spy, you are also subject to the penalties of espionage, as well.

And in fact, in times of war, bombing factories, railroads, bridges, and other key infrastructure is a COMMONLY accepted tactic in winning a war. Many times these strikes are timed for times of the day when the facility wouldn't be used, or notification is given of the intent to strike these types of targets - via leafleting, radio broadcast, etc. - and "if you don't want to be in the crosshairs, you might want to stay home."

This "nobody should die in times of war" is a ridiculous extreme. War is a nasty, unpleasant business, but sometimes it is *necessary,* sometime it is *justified,* and sometimes it is *moral.* Let's not confuse "do we have the right to launch a cruise missile at any location on the globe we think might be involved in a DDOS," with "enemy hackers in the employ of the enemy nations' government are legitimate targets during a state of war, and engaging in espionage and thus liable for the consequences, in a state of peace."

Likewise, I would expect any hackers in the employ of the US military would be subject to the same consequences if they are caught.

Re:Yes.

[PopeRatzo]

I've been saying that war is too civil, too precise, and not horrific enough.

I understand your argument. I agree in part.

The least we can do is bring back a draft so the burden of war can be more equitably shared across the socio-economic scale. If war is going to be more horrible, it should be more horrible for everyone, especially the people with the wealth and power to influence whether or not governments go to war in the first place.

Re:Yes.

[Ironchew]

If states can pursue and kill any hacker as they please without due process, then improperly-secured servers should be grounds for aiding the enemy.

I'm not suggesting either of these should be done, but it would level the playing field. If the sysadmins and their bosses don't like that liability, they shouldn't hook up important infrastructure to the internet.

Re:Yes.

[Belial6]

A draft is not going to push the burden of war on to the wealthy. Just like when there was a draft before, the wealthy will just fit in the "exceptions" category. Whether that is because they can afford college, or they can have one of their cronies arrange for their kid to get a states side posting.

Re:Yes.

[StormyWeather]

You are morally opposed to bombing, that's cool, I can respect that seriously.

However if we bomb a janitor trying to feed his family and taking the only job he can find at a bullet manufacturing plant and kill him, then what makes him so diametrically more involved in war than someone writing software to guide missiles, or someone who writes software to melt down an enemy nuclear rector or worse.

Rules of war are a zany thing, especially since one side (the underdogs) usually ignores them completely and figures they probably won't be alive to see the aftermath of that decision, or they will be a totalitarian regime, and won't have to face the music.

Re:Yes.

[gmuslera]

What about nations with shady definitions of hacking, digital rights and digital property? You could be targetted to kill/kidnap/jail just because a web page you visited had a funny javascript. In their own soil could send people to jail for decades for that kind of things, but who cares about people in other countries?

Re:Yes.

[DarkOx]

How do you even answer the question which is more serious? Disabling power systems in hospitals will probably kill more people in immediate terms. Taking out the banking infrastructure in a nation like ours would cause chaos and might cripple industry in preparation for a larger kinetic invasion.

Re:Yes.

[David_Hart]

The problem is locating the attacker.

Rather than the cracked computer that Grandma hasn't updated since she bought it 8 years ago.

Any cracker should be going through at least 2 levels of zombies he controls that are configured to dump all the logs to /dev/null.

Drone strike on the senior center.

Only two levels of zombies? In the movies there are at least 8 before the trace is cut off, usually because Mom called down to the basement "Dinner's ready"....

Re:Yes.

[Jhon]

"If states can pursue and kill any hacker as they please without due process, then improperly-secured servers should be grounds for aiding the enemy."

That's whacky logic. See below:

"If states can pursue and kill any destroy any incoming attack fleet without due process, then improperly-secured air space should be grounds for aiding the enemy"

OR

If a homeowner can kill any home invader without due process, then improperly securing your doors/windows should be grounds for being declared an accomplice to the crime.

Doesn't quite work, does it? Not without some serious logical gymnastics.

Re:Yes.

[Pseudonym]

Nations have been attacking munitions factories, power stations, and infrastructure ("dam busters", anyone?) for a long time, too. As a general rule, these facilities are staffed entirely by civilians.

Some of the people who write malware are more like the factory workers who build bombs or the engineers who build aircraft, than the soldiers who carry guns.

Re:Yes.

[lennier]

If war was more horrible people would do more to prevent it.

Yes, that strategy worked so well in preventing the Sequester, I am sure it would also work for preventing wars between nation-states.

Re:Yes.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I'm morally opposed to unjust war. One of the issues of just war is porportionality, which is mentioned in the slashdot article as "so long as that force is proportional".

We're talking about using kenetic weapons against hackers in cyberspace. Tell me, how much mass is in a bit?

Re:Yes.

[jgarry]

And what about the children? http://www.uscyberpatriot.org/Pages/default.aspx

Re:Yes.

[hedwards]

That's ridiculous. The supply lines guys get hit as a side effect of their jobs, but with a cracker, they're nowhere near combat Killing those guys is just unnecessary homicide..

Re:Yes.

[sanman2]

Or we could do what Kirk did and destroy all the critical computer systems, thus forcing the cyber-attackers to build real bombs to wage real war rather than their current cyber-war.

Then we could invite the cyber-attackers to a peace conference, since they'd now be afraid of real pain and suffering.

Then we could kill them all at that conference.

Re:Yes.

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Fine then. Bend over and take your espionage in the pooper.

Re:Yes.

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Everybody is spying on everybody, so killing spies threatens international order. Al-Qaeda kills spies, not nations at peace.

Oh. You mean all those spies at the WTC. My bad.

Re:Yes.

[StormyWeather]

How much water is behind the hoover dam which software controls? How much mass is in a tomahawk missile that runs on software? How much mass; is in a bunker buster, that is guided by GPS which is also run on military software?

Without software no modern military would be able to mount a campaign.

I know man, I don't want to get killed either, but just saying the guy that holds a joystick flying a drone bombing people isn't really that much better than someone shooting bullets other than he has air conditioning and a chair.

Re:Yes.

[Hylandr]

The history of any war has been pretty much to kill anybody and everybody regardless of their combative status. The US is more guilty of this than any other country in the carpet bombing free-for-all that was Germany, and the firebombing / Nuking of Japan.

The list goes on and we all know what it is. Why should this topic spark any surprise or outrage, except that now it's *our specific* demographic that could be targeted with zero due process?

Re:Yes.

[Cosgrach]

I agree. War should be one-on-one, a blood and guts in-your-face ordeal. It should be as unpalatable as possible.

And yes, enemy hackers should be seen as combatants and treated as such. Send in the ninjas and cut their throats.

Same thing goes for the MPAA and RIAA. Cut the throats of all the bosses and see just how keen they are to continue their evil ways.

Oh, and the banksters - give them a close shave as well.

Re:Yes.

[DarkOx]

I have argued before the least moral war is the one you are not really trying to win. Fundamentally the activity of war will kill, maim, and destroy property. If you are going to do those things you should have a damn good reason. If you have such a reason than it follows really very few targets should be off limits; we are already killing, maiming and destroying lively hoods for the cause after all. Total war really is the only just form of war. There is still some line, bombing an elementary school deliberately would be crossing it; for example, or maybe not if you have good cause to think the enemy is using them as human shields. The reality is war not the men of tribe slugging it out with sticks and stones.

War is factories building munitions, its banks financing the factories and facilitating payrolls, its farmers raising crops to feed troops, etc. These are staffed with people who are at least in some way complicit in some way. Your janitors job is necessary to the war effort if not directly. A munitions factory is a hazardous place and more so if not maintained; if something happened that impaired its output the war effort might be hurt. So even if he is just sweeping the floors he is doing it in a place the purpose of which is killing the enemy. Arguably any one who inst a child, invalid, or war protestor is a collaborator. Is the farmer growing corn and selling it the army to feed troops more or less culpable a soldier who may be a conscript? Any capital asset can be weaponized or turned toward war fighting use. This is just the reality of war between modern states.

Re:Yes.

[Cosgrach]

Bugger the children!

Re:Yes.

[Dogtanian]

Are you suggesting this as a serious possibility, or trying to illustrate (via ludicrousness) how unworkable such tactics would be unless we convert the Internet into something *totally* different to what it is today?

If the former, I'd like to point out that such tactics would be unworkable unless we converted the Internet into something totally different to what it is today. :-)

In all seriousness, there's no way that you'll *ever* be able to isolate any country on the Internet today from any other country- no matter how hard you try. Unless you totally isolate that country from *every* other one, and seal all holes, it'll still be possible to get through by indirect means.

"Secure Club"? Works well, provided there are absolutely *no* holes whatsoever in the outside of this massive infrastructure, and everyone is happy to go along with your plans exactly as you want them. Which is to say, it's not going to work in reality.

In fact, it's clear that even if the US decided it wanted to cut itself off entirely from *every* other country- while retaining approximately the same level of infrastructure within the US- it would be ludicrously difficult and unlikely to work.

Re:Yes.

[im_thatoneguy]

Obligatory YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA

Re:Yes.

[unamanic]

Doing so is as much a violation of the Geneva Convention as dressing your infantry in civilian clothes or placing anti aircraft guns atop a hospital. If a nation makes it impossible to differentiate civilians from combatants, their civilians become lawful targets.

Re:Yes.

[TFAFalcon]

Just start assassinating enemy leaders as the basic response to attacks and there will be a lot more peace in the world. Imagine if every time N Korea created an incident, their leader got shot/bombed. Or if the UK killed off the leadership of Argentina when the Falklands were invaded.

Proportional response is a good thing. But why direct it at cannon fodder and not at the people in charge? If you come under attack by state sponsored hackers, then kill off their heads of state. You'll get a much more satisfactory result with fewer casualties.

Re:Yes.

[meta-monkey]

Well, no, the proportion of the response is determined by the effect, not by the category of weapon.

I saw a documentary once called "Die Hard II: Die Harder" wherein the bad guys hacked into the air traffic control system and killed innocent civilians by making their planes crash. The heroic police officer described in the film then killed the bad guys with guns and also a cigarette lighter to great acclaim.

Doesn't matter if you're using a computer or a surface-to-air missile, blowing up passenger planes deserves a yippie ki-yay response. Defacing a website...not so much.

With regards to espionage, that's generally countered with security and counter-espionage. The cold-war acceptable response to spy satellites was "don't leave stuff you don't want the other side to see out in the open." Directly blowing up satellites or intelligence analysts was generally considered a "no-no."

Re:Yes.

[isorox]

I'm morally opposed to unjust war. One of the issues of just war is porportionality, which is mentioned in the slashdot article as "so long as that force is proportional".

We're talking about using kenetic weapons against hackers in cyberspace. Tell me, how much mass is in a bit?

I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.

Re:Yes.

[sjames]

I'll bet wars would be a lot less common if there was more leader killing. Sounds like a plan!

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're familiar with the concept of "war", right? We're not discussing whether it's acceptable to the country on the receiving end - their feelings don't enter into it. It's fair to say the USA didn't think Pearl Harbor was acceptable, but it was a perfectly legitimate attack under the rules of war.

The question is, whether a hacker can be a legitimate military target - whether it's fair to send a drone, or a SEAL team, to take them out. I think the answer to that is pretty straightforward: if they're engaged in acts of war against you, then it's perfectly reasonable to target them (personally, not just as part of a wider structure) for retaliation.

The form of retaliation may be counter-hacking, or it may be lethal force. Whatever works. A hacker engaged in acts of war is every bit as legitimate a target as Osama bin Laden. (And conversely, if - say - Iran could manage the targeted assassinations of the authors of Stuxnet, they'd be perfectly within their rights.)

Re:Yes.

[wiredlogic]

That's not a fair accusation because you are examining those actions through the lens of modern warfare where precision munitions are a reliable and effective tool. That capability didn't exist back then and they applied the technology they had as best they could.

Re:Yes.

[AmiMoJo]

Strange, the US seems to ignore the rules whenever it feels like it and I wouldn't describe it as the "underdog" in many conflicts.

Anyway, if hackers are legitimate targets expect Iranian drone strikes or ICBMs to be launched against CIA headquarters any time now.

Re:Yes.

[Chuckstar]

Depends on the hack, doesn't it? If an enemy country hacked a nuclear power plant and caused a meltdown with significant loss of life, then wouldn't the "kinetic response" potentially be not only justifiable, but appropriate?

This type of example is why you'll never get a major government to say "there is no situation where we would respond to a cyber attack with a physical response".

Re:Yes.

[ThePeices]

There is always a risk when killings spys of killing a civilion.

Im sorry, but civilions dont exist. Ive met *many* an ion in my life, and not a single one of those bastards was ever civil to me.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, your post is the ridiculous part of this conversation. It does not fucking matter if you're "50 miles behind the lines" - because there's no such thing as "lines" in modern warfare. If you are engaged in attacking your opponent, you can expect to be the target of defensive actions.

If you don't like the consequences of being designated a combatant, don't sign up for the military. Simple, no? Nobody's suggested that you should be able to lob a cruise missile at a kid who's running Napster on his home computer.

The people running the supply lines are hit because disrupting your enemy's supply lines is *good strategy.* Likewise, neutralizing your enemy's ability to co-opt your systems, and pull useful intel out of your networks, is *good strategy*. If that means you launch a cruise missile at the headquarters of the "Cyber Warfare Command" or whatever it's named, so be it. They are enemy combatants, wearing the uniform of their nation's military, in a time of war. They are legitimate targets. If you are not in a state of war, and still hacking another country's infrastructure to steal information, then you are engaging in espionage - and if caught at it, a legitimate target for arrest, and even execution.

Don't like it? Don't enlist.

Re:Yes.

[green1]

So would it not be "fair game" to bomb said bunker in Virginia to make the attack stop? If they are working from a government installation the risk of killing civilians is no more so than attacking any other military installation which are generally considered fair game in a shooting war.

That said, I agree that an appropriate reaction would be counter-hacking first, (just like nukes aren't generally considered an appropriate response to a squad of infantry with rifles, neither would bombs be the first response to hacking, but just as in that scenario, if initial force fails to stop the attack, escalated response is generally considered appropriate)

Re:Yes.

[blahplusplus]

"where the fuck did you guys learn your ethics for war?"

War is a racket, there is no ethics. You need to read more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

Re:Yes.

[green1]

In a conventional war, if the enemy sends a few guys with rifles, you send MORE guys with rifles, or a couple bombs, The point is that you don't counter with the same force, you always counter with just a bit higher (after all, the goal is to win, not lose) Obviously you don't go straight for the nukes in this case. However if your proportional response fails to stop the attack, you slowly ratchet up the pressure until it does. If the enemy is sending wave after wave of men with rifles, and you can't stop them no matter how many men with rifles you employ, you start looking at bigger and bigger weapons until you achieve your goal. No country is going to surrender because they ran out of rifle rounds while they still have tanks, bombers, and missiles sitting unused just because the other guy only used rifles, but just happened to have more ammunition.

So too it goes with cyber warfare. The question becomes more a point of at what level you consider the damage they have done with their hacking critical enough to warrant a more aggressive response.

I fully agree that you shouldn't bomb the guy behind the computer as a first choice. But if dedicated counter-hacking attempts fail to stop the attack, and the attack is on critical infrastructure... Is it really a good idea to just shrug your shoulders and say "well, we tried" and let it continue? or should you not respond with the minimum amount of force necessary to stop the attack? And if that minimum level requires a physical attack, is it not justified if you already tried all other options first?

Re:Yes.

[Guppy]

zombies

That brings up a good point. Cyber False Flag operations are far cheaper and easier to perform than their meat-space equivalents. By escalating from virtual-to-real body counts, you increase the risk your actual attackers must take, but you also increase the your own value as an entity that can be manipulated into doing someone else's dirty work.

Re:Yes.

[Hylandr]

They ( We ) didn't even try, and we still have ' collateral damage'.

War is total. The side that knows this and practices to an unfair advantage it will be the winner.

Re:Yes.

[Opportunist]

So Cuba should be entitled to send missiles to attack Florida for the ongoing economy war the US is waging against them?

Huh? Why not? What's the difference?

Re:Yes.

[ShanghaiBill]

A draft is not going to push the burden of war on to the wealthy.

A draft pushes even more of the burden onto the poor.

With the draft: Rich kids get exemptions. Poor kids get drafted, sent to war, and get paid peanuts.

Without the draft: Poor kids go to war, but at least get paid enough to entice them to volunteer.

Re:Yes.

[dwye]

Everybody is spying on everybody, so killing spies threatens international order.

Killing "spies" (which as a term of art means either A's military in B's country dressed as B civilians, or B civilians knowingly working for A) has always been on the table, just as has killing "enemy agents" (citizens of A working in B, with or without diplomatic cover, usually trying to develop and/or aid "spies") when they cannot be captured and interrogated, and maybe traded for "intelligence agents" (our guys who the other side would call "enemy agents" or "spies" if they used our terms) at a later date.

Al-Qaeda kills spies, not nations at peace.

So, Soviet Russia never killed any of its citizens who were spying for the West, or whom they thought might be (Subliminal Man says, "KAL 007 in the Reagan era), or just they never killed any British or American citizens during the Cold War, or before (Subliminal Man says, "Sidney Reilly")?

More on topic, the people that are threatened by the Tallinin Manual rule are not mere spies (i.e., seeking to learn secrets) but are more saboteurs (i.e., seeking to damage vital infrastructure, like dams or power stations [or gas centrifuges]).

Re:Yes.

[dcollins117]

Ive met *many* an ion in my life, and not a single one of those bastards was ever civil to me.

Don't take it personally, they're just after your spare electrons.

Re:Yes.

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Just because it looks like war "usually" lacks substantial collateral damage doesn't mean that's actually the case; an attacking military like ours will typically keep the full toll to itself (or not keep track), give numbers knowing they won't register meaningfully in most people's minds, and/or imply (if not state outright) that the people that were hit were enemies.

We're rarely told about things like tactically unimportant shantytowns well removed from the real target being bombed seemingly without reason, long enough that adults & kids hiding (ineffectively) in their shacks snap, bolting into the open like the 13-year-old girl that lost one leg and her little sister's life. To be fair, I do recall hearing about a boy from Iraq brought here to the US for emergency care after he picked up a "ball" (cluster bomb), losing an eye, both hands, nearly disemboweling himself, lodging shrapnel in his brain, and killing his big brother...but I might well have only heard about it because the kid was brought to my area for care.

I mean, think about it -- cluster bombs aren't used in carefully targeted attacks to get rid of "bad guys", because government leaders & the military of a country have bunkers to hide in and enough warning of incoming attacks to reach them. It's the average, everyday civilians like us that are caught outside when an invading force starts dropping shit like cluster bombs, or that later find the undetonated remainders the hard way afterwards -- and the attacker isn't exactly going to consult locals to be sure it's not when all of the kids & many parents are walking to/from school...

Re:Yes.

[amck]

To Pick a not-so-hypothetical example, various intelligence agencies have been monitoring hospitals over the last decade or two to find wanted terrorists as they come to the west in disguise looking for medical treatment for cancer, etc.

So, if i'm a sysadmin in an Irish (or Swiss, or other non-NATO, neutral) hospital, and my internal databases get hacked, in such a manner that patients lives are put at risk / lost, and I _think_ I can trace the attack back to Virginia, what do I do?

Civilian lives lost due to foreign military activity would typically be called an act of war, no?

Re:Yes.

[DougF]

Your premise is incorrect. The vast majority of US military enlistees are from the middle and wealthy classes, mostly for the college education benefits. In fact: 98% of US military enlistees are HS graduates, compared to a 75% graduation rate in the US. More US military enlistees are from the $70K+ income group than from the $20K- group. The vast majority of enlistees are from the $30K to $60K income groups, which puts them squarely in the middle class and NOT in the lower class. In other words, the poor need not, and in fact don't, join the military, they have the US government to support their lifestyle.

Re:Yes.

[DougF]

If war was more horrible people would do more to prevent it.

Didn't work for WWII. 15M or so dead for WWI, 40M or so dead for WWII. Did work for the Cold War, when governments realized their existence could be vaporized in mere minutes. Lesson learned: Threaten governments, not people.

Re:Yes.

[pantaril]

So, if someone used your computer to hack into chinese goverment agency and then, the Chinese would assume you are responsible and sent undercover agent to kill you, you would be OK with it?

In my opinion, no nation has right to kill anyone for cyber attack as you are never sure who is the real attacker. The proper action would be to secure your systems, make counter-hack attempt or try to sue/extradict the culprit, if you think you know who he is.

Re:Yes.

[khallow]

I've been saying that war is too civil, too precise, and not horrific enough.

One could say the same of any bad thing where there is moral hazard in the economic sense. But generally any time you have massive harm, there is benefit from reducing that harm.

Re:Yes.

[Stalks]

Its so much easier with cyber-attacks though. The attackers identity is hidden by tunnelling through multiple zombie machines or which some or all don't hold logs detailing the next 'hop' makign it impossible to trace.

Re:Yes.

[dbIII]

You have a good point because we've already jumped the shark by saying torture is OK, so why not what you suggest as well? If you want barbarism then fair enough, just don't expect any sort of respect.

Re:Yes.

[lightknight]

Tread carefully here. Misdirection on the internet was a fine art during the '90s...who knows what level it's at now. We're talking the kind of 'bouncing the signal off enemy satellites' kind of approach that the CIA wishes they could pull off.

And now a bunch of morons, with tiny brains, and big clubs, who want to bring 'T3h L@w to the iNternets' are getting involved? If I were a betting man, I'd be betting a few thousand dollars that the US gets tricked into a war by someone more clever than itself. Remember, the one of the greater feats of cleverness, at the end of the day, is to get your enemies to fight each other, while you watch from afar, on a comfy couch, eating popcorn and drinking pop.

Give up your baseless dreams of playing the White Knight to people who do not need your help; your ego prevents you from realizing what you need, which is some quiet contemplation over whether the direction you're headed in is really in sync with your ideal.

Re:Yes.

[lightknight]

Precisely. The 'Just War' approach inevitably degrades into the "I do as I please" approach, as there is no metric for telling you that you are going to far, save that of the guillotine or sudden appearance of a MIRV over your capital city.

Re:Yes.

[lightknight]

There is better chance to positively identify a spy on your own soil, than on the internet. Again, misdirection, proxy methods, pawns, compromised individuals, etc. are all applicable here. If the Russians want some information on the latest DoD submarine, are they going to go in directly and get it, or have a female agent compromise a contractor on the project? And yet the contractor is, unknowingly, a pawn in all of this nonsense.

Re:Yes.

[lightknight]

Amazing that in all this time, they haven't employed proper security. I mean, you should hear what is said about some of these systems: no anti-viral protection, engineers carrying critical files around on thumb-drives (infected with viruses), etc. It's not like any half-decent network admin doesn't know how to secure these things to the ridiculous degree...it's just that things are never put into play, because, I assume, it requires training, and training is money. So people bumble along, from one catastrophe to the next, only fixing things when they become bad enough to warrant attention. No different from the Mr. Burns approach to running the Springfield nuclear power-plant.

You want to lock down a network? Force registration of the MAC address of every device to an existing account. Encrypt traffic inside. Use fiber instead of copper (harder to tap, I'm told). Etc., etc.

Re:Yes.

[lightknight]

Exactly. See, the sad part is, having reviewed what happened during WWII, with regards to Pearl Harbor, we know that our leadership is not above lying to us to achieve their own ends. Having recently read what Nixon pulled off with regards to the Vietnamese, we know it was not a one-time thing. It is, in all likelihood, a recurring problem with regards to leadership, both in this country, and possibly others. As such, there is no logical option, but to view all attacks on the US, as reported by various compromised organs, as possibly tainted, or incomplete, with regards to the information supplied. We hear that China is attacking us via the internet...suspicion says that we perhaps are doing the same to them. From this point on, it becomes a question of which nation, if any, is 'right'; which is usually resolved in the time honored fashion of 'who started it' and 'who is continuing it.'

Another problem then presents itself, which is of the 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' -> despite the lunacy of this situation, there may well be a time when there is a real enemy out there, destroying things, yet no one believes the information regarding it purely because they've been lied to so much. Two lessons could be learned from that fable, three of you're Ferengi ("Never tell the same lie twice"): 1.) Continuously lying will result in a lack of help when it is most needed, and 2.) There really was a wolf, in the end. It shows up only after all chance of help has been permanently removed.

Re:Yes.

[craigminah]

Sequestor was a political posture. It's reducing the INCREASE in spending, there si still a net increase in spending from FY12 to FY13 so don't believe the fear-mongering. If they were to say, "if we can't fix the budget we'll automatically close the Pentagon and eliminate the 'Affordable' Health Care Act." I bet that'd be horrific enough to get politicians to act, but then again who knows as they are hard to read and don't do what's logical.

Re:Yes.

[Eunuchswear]

No. There isn't enough transparency to be sure we are killing the right person in such a case. We bomb to many innocent people as it is.

What do you mean "we"?

The US is so far the only country to have claimed an offensive "cyber-war" capability, and probably the only country to have launched an attack. (A real, actual, breaking things and possibly people attack, not espionage).

So if anyone is going to be bombing in retalliation it's not the US. (So far).

Re:Yes.

[Eunuchswear]

CIA drone pilots? Are they civilians? Yes. Are they combatants? Yes.

Interesting.

Re:Yes.

[BForrester]

Just start assassinating enemy leaders as the basic response to attacks and there will be a lot more peace in the world..

If a leader was killed off every time a country attacked another, there would be nobody left to run the Western democracies.

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

So, if i'm a sysadmin in an Irish (or Swiss, or other non-NATO, neutral) hospital, and my internal databases get hacked, in such a manner that patients lives are put at risk / lost, and I _think_ I can trace the attack back to Virginia, what do I do?

Realistically, there is nothing you can do other than write a stiffly worded letter of complaint to President Obama. Ireland or Switzerland are hardly going to declare war on the US.

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

Total war really is the only just form of war. There is still some line, bombing an elementary school deliberately would be crossing it; for example

No, you can't have it both ways. There either is a line or there isn't.

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

If war was more horrible people would do more to prevent it.

Didn't work for WWII. 15M or so dead for WWI, 40M or so dead for WWII. Did work for the Cold War, when governments realized their existence could be vaporized in mere minutes. Lesson learned: Threaten governments, not people.

The Cold War proved that if all-out war is really horrible enough, you just use proxy wars instead.

Re:Yes.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I was more going for that traditionally, proportionality meant responding in kind, not necessarily amount. It just seemed odd to me that you'd respond to a software attack- which has no mass and almost no reality outside of cyberspace- with a kinetic attack- which has lots of mass and lots of reality in the real world.

Re:Yes.

[unamanic]

Am I a lawful target? I'm a military member so, yes even when I'm in civilian clothes or at home in bed at night I am a lawful target.

Are all CIA agents lawful targets? Yes. Do they operate from a government facility that is also a lawful target and so clearly identified? Yes. If the US started operating drones from inside elementary schools, then elementary schools would also become lawful targets. The law of armed conflict is really pretty simple, each side attempts to destroy the other's ability to wage war with as little collateral damage as possible. The moment that one side breaks the rules, the other is also permitted to break them as well to stop the damage caused by the original violation. The U.S. generally doesn't respond to enemy LOAC violations with reciprocal violations because doing so make the enemy less likely to surrender.

The bottom line is this:
- If we are at war with a nation and get attacked from within that nation we can and will respond to the attack, probably with kinetic weapons (regardless of the perpetrator).
- If we are not at war with a nation and get attacked, we probably attempt to deal with it diplomatically(regardless of the perpetrator) before proceeding to a military solution. That diplomatic solution may be to seek extradition for prosecution or, possibly clandestine, approval to operate drones in their airspace to eliminate the threat.

Re:Yes.

[TFAFalcon]

Well there you have it, peace.

Re:Yes.

[Jiro]

If hospitals in your country are being used as a shield by terrorists, and as a result Americans start attacking your hospitals, that's the fault of the terrorists for using your hospitals as shields and/or the fault of your own government for letting your country be used as a haven for terrorists, not the fault of the Americans. This is true whether the attack is cyber or physical.

It really sucks to have terrorists hiding among civilians because it makes the civilians get hurt in attacks, but that's what happens when terrorists hide among civilians.

Furthermore, the question is whether nations have the right to kill enemy hackers. You do not; you are not a nation. If the Americans are attacking you and you want to attack them back, get your country to declare war on America and join the army.

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

That's not a fair accusation because you are examining those actions through the lens of modern warfare where precision munitions are a reliable and effective tool. That capability didn't exist back then and they applied the technology they had as best they could.

Whether you agree with them or not, the firebombing of Dresden and nuking of Japan weren't just cases of "oops, we missed the docks/tank factory and accidentally hit a school". They were deliberately targeted at the civilian population to cause shock and awe.

Re:Yes.

[green1]

And again I'm not arguing that a kinetic attack should be the first choice for a response. but realistically you have to make the threat stop, and if a kinetic attack is the only way to do that, you'd be stupid not to use it. And yes, it would be a "proportional" response if it followed the usual escalations, or if the software attack had equivalent real world consequences (yes, modern software controls physical things that CAN kill)

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

They ( We ) didn't even try, and we still have ' collateral damage'.

War is total. The side that knows this and practices to an unfair advantage it will be the winner.

I don't think Hitler lost WW2 because of having too many scruples about engaging in total war.

Re:Yes.

[tehcyder]

Bugger the children!

As the priest said on the Titanic.

Re:Yes.

[Hylandr]

Hitler lost the war, because *we* didn't have 'too many scruples'. We outright targeted civilians, both in Germany and Japan.

This is why we won.

What nobody gets yet, is the scope of involvement in a 'cyber attack'. An ISP, or Cable technician can be seen as a combatant that's assisting the hacker by making sure the infrastructure is intact.

In order to destroy the infrastructure with 'kinetic response' means carpet bombing the hell out of the place since the infrastructure of the web is interwoven with everything else we enjoy in life.

If we allow kinetic response to individuals it's only going to get out of hand. Fast.

Re:Yes.

[GLMDesigns]

More guilty!?! More guilty than the Japanese in China? More guilty than Timurlane/Temujin? Take a look at the civilian deaths in WWI. There were approximately 7,000,000 to 10,000,000 civilian deaths. The firebombing of Dresden took about 25,000 lives. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 100,000. I'm not justifying war, or the actions of the leaders (that's for another conversation) only the point that "The US is more guilty of this than any other country ..." The US is no more guilty than any other combatant. Case in point the german firebombing of london took about 35000 lives. And external war is not the only place where civilian's die. Take a look at Stalin's murder of Ukranians, his "decossackization", the millions of civilians put into military gear (untrained) and forced to charge German lines. How about the 20+ million who died in Mao's "Great Leap Forward". And there are many,many more examples from the Assyrian Empire, to the destruction of Carthage, to ... more, and more, and more.

Re:Yes.

[GLMDesigns]

And here I thought poverty was caused by capitalist countries "investing" in poor countries and causing "underdevelopment." This has been taught in Marxist 101 classes since the 1950s. It's one of the intellectual mainstays by countries that prohibit foreign companies or limit foreign workers. (Read Lenin's Imperialism, the final stage of capitalism (or something like that).

The US is doing Cuba a favor by not interacting with it. After all, according to Underdevelopment theory, it is capitalism (ie international trade) that it hurting the periphery (poor countries) and benefacting the core ( US and other developed countries).

Re:Yes.

[Hylandr]

I see, and concede your point on quantity of deaths.

But I hold that allowing Non-kinetic-combatants to be dealt with kinetic force will only justify more carpet bombing. And whether or not we hold the title for most civilian deaths, we did also target civilians. I doubt that will be a limiting factor in future engagements either.

Re:Yes.

[GLMDesigns]

Fair enough.

I'm not a big fan of war. I pray that there is never going to be an existential battle between super-powers. Should that be the case .. well we're all f**ked. Civilians will die in the 10s of millions.

Re using kinetic force against a cyber-terrorist ala 24. That is tough. The cyber-attack kills millions the kinetic attack kills a handful.

In general though we are going down a very bad path with drone assassinations in Pakistan, Yemen and other places. I am thoroughly disgusted by the road we're taking. That said - I can come up with "what-ifs" where I would not be so opposed to targeted killings of "cyber-terrorists" (for lack of a better word) - see the above example.

Re:Yes.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Hmm, given that- in that case, wouldn't the best thing be to take out the routers between you and the country that is attacking? They're likely unmanned and while secure, probably not guarded against a cruise missile.

Re:Yes.

[HornWumpus]

With enough resources, you can do traffic analysis even if you can't break the crypto.

I'm betting the NSA has those resources.

You can also root all the machines in the zombie chain if you have the zero days in your pocket. Again I'm betting the NSA has these zero day exploits waiting.

Re:Yes.

[HornWumpus]

They are both legit military targets. What makes you think a scientist doing weapons research isn't a legal target?

Re:Yes.

[kilfarsnar]

I've been saying that war is too civil, too precise, and not horrific enough.

I understand your argument. I agree in part.

The least we can do is bring back a draft so the burden of war can be more equitably shared across the socio-economic scale. If war is going to be more horrible, it should be more horrible for everyone, especially the people with the wealth and power to influence whether or not governments go to war in the first place.

Conscripts don't make good soldiers. If you are drafted against your will to do something as terrible as fight in a war, you won't do it very well and you will look for any opportunity to escape. The fact that America's rich and powerful seldom go to war is more cultural. Notice that Prince Harry of England flies combat missions.

Re:Yes.

[kilfarsnar]

then remove those categories all together?

You and what army?

Re:Yes.

[HornWumpus]

And reverse the megadeath trend. Which is the whole point.

Re:Yes.

[green1]

Considering that many attacks are now extremely decentralized through botnets and other such things, isolating you from them could isolate you from the entire internet. now taking out the other country's links to the internet so they can't control the attack anymore, that might make sense. Of course if they keep getting around it somehow, you'll have to eventually work on something more drastic.

Re:Yes.

[Opportunist]

So, as long as I have the stronger military I may browbeat another state economically into submission?

Why do I suddenly feel like international diplomacy is like a schoolyard and the US is about to steal my lunch money?

Re:Yes.

[Wolfrider]

--Where, oh where, is Retief of the CDT (and mod points) when you need them...

Re:Yes.

[bryan1945]

Yep, and it's not just to shield the terrorists, they think it also makes a good photo op to send out pictures of dead kids and women. Since basically the entire world hates the US, they lap it up like good doggies. The US is far, far, far away from being pure, but at least we don't send moms or teenagers into a marketplace to blow themselves up.

Re:Yes.

[metaforest]

Tell me, how much mass is in a bit?

A little basic electronics math will tell you... might be a bit off on this but I think we can get close with:

For electrical transmission over wire the mass of a bit is approximately* proportional to
M =(1/B)*A*V*C*E
Where B is bits per second
A is average impulse current flow within a bit frame.
V is the peak-to-peak voltage of the signal carrying the bits.
C is the Coulomb constant: 6.241509x10^18
E is the mass of one electron 9.109382x10^-31 kg

*This will overestimate the mass of a typical bit for a number of reasons. Not all the combinations of bits in a sequence require the same energy to transmit. This calculation assumes a square bit. Circular, or round(ish) bits are more accurate but the maths are uglier(in /.) to show/write.

Re:Yes.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

"isolating you from them could isolate you from the entire internet."

Which, during a cyber attack, is exactly what you want to protect local mission critical automation, correct?

Re:Yes.

[ultranova]

There is always a risk when killings spys of killing a civilion.

Which is why exposed spies are usually sent to a court, rather than simply assassinated.

Re:Yes.

[PopeRatzo]

Conscripts don't make good soldiers.

That's a small price to pay if you're making a better society.

And conscripts did just fine on two fronts against the Germans and Japanese.

And, I'm not sure that conscripts don't make good soldiers. A lot depends on the mission. An unjust war? Not so much. A just war? Then conscripts are every bit as good as someone who believes combat is his best option in life.

Re:Yes.

[green1]

No. it really isn't. no country wins by sending themselves back 50years technologically.
If you advocate cutting the attacker off from the internet you may have something, but that likely involves kinetic strikes on infrastructure not in your own country.

Re:Yes.

[rohan972]

where the fuck did you guys learn your ethics for war? from fucking terrorists?

Even worse than that: Hollywood.

NO!

[fustakrakich]

Duh!

Proportionate Response

[the eric conspiracy]

If said hacker is messing with infrastructure, yes. That sort of thing can put lives at risk.

Re:Proportionate Response

[fustakrakich]

Will you apply those rules to the home team?

Re:Proportionate Response

[skovnymfe]

Of course not. It's the other guys that need to die in the name of our righteous cause. Not us.

Re:Proportionate Response

[Freddybear]

Let the enemy worry about that.

Re:Proportionate Response

[mjwalshe]

And in some cases is a war crime eg targeting hospitals power supply that would be a war crime under current law

Re:Proportionate Response

[X0563511]

We already have rules covering the home team.

Re:Proportionate Response

[sjames]

Permitted? We're talking about warfare, the enemy rarely asks for permission!

If you mean morally, the equivalent would be if an army hid a weapons cache in your basement without your knowledge.

Re:Proportionate Response

[alexgieg]

Well, one could calculate the total amount of force used by the hacker while pressing his keys and retaliate proportionally. One trembling punch and two pokes per hacked site should be about right.

Re:Proportionate Response

[erroneus]

I would but my "team" doesn't represent me. And I believe that is the case for most governments these days.

Fact is, the government and the people are far enough apart these days to be completely different species.

Re:Proportionate Response

[vux984]

Well, one could calculate the total amount of force used by the hacker while pressing his keys and retaliate proportionally.

So if the hacker's been pounding away on his beloved Model-M, then we can drop a bunker buster on him and call it even.

His neighbors would probably appreciate the quiet too.

Re:Proportionate Response

[fustakrakich]

I will believe you the first time I see a politician refuse to vacate his seat after losing an election.

Re:Proportionate Response

[greenbird]

I will believe you the first time I see a politician refuse to vacate his seat after losing an election.

Which puppet is in the seat isn't relevant as long as the strings are attached.

Re:Proportionate Response

[dbIII]

Irrelevant since the US hasn't signed on, so nothing a US citizen does is a war crime. Military justice does recognise a wide range of crimes however. Bombing a hospital or it's power supply would not be one. Deliberately shooting war corresponents is supposed to be a crime but that hasn't made it to court yet.

Re:Proportionate Response

[mjwalshe]

err the USA does adhere to the laws of war and is a signatory to the Geneva conventions - the fact that the US hasn't signed up to the International Criminal Court is a different matter.

The USA held off from bombing dams in Korea for this reason

Maybe...

[Pyrus.mg]

If lives are at risk due to the attack then I say kill 'em.

Re:Maybe...

[gmuslera]

So if any country of the world have a computer hacked from an US IP is right to launch a bomb there and the US won't retaliate?

High risk of mistakes being made

[stoofa]

There are enough fatal errors made when soldiers and armed police kill innocent people carrying brooms, and the like, that are mistaken for firearms. With all the spoofing techniques available, how certain could they be that a strike was based on stringent enough intelligence?

It goes both ways.

[stewsters]

How about another question, do enemy hackers have the right to kill a nations citizens? I think the answer to that question will be the same.

Re:It goes both ways.

[Freddybear]

A "right"? No, of course not. It's not a question of "having the right to commit an act of war". You commit an act of war you either win the fucking war you just started or you lose the fucking war and you take the fucking consequences.

Re:It goes both ways.

[gmuslera]

Do local hackers have the right to kill enemy citizens? Would be right and without retaliation if the attacked country send a missile to that local hacker house? You lose the right when you make it one sided.

Re:It goes both ways.

[fustakrakich]

I'd rather commit the act of fucking. You can have the war.

Strongly Agree

[GameboyRMH]

Now, to hack into RIAA headquarters and launch an attack from there in the name of Al Quaeda! Take off every drone!

Irrelevant

[Hatta]

The biggest threats to our freedom, safety, and economic well being come from our own governments, not foreign ones. When we start using proportional force against internal threats, we can start talking about what proportional force against external threats is.

IOW, I'm a lot more scared of Goldman Sachs than I am scared of China.

Re:Irrelevant

[Opportunist]

It scares me less. Mostly because I'm not in China.

Rest assured, Goldman Sachs wouldn't scare me either if it couldn't affect me. Let's move them to China, sounds like a compromise?

Public Beheadings

[WillgasM]

or Gitmo. That place is still open, right?

Re:Public Beheadings

[isorox]

or Gitmo. That place is still open, right?

No, first thing Obama did in 2009 was shut it down.

Really?

[Spillman]

I never even considered this possibility until right now. I mean killing someone for hacking? I would generally say no, but what if its an infrastructure sort of thing. Like they hacked into a hospital and fiddles with patient records and people died, or they hacked into ATC and caused plane crashes? Should they be tried for murder? If we are at war with that country should they just be attacked by drones and killed off like an enemy combatant? I don't really like where this train of thought is heading, it's like the futuristic dystopia is almost here!

Re:Really?

[ZombieBraintrust]

What the summary is describing is espionage. Spies have been killed for stealing tech and breaking things for hundreds if not thousands of years. Just because a spy can program doesn't give them special status.

Re:Really?

[gl4ss]

well. the blurb is implying actually that the question is actually if killing unarmed enemy soldiers in cold blood would be ok or not(armed with a rifle vs. unarmed). asking it like that it's quite clear that you should end up in international court if you really started waging "war" like that.

usa is already drone killing without trying to apprehend people who they suspect of doing social hacks to get other people to do nasty things, granted that those are mostly in countries where the governments have given permission for such murders...

if they start just bombing china then it's war. why wouldn't it be? or going in and just killing the particular guys? well that would just be murder - unless they were killed in combat - and at worst it would be an act of war(again, why wouldn't it be?). if you just go in and knock their doors and shoot 'em - it's murder. how would it be anything else? and if you take them prisoners on the premise that they've been acting in a war then they're POW's - if you just shoot 'em it should result in international court, since shooting prisoners isn't really the thing to do if you want to even attempt to keep your hands clean in a war.

which gets us to the point that usa isn't likely to label them as enemy soldiers for conviency reasons - first off, then killing them would be a precise act of war and even if they managed to arrest them on some overseas trip if they were labeled as soldiers they would gain more rights than a common cybercriminal they could just throw into the brig for 20 years. so for them it would be beneficial to be labeled as enemy soldiers who acted in a war rather than common criminals or terrorists - since then they would have rights!

Re:Really?

[Dr Damage I]

If a person is committing what can reasonably described as acts of war against a nation that they are not physically present in and the government of the nation that they _are_ present in declines to punish or extradite the individual, I think it's reasonable to regard that individual, and the government protecting them, as being in a state of war with the nation against which those acts of war were committed. That being the case, I would regard the individual as being subject to retaliation by the nation that they are at war with.

That, however, would be a very different scenario than an individual against whom all civilian legal avenues have not been exhausted.

Re:Really?

[russotto]

well. the blurb is implying actually that the question is actually if killing unarmed enemy soldiers in cold blood would be ok or not(armed with a rifle vs. unarmed).

In a war? Unarmed enemy soldiers are fair game unless they've surrendered.

Re:Really?

[dbIII]

asking it like that it's quite clear that you should end up in international court if you really started waging "war" like that

Except the US hasn't signed on so it would have to be a US court and US laws.

well Duh

[mjwalshe]

Yes obviously if attacks are of a serious level then eventually some one is going to go kinetic - taking out undersea cables using ROV's is doable for some countrys or a 2000kg Jdam on top of the countrys cable lading points.

Or less serious have your man from universal exports / SAG group do a hardcore run and find the right manhole covers pour in diesel add polystyrene packing elements and a short delay fuse.

In fact close reading of something the Foreign secretary said in a recent documentary on the SIS (MI6) recently implied that this had been done.

Re:well Duh

[SpectreBlofeld]

Interesting, have a link to that?

Re:well Duh

[mjwalshe]

It was a BBC documentary series on the three main security services in the UK MI5 MI6 and GCHQ might be on NPR or BBC America some time

Two birds, one bomb

[cjfs]

Now we can finally get rid of all those meddling proxies and exit nodes!

Damn those enemy combatant hacker-terrorists polluting the RAIN-clouds and causing your PVR to miss recordings!

How do we know?

[Calydor]

There is enough trouble as it is proving that an IP on a file sharing network is legit and it is the current owner of that IP who is sharing a file. With the resources available to a government agency, how likely is it that an IP would actually point at the source of the attack?

This is going to lead to the bombing of apartment buildings with tons of collateral damage.

Re:How do we know?

[meta-monkey]

Lieutenant: "Sir! We have confirmed reports the attack is coming from IP address 127.0.0.1!"

General: "Nuke the source of that IP address immediately!"

Re:How do we know?

[Opportunist]

You mistake "reason for war" with "justification for war".

Wars need no reasons. Just justifications.

Key is kinetic

[alcourt]

The summary I read restricted a "kinetic response" to cases where "kinetic damage" occurred. For those who do not read that language, that means no dropping bombs unless physical damage is done.

So Iran might have been justified under this doctrine in attacking the creators of Stuxnet, but South Korea would not be justified under this doctrine in launching a few artillery shells/missiles at the initiator of whoever attacked them, because while wiping hard drives is really annoying, it does not rise to the level of "kinetic damage". Note, taking power offline may not even rise to the level of kinetic damage, even though there is serious issues caused. That gets into the fine interpretations though.

Most authorized retaliations are purely online/computer under the doctrine.

Re:Key is kinetic

[EdZ]

that means no dropping bombs unless physical damage is done.

Then how would strikes against AWACS be justified? They're electronic warfare platforms, and legitimate targets, but they carry no physically offensive weapons, and cannot directly cause injury. You could even consider jamming as a wireless Denial Of Service attack.

Missiles are not an "Act of War"

[Okian Warrior]

If memory serves, the US government doesn't consider firing missiles into a foreign country an act of war (used as justification for the missile attacks into Syria).

If firing missiles into a country isn't an act of war, which surely killed foreign citizens at the time, then by that logic it is OK for a country to kill foreign hackers.

Just get the geo-location of their IP address and fire off a couple of missiles. Or (as described here) have agents drive a jeep into the cul-de-sac of the house in question, fire off a bazooka or M47 or other portable "instrument of justice" into the house, and drive off.

Really, it's a no-brainer.

Re:Missiles are not an "Act of War"

[gl4ss]

If memory serves, the US government doesn't consider firing missiles into a foreign country an act of war (used as justification for the missile attacks into Syria).

If firing missiles into a country isn't an act of war, which surely killed foreign citizens at the time, then by that logic it is OK for a country to kill foreign hackers.

Just get the geo-location of their IP address and fire off a couple of missiles. Or (as described here) have agents drive a jeep into the cul-de-sac of the house in question, fire off a bazooka or M47 or other portable "instrument of justice" into the house, and drive off.

Really, it's a no-brainer.

of course it's an act of war... only reason firing missiles into a country is not an act of war is that the receiving country doesn't for some reason declare it as such - a war takes two(which is something to remember when declaring a war on an abstract).

usa government just labels wars as not being wars for technical reasons of their own legislature. the media and rest of the world still speak about war on iraq, the gulf war and so forth.

If killing the hacker is a proportional response

[GodfatherofSoul]

Say someone is trying to take down the power supply in a hospital or disable safeguards in a nuclear plant. But, this is one of those probably fictitious "24" scenarios. If you have that much information to find the guy, you should already have enough intel to stop him by more reasonable means.

They already does

[wisnoskij]

Every nation on Earth already has the right to kill whoever they want.

But in this particular case, the question is not do they have the right but do they want to go to war with the country that citizen is part of or not.

Re:They already does

[Dr Damage I]

A nation might have the power to kill whomever they want but that is a very different thing from a right.

Re:They already does

[dwye]

Right and wrong do not really exist on the sovereign state level. Did Britain and France have the "right" to dispose of Czechoslovakia in the Munich Accords? If not, to whom could the Czechs appeal, and would it have mattered? Did the USA and Britain have the "right" to consign Eastern Europe and part of Germany to Soviet control at Yalta? If they did not, to whom should the Poles or the people of the part of Italy that was given to Yugoslavia complain? Did Grand Fenwick have the "right" to declare war on the USA in the hopes of aid after they were defeated, or the "right" to blackmail the World after they captured a doomsday bomb that was just lying around during the evacuation exercise, and if not, to whom does the USA or USSR appeal that will be able to return the Bomb to its "proper" owners?

Sorry, but lacking the Organians, or at least the Vorlons, or a Security Council with the monopoly on nuclear weapons (as some in the US proposed in the halcyon days before the Soviets had their own Bomb), there is no appeal but the traditional Judge of Princes. Might may not make Right, but it *can* render the matter academic.

Any man hacking in the prone position in bed...

[Antipater]

a nation under cyber-attack can respond to the cyber-attackers with "kinetic force," so long as that force is proportional.

What defines "proportional" in this case? Do they have to spend a night in the box?

A parallel

[mhajicek]

Should a factory worker manufacturing weapons and munitions be targeted? In war historically they have been. I think the main problem now is that we don't have distinct times of war and peace, we have a messy in-between all the time.

Re:A parallel

[mjwalshe]

yes to give a real life example my father was bombed out of his house in WW2 the Luftwaffe was aiming for the big spitfire plant nearby at castle bromwitch - lucky he wasn't in the house at the time or I would not be here :-)

Re:A parallel

[Kaenneth]

My (German) grandfather would have fought in the battle of the bulge; but due to equipment shortage wasn't able to go. Everyone else in his unit who went, died.

Bombing factories made me possible.

Re:A parallel

[Jhon]

"In war historically they have been."

I don't think that's accurate. The FACTORY was targeted, not the factory worker. I may be picking nits (as the worker may or may not have been inside the factory when it was 'hit'), but I think this is a pretty important distinction. Factories are much harder to replace than factory workers.

I think a better example would be trying to target the PhDs working on the Manhattan project (or any other 'brain trust' a given nation might have) -- would would be a valid target.

Re:A parallel

[khallow]

A recent example would be the assassination of several Iranian scientists supposedly involved in the clean up of the Stuxnet worm from the Iranian nuclear program.

Re:A parallel

[SonnyDog09]

Without the workers, the factory is useless. You don't actually have to kill the workers, however. You can simply destroy enough infrastructure around the factory to make it difficult for enough workers to show up for their next shift, and production is halted. This is the theory behind the RAF's Area Bombing program in WWII.

Re:A parallel

[SonnyDog09]

Don't forget the dude that was helping Saddam build his "super gun." Also, one of the targets of the first RAF raid on Peenemunde (the German rocket development facility) were the scientists working there.

Re:A parallel

[Richard_at_work]

The RAF during WW2 switched to area bombing for precisely the reason to target factory workers and producing members of the German citizenry.

Re:A parallel

[Jhon]

Again, I may be picking nits, but this isn't accurate. The RAF's goal wasn't the directed killing of factory workers, but their demoralization (forcing them to move/leave the areas of industry).

Bombing a city which in all likelhood had bomb shelters and TIME to get in to them isn't really the same as surprise drone strike. The first's isnt REALLY for the purpose of killing of anyone (but the likelyhood of colateral damage is understood) but the forced displacement of workers. The latter *IS* targeted killing.

I'm gonna answer on behalf of the crackers...

[Deus.1.01]

YES!

I'm sure everyone in that league wants a justification that leads to an arms buildup.

CYBORGS!

Re:Pointless question

[postbigbang]

We don't use bombs. But we do use code designed to disable equipment used to make nuclear weapons.

Much more fruitful, these cyber-attacks. Surgical targeting of those waging war is better than the insanity of drones and bad intelligence.

Wrong targets.

[girlintraining]

"We are certain there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Thousands of deaths later... evidence emerges this was a complete fabrication.

"A broader definition of imminent","No specific threat","Without trial or due process."

Quoting recent media regarding the Obama Administration's use of drones against Americans domestically.

Now, these are just the military examples. How many people have been given the death penalty after exhausting all of their appeals, due process, etc., only to later have it emerge that authorities lied, omitted key evidence, or coerced confessions? More than you're probably comfortable admitting.

And now, we're going to entrust the government with making the correct and accurate assessment of who the hacker is, and then use lethal force on them? We can't even properly trace a 911 call before sending the SWAT team to a guy's house in an attempt to get him killed even after the guy warned them this would happen ahead of time! What the sam hell makes any of you think they're going to do better on a network with far less security and safeguards than our public telecommunications network?

Re:Wrong targets.

[Cosgrach]

Yes, the people responsible should be publicly flogged and then executed. But that will never happen.

No.

[roman_mir]

"Do nations have the right?" - no, only individuals have rights. Groups of people do not have rights that are different from other groups of people.

More pressing is the question: how to protect yourself against a drone strike?

Re:No.

[fascismforthepeople]

no, only individuals have rights. Groups of people do not have rights that are different from other groups of people

Although in your world, corporations are people, entitled to the same rights as other people. Hence corporations have the right to use lethal force in self defense, right?

Really, though, your statement of

Groups of people do not have rights that are different from other groups of people

Is not in any way representative of your actual beliefs. You have stated many times that you are fundamentally opposed to representative democracy (as is your dear leader of your religious movement), you want the right to select a government extended only to specific people - in other words that is a right that you do want to extend differently to different groups of people.

Of course, that is just another case of you concentrating power in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many. Another word for extreme concentration of power in the hands of very few is fascism. And you, of course, are a champion of bringing forward fascism for the people.

Libya, not Syria

[Okian Warrior]

Whups - we launched missiles into Libya, not Syria. Hard to keep these issues straight.

I don't believe we launched missiles into Syria yet - have we?

Re:Libya, not Syria

[dcollins]

"Whups - we launched missiles into Libya, not Syria. Hard to keep these issues straight. I don't believe we launched missiles into Syria yet - have we?"

And that, kids, is American foreign policy in a nutshell, right there.

Re:Libya, not Syria

[dbIII]

There's too much of a history with the government there (eg. "rendition" to Syria of people captured in Iraq, Afganistan and even Europe). I think the US government doesn't know who it would prefer running that place so is sitting it out.

attack - counterattack

[freeze128]

If the answer to the article's question is yes, then the hackers would know that they may be targeted with lethal force. Once they know that, they may start to carry firearms themselves (without the training that actual combatants have). This would lead to chaos, as they might start shooting themselves, their cube neighbors, the shopkeeper down the street, the telemarketer on the phone...

I say *NO*! We don't need even more wanna be ganstas shooting at just anything that freekin moves. What happens in the matrix, stays in the matrix!

Re:Nuclear accident

[bonehead]

Then after said removal they can account for their crimes.

Yeah, 'cuz that's never full of controversy.

(Gitmo....)

Finally...

[Penguinshit]

... a REAL use for Power Over Ethernet!

"Proportional"

[meta-monkey]

Well, given the "proportion" the justice seems deems fair for copyright infringement (multi-million dollar judgements) and violating the terms of service of websites (20+ years in jail, million-dollar fines) I'd say the appropriate response to, say, defacement of a government website by a foreign hacker is a tactical nuclear weapon lobbed at him.

Re:"Proportional"

[meta-monkey]

correction: "justice system" not "justice seems"

The only sure method

[ozduo]

Is to "nuke them from outer space"

yeah, sure

[markhahn]

if a country can kill hackers, shouldn't it be able to call in the drones against tax cheats, dishonest bankers, publishers of unflattering new articles, jokes which insult the dignity of the nation...

Re:yeah, sure

[tokencode]

Tax cheats can't take out your electrical or water supplies and are not sponsored by other countries.

Re:yeah, sure

[Opportunist]

No, they do it for personal greed. Which makes them worse in my books. Not even for some (misguided) "greater good" but just personal greed. Snuff them out and we'll all be better off.

Re:yeah, sure

[markhahn]

do you really think tax cheating costs less than fixing a power plant or two? why would it matter if they were sponsored by Coke or the Illuminati?

the spectre of foreign hackers taking out infrastructure is asinine: we are responsible for the vulnerability of our systems, just as you are responsible when your system gets hacked...

Why noy?

[aklinux]

I fail to see where someone on a computer is any less valid a target than roads, railroads, ships, ports, & factories have been in past wars. All may contain civilians, but all are contributing to the war effort.

BTW - "proportional"? What does that have to do with the situation?

Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere...

[girlinatrainingbra]

And shouldn't drone pilots from and within the USA be just as much a target for targeted killing by the "other side" even while they are located in the USA geographical boundaries? So if the cyberwarfare hacker is still a legitimate target while not actively engaged in the "war activity", couldn't a USA drone pilot be legitimately targeted while walking into a grocery store to buy groceries for her/his family and herself/himself? There's a lot to think about when we decide to expand the boundaries of what we are allowed to do while still claiming "nya-nya-nya, you can't do that to us while we can do that to you", mostly because of the assymetry of our tactical abilities.
.
Overreaching on moral boundaries because of our tactical abilities could be our downfall when we no longer have the tactical advantage. We no longer have the moral advantage (considering the things that have already been done in "our" name, since it is our USA and our armed forces and our "special forces" that have carried out extra-ordinary rendition, torture in Abu Ghraim, extra-judicial kidnappings and extra-judicial extra-warfare executions/assassinations) but it makes to sense to keep digging ourselves deeper when we could actually be a beacon of sensibility to the world. Oh, wait, that's not really our goal, is it, regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats are leading in the Executive or in the Legislative branches of our government.

Responsibility and Proportional Response

[tokencode]

When considering state-sponsored hacking, responsibility needs to be traced back to the state level, not the individual. Additonally, the proportional response should be based on the intended outcome of the attack. If China tries to take out the US power grid, the proportional response should be to take out their power grid by a means of our choosing. That may or may not include physical damage, missiles etc. We all know that cyber-attacks can have real world consequences, they must be met with real-world responses. Attacking the "hacker" is like trying to go after the soldier who fired the missile, rather than the country he works for.

No

[HtR]

I didn't think any country had the "right" to kill anyone living in another country, unless the countries were formally at war.

Questions:
- Do you think the US has the right to kill someone currently living in another country if that individual is breaking US laws?
- Do you think a foreign government has the right to kill an American living in the US if that individual is breaking that foreign country's laws?

Re:No

[tokencode]

A state-sponsored cyber-attack with consequences such as taking out infrastructure inside of another country is an act of war. If someone were to attack the US power grid, damn straight we have a right to kill people in that country. If this is an individual, we have the right to request their arrest and extradition. If that country refuses to intervene and prevent such attacks when they are capable of doing so, that is also an act of war. We cannot allow people to attack infrastructure without real consequences.

Re:No

[HtR]

So in your scenario, if a Chinese citizen would attack the US power grid, and the Chinese government did nothing, the US government should declare war on China? Or are you saying it's okay to kill another country's citizens without declaring war?

Also, you didn't answer my questions. Does this work both ways?
For example, does the Iranian government, assuming they knew that an American citizen wrote Stuxnet, have the right to kill that American?

Re:No

[ZombieBraintrust]

A government is nothing but a social institution given the right to kill people by its citizens. All governments have the right to kill people in general. Killing citizens from another country is generally the definition of war. Most nation will kill each others spies in time of peace. (or trade them for things under the threat of killing them)

Re:No

[rubycodez]

that's cute, do the unicorns in the magic land between your ears also poop skittles? Governments do most the killing on this world, and it will never stop.

Re:No

[2fuf]

At least they don't bend over and drop their principles like a coward.

Re:No

[Opportunist]

That doesn't mean that they have the right to it, morally. Just that they don't get punished for it.

It will not stop, at least it isn't very likely to stop any time soon. But if the wars going on right now should teach us something, then that force will be met with resistance, as long as the majority does not accept that force as legitimate. Just having the bigger gun is no legitimation, if applied incorrectly all it breeds is more resistance.

It is amazing how little we learn from history. The atrocities of Germany during WW2 in the occupied areas, the Vietnam war, and the current disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan. In all these scenarios one side had the bigger guns and the (technological) upper hand and in all these scenarios it failed to work out. Yet we refuse to accept that you cannot browbeat people into cooperation...

Re:No

[dbIII]

Yet your power grid has fallen over in spectacular ways on more than one ocassion without being much more than really annoying and some lost opportunities. California seemed to be almost perpetually going in and out of that state for a while, and a lot of it was deliberate. I think your suggestion is almost as ridiculous as bombing Enron would have been.
Overwhelming responses tend to happen after an overwhelming attack. A grid shutdown with no follow up is criminal mischief on a major scale and not the sort of thing you load up the B52s for, since once you start killing a lot of people you get asked to provide a good reason.

oops misspelled asymmetry

[girlinatrainingbra]

oops, I mis-spelled "asymmetry" as "assymetry", but then again our "asymmetry" is a metric/measure of our assiness, isn't it? humor from mis-spelling, or freudian slipperiness from mis-spelling? signed, ms. mis-spellings-r-us.

Re:So long as attribution is reliable enough

[DNS-and-BIND]

The "red Chinese" were Second World scum, hello? Or did we not get the memo?

Who can take anyone who, in 2013, uses a word like "red Chinese". As if the nationalists are threatening to come across the Strait of Taiwan in an amphibious invasion of Fujian province or something. Jeez, join us in the modern age old-timer, or to make you more comfortable..."Nixon's the One '68!"

CIA's new weapons in war on spying

[Grayhand]

They used to use poison darts now it's poisoned Red Bull and Hot Pockets

Re:CIA's new weapons in war on spying

[tokencode]

I'm pretty sure a caffeine embargo would defeat the hackers or at least drastically lower their efficiency.

Re:So long as attribution is reliable enough

[benjfowler]

I forgot. In the Trotskyite alternative universe, any criticism of anybody who's just happens to have a brown skin is racist, no matter if they're our sworn enemies or not, and no matter what heinous crimes they commit, or how dysfunction and defective their culture is. Only white people can possibly be racist.

"Proportional Force"

[PrimalChrome]

You've heard the maxim that violence solves nothing? That's not quite true. "Proportional violence" solves nothing. "Overwhelming violence" ends issues. You can debate the morality of this truism, but history backs its legitimacy.

Think of all of the long term wasted resources and suffering that could be solved with a little overwhelming force... The next time Israel and one of their neighbors starts slapping each other with their silly limp wristed marketing ploys.....nuke Jerasulem and the capital of the other nation into glass. Don't make a big ta-do over it...just have the president go on camera, yawn, and say,"Silly bitches." The next time there is a massacre in a turbulent African nation, send in a few regiments for live fire exercises. Anyone with a gun and anyone within 100 yards is a fair target. When we have proof of cyberattacks backed by the Chinese government, blanket the airwaves and every piece of copper with the message that they've been caught and that was their last chance. If it happens again, nuke the Forbidden city.

Yes yes...horrid.....immoral....evil... Whatever. I'm sick of everyone howling about the US being the big evil for being involved with anything....and then howling yet again if we don't step in and operate as the World's peacekeepers. If they want peace....give it to them. Just like it was given to the Aztecs.

Am I serious.....I dunno, but it sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Re:"Proportional Force"

[Tim12s]

Classic.... Unreasonable minds need unreasonable responses.

Regrettably, most of the conflicts these days are based on unreasonable actions of unreasonable people who are not accountable for their actions because they are dead. This has resulted in the perpetuation of conflict. Someone once said that it is easier to change a block of solid concrete than it is to change someone's mind. Just look at family arguments.

"Enemy hacker" is a pretty vague term.

[GrumpySteen]

Let's all look forward to the days when people like the guy who got into Sarah Palin's email can be summarily executed without a trial.

Defense Contractor Play for Money

[MarkvW]

Just another defense contractor play for money. Same old story from the Military Industrial Complex.

what to target

[TheSHAD0W]

Typically nations are expected to attack the other nation's strategic resources, and any people who get in the way are going to get creamed. Nations may also target persons who are providing an effective defense or offense against themselves. There's nothing new here.

However, as mentioned above, it may be very difficult to accurately target the hacker. IMO in most cases it will prove more efficient to target the other nation's infrastructure. Breaking fiber optic links, locking attackers out of satellites you control and jamming or destroying satellites you do not, would likely prove more effective in blocking further cyber-attacks than trying to locate and kill individuals.

Re:Well...

[Americano]

But if it can be proven without any doubt that a suspect is indeed the perpetrator

Since that is an impossible standard of proof to achieve, your answer could have been more succinctly stated as, "NO."

Von Clausewitz

[vikingpower]

"War is the continuation of diplomacy with different means". Cyber attacks are either the continuation of war with different means, or the same. So yes, why not ?

Re:Von Clausewitz

[Opportunist]

Clausewitz does not apply, we're talking about a highly asymmetrical form of war that he didn't even consider. Especially when you take his argument for total war into account, something the US couldn't even possibly realize even if they wanted without their economy going down the drain even more rapidly than it already does.

There are a few very obvious reasons why it is crazy to respond to cyber attack with deadly force.

1. Escalation. You kill the for meddling with your economy, then he'll go and make sure his meddling counts. Before he was only interested interested in causing economic problems, now he'll try to sell his life as expensive as he can. Switch from shutting that nuclear reactor down to blowing it up.

2. Precision. Do you know whether he attacked you, or was he just the dupe for someone else? Was he attacking you or was he hacked as well and used as a bounce? It is very hard to determine that without the full cooperation of the government the alleged hacker lives under. And you don't think you will somehow convince China to let you "inspect" them, this isn't Iraq who needs to fear your retaliation or (snicker) economic shutdown. YOU would suffer more from something like this! And attacking just "because we think you did it" is pretty much a free pass to attack ANY country at random for no other reason than "'cause we can".

3. Retaliation. Ever thought that this may just as well be used for false flag ops? China claiming that they were attacked by some US hacker, so they now may bomb L.A.

Still think it's a great idea?

Re:Pointless question

[postbigbang]

My implied retort as to the answer to the question posited is: no.

No drones hovering outside a window, looking for a make on a cyber-warrior in an undeclared war. Once a declaration of war is made, then the rules of war apply. I'm hoping also for: no war.

Short answer: No

[CanHasDIY]

Here's why:

Say a hacker in China breaks into a US government system and does whatever.

How, precisely, is the US government supposed to take "kinetic action," i.e. directed violence, against said hacker, without declaring war on China?

Murky waters, for certain.

Re:Short answer: No

[geekoid]

Yes, the answer is yes.

The detail can be tricky, but that depends on the situation. A state back group attacking our power grid? that means they have made war against us.

Re:Short answer: No

[CanHasDIY]

Yes, the answer is yes.

The detail can be tricky, but that depends on the situation. A state back group attacking our power grid? that means they have made war against us.

Yea, sure, if the hack is state-sponsored.

What about the ones that aren't?

Foreign drones on American soil

[sbjornda]

I imagine pretty soon China and North Korea will be sending their drones to the U.S. to take out dissident Chinese and North Korean citizens who are trying to crack their infrastructure from afar. Drones on foreign soil to execute dissident expatriots... soon to be a global phenomenon.

Re:Foreign drones on American soil

[tokencode]

I'm pretty sure the US would blow them out of the sky before they ever reached their intended target

Re:They killed Aaron Swartz

[CanHasDIY]

They may have ruined his career, but I'm afraid there's only one person you can blame the loss of Aaron's life on, and that's the man who actually took it.

Suicide is never the answer, ya dig?

If and *only* if

[gman003]

If, and *only* if, that hacker meets either one of the following requirements:
1) An active member of a military we are at war with, following a proper, public and legal declaration of war
2) Engaged in an activity that has, or inevitably will, result in deaths.

*and* the killing meets all the following requirements:
1) Civilian casualties will not exceed those who would have been (or were) killed by the attack
2) The information on the target is reliable enough to meet whatever standards are in place for killing other types of targets
3) The expense of killing them does not exceed the damage that would have been (or was) inflicted by an attack.
4) There is no reasonable way to bring them back alive for a fair and public trial

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[Anonymous Coward]

And shouldn't drone pilots from and within the USA be just as much a target for targeted killing by the "other side" even while they are located in the USA geographical boundaries?

Are you seriously suggesting that the facilities the drones are controlled from would NOT be a prime target of a nation that decided to go to war with the US? I don't think anybody would expect these facilities to not be attacked, if the enemy had the capability to do so. The military is certainly securing these facilities with this possibility in mind - the drone pilots don't get to VPN from their home computer.

So if the cyberwarfare hacker is still a legitimate target while not actively engaged in the "war activity", couldn't a USA drone pilot be legitimately targeted while walking into a grocery store to buy groceries for her/his family and herself/himself?

Where do you get "not engaged in war activity"? The article talks about hackers actively engaged in attacks on an enemy nation's infrastructure. In much the same way, the drone pilots would, if the enemy had the capability to attack them, be legitimate targets while flying drones in enemy territory. Command and control facilities are high on ANY military's list of targets in a hot war.

What your post really says is, "Oh, let's just let bygones be bygones with all those bad things we've done, and give everybody who knows Linux a special immunity from the consequences of their actions." That's fucking ridiculous.

Proportional?

[girlinatrainingbra]

2 = 2/1 is a fraction which is a proportion. 1 = 1/1 is a fraction which is a proportion. 0.5 = 1/2 is also a fraction which is a proportion. So the word "proportional" has no definable meaning in this case. Also, if "equivalent" is meant by "proportional", then there can be no kinetic response to non-kinetic actions or aggressions. Kind of like the admonition to not hit someone because of the words they say. But there's no point in laying out these fine points of law and warfare when the USA is unilaterally going to not be a party to the rules of the Geneva Convention by claiming that during our war on terrorists, since the terrorists are not of a nation-state, or they're not wearing uniforms, or they're not espousing the beliefs or magical thinking which we think they ought, then of course they're not capable of being humans so of course the Geneva convention doesn't apply. Or how the USA always wants to make sure that the soldiers and the hierarchy of the USA military forces is never subject to the review of or consideration by or punishment or incarceration by the International Criminal Courts or any international tribunals, e.g. the Hague. Or how the USA can decide that we can flout (yes, that's the proper use of the word "flout", not "flaunt") any other country's rules or sovereignty because of course we're in the right.
.

Re:Proportional?

[tokencode]

In every one of your example, notice the equal sign..... that would mean that yes the two sides are proportional to each other even though you have written them differently... If China tries to take out the US power grid, the proportional response is take out their power grid. I do not understand why the means of attack really matter that much. If China fires a missile at the US, can the US only return fire with a missile? No that would be absurd, the same thing is true for hacking.

Re:Proportional?

[geekoid]

The proportional attack would be to take out the people actively attacking the grid, not taking out their power grid.

That is, Ideally.

You you are talking about is mutual assurance.

Re:Proportional?

[geekoid]

Since you are apparently new to the internet, or q dumb fuck, I decide to post a definition:

proportional - corresponding in size, degree, or intensity

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proportional

I am tired of idiots like you overlooking the context in order to make a stupid ass statement.

You are NOT nearly as smart as you think you are.

"Also, if "equivalent" is meant by "proportional","
it doesn't and that is pretty damn clear. Your first clue was that they use the word 'proportional'.

Flaunt:: to display ostentatiously or impudently
Flout: to treat with contemptuous disregard

Both are accurate. Flaunt context is not substandard.

Of course, form you post you don't know what the word context means either.

US Policy on Cyber Defense

[cyberfringe]

In November 2012, President Obama signed Presidential Policy Directive 20 which lays out the specific "rules of engagement" regarding cyber- defense and offense. http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/267879-report-obama-authorizes-new-cyber-warfare-directive We in new territory here so it remains to be seen whether the policy, in practice, complies with binding international treaties on the "rules of war". If the question is whether the US government, or any government, has the right to respond to a cyber attack with deadly force, I think you have to refer to the treaties with specific cases in mind for the legal perspective. Having the "right" from a moral perspective is something completely different.

yes, it is totally valid

[Chirs]

In my books a USA drone pilot involved in actively carrying out campaigns is every bit as much a legitimate target as a pilot of a manned fighter.

It's as valid to send assassins after the drone pilots as it is to shoot down the manned fighters.

Re:yes, it is totally valid

[girlinatrainingbra]

That was, and is, my point exactly. Some anonymous person responded to my comment and misread it entirely as thinking that I was saying that the cyber-warriors were off limits so I replied politely asking them to reread what I'd said. Thanks for agreeing with me. I'm glad that you got the point that I was making.

Read my words again. You misread it completely.

[girlinatrainingbra]

Learn to read. I said that those engaged in warfare are legitimate targets during the course of the war / police action / aggression of an "un-declared war".
.
I also pointed out that these aggressors are still part of the aggressive force while performing other actions, even while buying groceries. We don't get to call a fucking "time out, I'm pissing/shitting/taking a shower/jacking off/buying my wife her wine/buying my babies some diapers, so I'm not really a valid war-target right now," even if you are a drone pilot in Podunk New Mexico and you've changed into civvies. If you're active duty military engaged in the aggressor forces, then you are a valid target. If you become part of the "cyber warfare command", either by becoming active duty military or being a part of the "blackwater or whatever new name they've become" hired mercenary forces or being a part of an our-sourced software team engaging in actions requested by the military, then you become part of the subset of legitimate targets of aggession.
.
I have no clue how you misread what I said, but I'm not going to try to read your mind. Don't try to read my mind: read my written words in the GP post. Try reading it again.

AWACS by itself would maybe be immune

[Chirs]

As soon as the AWACS starts sending data to strike fighters it could probably be considered part of the package and thus a valid target.

Re:AWACS by itself would maybe be immune

[Opportunist]

An AWACS plane is a justified target as part of the CCC package of warfare. Disallowing an attack on it (yeah, like anyone cares...) is like saying you may not attack the general in his bunker because he's not really shooting at you, he's only coordinating the attack.

'cause if that becomes illegal... uh, then I guess the US has a problem. After all, they strung up Saddam, and afaik he never fired a shot at them, personally.

Re:So long as attribution is reliable enough

[bullgod]

China is Second World.

Some parts of the Arab world, notably the Assad regime in Syria, favour Russia largely as a reaction to the American support of Israel.
Surely it's not that hard to work out.

See how ghost of Henry Kissinger haunts the threads of ./

WARNING

[lkcl]

the geneva convention is very clear. if a citizen of a country is physically attacked by soldiers from another country, it is AUTOMATICALLY a declaration of war by the attacking country. once that declaration has been made - whether it be implicit or explicit - that declaration AUTOMATICALLY gives ALL citizens of the country that has been attacked the right to retaliate against all and any assets and citizens of the attacking country.

as i have mentioned repeatedly on slashdot for some years now whenever the words "cyber" and "war" are mentioned in the same sentence, it is incredibly stupid and very very dangerous to make this association.

the other issue is very very simple: any country that has critical infrastructure assets connected directly to the internet is ASKING FOR TROUBLE, period. disconnect them from the public internet and set up a separate network, for god's sake! if you don't know how to do that, ask your Dept of Defense for advice. they do it all the time. if you're too lazy to do that, or too cost-careless, then please quit your job: you're too irresponsible to be in charge of your country's critical infrastructure.

Re:WARNING

[bloodhawk]

Perhaps you should go reread the Geneva convention. It is actually very explicit about protection of civilians, your country being at war does not in any way open its citizens up to attack under the convention. The Fourth Geneva Convention is all about protection of non combatants in a war zone.

yes

[geekoid]

"But do nations actually have a right to fire off a bomb or a clip of ammunition at cyber-attackers, especially if a rival government is backing the latter as part of a larger hostile action?"
yes, that would make him an enemy soldier.

  Should a military hacker, bored and exhausted from twelve-hour days of building malware, be regarded in the same way as a soldier with a rifle?

like a soldier doesn't work long days and get bored and exhausted?
And yes, yes they should.

If you are in the process of trying to take over an enemy computer, you are a fair target.

Re:Yes

[Opportunist]

Longitude and latitude, so I can redirect your country's drone?

You feel entitled to kill me, I feel entitled to kill you.

Re:yes

[Opportunist]

You do? Why? Because the attack came from China? Well, maybe next time they should hack your computer and use it as the source for their next cyber attack, I'm sure you'll enjoy being smoked out by the SWAT team kicking down your door. After all, you were an enemy combatant, so killing you was just fine.

The main reason why I am against a death penalty in all its forms is that there is a nonzero chance that it may be applied against me despite me being innocent. This is the same deal, just on a global scale.

Re:yes

[ILongForDarkness]

Yeah but we all know that foreign casualties don't count, that is why it is only American deaths that get reported. It isn't non-zero I agree but there is often a lot of info about who is controlling the botnet. Example it is highly likely the US is responsible for Stuxnet. They'd have to have very convincing intelligence that they've found the source since it would be an act of war they are committing in taking out the foreign citizens but I don't see why only enemies with guns are fair game when lives and livelihoods can be just as affected with a keyboard.

Re:Yes

[skine]

This is my thought as well.

We can argue all day whether it is right for them to do, but not so much whether or not they have a right to do it.

Star Trek Justice.

[Ostracus]

Do Nations Have the Right To Kill Enemy Hackers?

I mandate that all enemy computers, be like the consoles in Star Trek. "Take THAT enemy combatant! *ZZZAAPPP!*".

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[egcagrac0]

And shouldn't drone pilots from and within the USA be just as much a target for targeted killing by the "other side" even while they are located in the USA geographical boundaries?

Yes.

Just because the weapons have a longer reach, that doesn't mean the person at the controls isn't a valid target.

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[girlinatrainingbra]

Exactly. That was my point. Somehow, people are misreading that as saying I think that they ought NOT be targets, which is not my meaning at all.

Re:Pointless question

[egcagrac0]

Perhaps not, but we might attack their undersea communications cables in international waters, unplugging the attackers.

Upon confirmation AN ATTACK....

[Oil_Tan]

Since software and computers have taken over many jobs humans do or have done...unacceptable damages shall be returned...end

A little late!

[CHIT2ME]

Had we taken this stance earlier, Julian Assange would no longer be in the news, he would be in the grave!

Re:They killed Aaron Swartz

[geekoid]

No. People where aware if was despondent and took no action to help him,.

Suicide is more complex them people think.

No

[loufoque]

That's a stupid question. A nation doesn't have the right to kill people.

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[sjames]

Agreed. That is a big part of the reason I had/have concerns about stuxnet. Especially given that we're rich with soft targets for an unfriendly nation to hit.

No

[Meneth]

Not without a declaration of war.

Nuke it from orbit

[drolli]

Its the only way to be sure.

Good luck!

[dr_dank]

I'm behind seven prox++++++NO CARRIER

Act of war?

[Alex Belits]

An act of war is an act of war. However the war either is or isn't there -- once anything is considered an act of war and hostilities are started, ALL forms of warfare can be applied by both sides.

So be careful what you do in a response to a high school student defacing your country's most prominent sandwich company's web site -- you may get your diplomats thrown out, your citizens' assets seized, and your cities bombed, all within completely valid war. In other words, the consequences would be the same as with any other act of war perpetrated by you.

In other words, it's never worth doing, so everyone should shut up, stop using Windows, and hire competent sysadmins.

Re:Act of war?

[Alex Belits]

what has windows got to do with the millions of rooted linux servers?

Not much. Windows exists, millions of rooted Linux servers do not.

The countless linux priviledge escalation vulnerabilities + mis-configured mysql/php/stuff make it too easy.

Most of those "countless Linux privilege escalations" are not exploitable at all, leave alone through MySQL, of all things. Stop making stuff up.

oh and BTW... normal people would look at a desktop installation of Linux ... exclaim "what the fuck is this piece of broken shit.. nothing works". Linux is not really a solution. Unless you think driving nails in peoples heads is a solution to relieve headache. (some people though so.. in pre-science times..)

On top of being completely wrong, this is also irrelevant. Do you have to post those idiotic phrases so your employer can verify that you met your quota for astroturfing, or are you really that stupid?

Re:Act of war?

[Alex Belits]

Oh thats okay. It is quite possible that such exploits are out of your conceptual grasp.

Yes, it's outside my "conceptual grasp" that insecure design is OK because even with secure design vulnerabilities are possible.

I never said morons could exploit them.

It does not matter how smart you are if vulnerabilities aren't there.

Its okay though, don't feel bad. Cheer up ! You can always work on the documentation. THey need tons of idiots there !

Your arrogance is misplaced.

MySQL.. another bug ridden shitty mess... has the amazing power to allow remote connecting clients

What remote connecting clients? No one enables that, everyone runs database servers with local connections or over a tunnel to localhost.

to cause buffer overruns and inject&execute shellcode. I wish I was making stuff up :(... but its really this bad. :( :(

Name one instance of this actually happening to a server anywhere outside of the testing lab. Just because you can google for bug descriptions, does not mean you understand what they mean.

No, its because I hate Linux, the culture around it and most of the people involved in it, especially the developers. I thought that part was obvious? Do you have a learning disability? You seem like the type... I'm sorry :(

If you hate all those things, you have to hate pretty much everything that is good in the world, too. Even paid Microsoft shills are less pathetic than that.

Re:Act of war?

[Alex Belits]

Not everyone. I have seen several production websites which have their databases elsewhere and they allow remote connections.

While it's a bad practice, having unencrypted remote connections behind a firewall still does not make a server vulnerable.
If you have any evidence of a production MySQL server being open to the public, please post it or shut up.

Its quite sad that they got fooled by asshole linux consultants

There are no "Linux consultants" that would ever recommend to run a Linux server (or any kind of server) without a competent in-house sysadmin.

who convinced them that moving towards open source is a good thing, not telling them about all the millions of security holes riddled in the vast majority of open source products.

More baseless FUD. Hint: a number of published (and fixed) bugs does not make a system insecure. Crap design and irresponsible development makes a system secure, and those are rampant in Windows OS and Windows software.

Re:Act of war?

[Alex Belits]

But even if they don't have remote access there are several ways to exploit phpadmin or whatever other shitty php product they use to connect to the DB. (LAMP awesomeness ! Yay ! )

And you have an evidence that anyone actually had this accessible outside the local network, right?

Please stop reading security mailing lists and CVEs. They are not written for the likes of you -- it takes a person with actual knowledge of the products and their application to understand them.

non-ass-symmetry ?

[girlinatrainingbra]

Nice def! Thanks for the laugh! Ought it be spelled a-ass-symmetry? (Where else would you be able to get away with a triple-S in a word?)

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[bobwalt]

The drone pilots are just as much a target, it is just that the combatants have no way to reach them. Believe me if the people we are fighting had a way to reach the remote pilots they would not hesitate to kill them, their families, and anyone who happens to be near them at the time. Armed drones are one of our weapons and they do cause collateral damage and when we are especially careless we also kill people who are on our side. IUDs. Suicide bombs, and car and truck bombs are weapons of the other side and they are mostly designed to kill the innocent. Whereas we try to limit civilian casualties the other side tries to maximize them as part of their war of terror. As to "extra-judicial" executions and assassinations - we have never needed a warrant to kill an enemy soldier fighting in a war against us why should we need a warrant to kill an enemy combatant in the same role?

No

[2fuf]

No one, not even a government, should have the right to kill anybody. The buck stops here.

Make punishment fit the crime

[Tablizer]

Worse than death: make them use Windows Vista.

Re:Make punishment fit the crime

[Opportunist]

Could you shoot me instead?

Re: IUD's !== IEDs

[girlinatrainingbra]

:>) IUDs != IEDs
.
I agree with your points, however, I have to stop my laughing long enough to point out that perhaps only the Catholic Church and the most ardent right-to-lifers tend to think of "IUDs" (intra-uterine-devices, used for contraception) as weapons which take the life of the innocent. Thanks for the accidental injection of a little humor into an otherwise very sad and humorless topic. (if I didn't see the humor in these silly little things in life, life would be very very depressing.)
.
On the other hand, the British redcoats saw the American militias as terrorists, not even being gentlemanly enough to wear uniforms or fight fairly standing out in the open light they ought to! The resistance most often makes use of whatever weapons they have access to and can improvise, whether they are IEDs or IUDs. To denigrate their actions as being targeted to the innocent is as wrong as to claim that the "selective drone strikes" of the USA do not cause any innocent civilians' deaths. There is a lot of collateral damage. Reread the definition of "militants" when you hear the statements from the press office about how many militants were killed: militant only means able-bodied males of a certain age, not that they were part of an organized or disorganized/unorganized militia or military or aggressor force.

Yep

[Nidi62]

Should a military hacker, bored and exhausted from twelve-hour days of building malware, be regarded in the same way as a soldier with a rifle?

If a soldier, in uniform, commits a hostile act, they should be open to counterattack. This includes a kinetic attack. If you are in uniform, you are a target. Doesn't even have to be the soldier, unit, or branch that carried out the attack. Any member of the military becomes a legitimate target.

Absolutely

[unamanic]

All members of the enemy military, military civilians, and military contractors are lawful combatants. There is no special protection for IT guys, just like there is no special protection for cooks or personnelists. That's just the way it is and those of us in uniform accept it.

If we are already at war with a nation and one of their civilian population decides to attack us in any way they become an unlawful combatant and give up their protection under the Geneva Convention. The attacked nation has the right to eliminate the threat in any way they see fit, whether that is a counter hack or a guided missile.

If we are not at war and a civilian attacks our network, then it is a criminal matter handled via the state department. Depending on the political tensions, the attacker's nation's response or lack of response may precipitate military actions. This would be true If the crime were murder, theft, or embezzlement, computer crimes are not special.

Re:Really? A. . . .

[rubycodez]

you have something against clip-fed machine gun owners asserting their right to bear clip-fed arms? Let me educate you, you godless leftie, nothing says "Stay out of my face" to the King of England than a clip fed machine gun wielding patriot.

"Act of war" in the eyes of a lawyer politician

[bussdriver]

A lawyer politician can redefine up as down and kill as invigorate...

Japan had US oil blockades severely threatening their supply lines during their WW2 quest for world domination. That wasn't an act of war.... (except to the Japanese who responded violently to what WE didn't LABEL as an act of war.)

Re:"Act of war" in the eyes of a lawyer politician

[Alex Belits]

A lawyer politician can redefine up as down and kill as invigorate...

And this has absolutely no effect on his potential to be bombed, as it's based on other side's politicians' definitions. Everyone already knows that US feels free to bomb anyone who does not have nuclear weapons.

Japan had US oil blockades severely threatening their supply lines during their WW2 quest for world domination. That wasn't an act of war.... (except to the Japanese who responded violently to what WE didn't LABEL as an act of war.)

Except the rest of the world disagrees with US about that, however there is much more to WWII than a petty conflict between US and Japan, both minor players in the conflicts.

Do we have a right to kill enemy Slashdot editors?

[funkboy]

dupes are really just not that hard to eliminate...

yes

[ILongForDarkness]

A hacker working under orders by a nation state for the purposes of attacking the state's enemies is a combatant and a completely worthy target. What is the alternative? An arms race of nerds doing offensive and defensive cyber attacks knocking out peoples' livelihoods, taking down power systems, stealing inventions that someone has worked years to create etc with no repercussions other than the occasional "naughty, naughty, China we know it was you"?

Yes

[gelfling]

Next question.

Nations don't have "rights", they have "powers"

[CrimsonAvenger]

A nation neither has nor needs the "right" to do in a hacker.

As to whether any particular nation has the power to do so depends largely on whether their laws allow it, or they have the muscle to get away with it.

Or the skill to make sure noone ever finds out they did it, of course.

A soldier is a soldier

[jevring]

With the exception of medics and the like, a solder is a solder, regardless of how they assault the enemy. Be it via bullets, via networks or via psy-ops, they are equally valid targets, I think.

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[AmiMoJo]

Turning it around it means hacking is a legitimate response to real warfare. Taking out power in a city where drone pilots live is an appropriate response to drone strikes in this case.

The problem for the US is that an airbase is easy to target, but when you star messing with a country and thousands of amateur hackers spread all over the place in residential areas start to retaliate you have a serious problem.

One problem

[Dr Max]

Problem with that is it means all the big countries can hack all the little countries as much as they want, because they know the little countries don't have the resources to attack or counter hack, plus the rest of the world wont care much (if they ever find out about it) because not many if any people will die directly.

Re:One problem

[Dr Max]

Obviously that's not the only way you can use hacking (or any attack). Maybe elections results could be altered, a series of blackouts or malfunctioning factories if you don't do what we want could be started, and no doubt countless more example, control of a countries internet gives you a lot of power over the people. So Is America in Afghanistan right now trying to steal the terrorist's technology?

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[DNS-and-BIND]

Hmm, I was told that criticizing our President was racist. You're saying (R) and (D) are the same? By that standard you must be a racist too. How does it feel?

Re:if Yes Next question

[green1]

Politicians and government officials are fair game during war. They just aren't generally attacked for a couple reasons:
1) they are usually much harder to get at then the lower ranking people
2) politicians and government officials make the decisions, and don't want someone else making that one on behalf of the other side.

Of course if the death toll in that group was generally much higher in war, we'd probably see many fewer wars...

Depends

[Opportunist]

If you feel entitled to kill me for hacking you, I feel entitled to kill you by hacking you.

Don' think people will not respond in kind.

Re:Depends

[Opportunist]

My answer is "if you do, so do I". I leave the escalation up to you, but don't expect me to just sit there and take the punches.

Only Military Hackers

[Lawrence_Bird]

A military hacker, or any other who is in the employ and under the direction of another state, should be considered fair game for any retaliation. Of course, that retaliation may trigger a far larger event. The government sanctioned hacker is acting in the same manner as a diver placing a bomb in a harbor. Or troops removing rail tracks. It is sabotage. [queue Beastie Boys]

An independent, not govt recruited or sanctioned hacker should be treated criminally.

Yes.

[NoEvidenZ]

But only THROUGH their computers.

Dumb question, nuclear deterence still apply

[manu0601]

This is a stupid question. A country may wonder if hacking is an act of war, but without any doubt, replying with missiles is indeed an act of war, calling for further escalation

Who are the possible enemy here? China? Russia? Both have nuclear weapons. Of course they have less than NATO, but still enough to blow up the whole planet, therefore nobody reasonable would ever consider bombing a hacker from theses countries.

Re:Depends...

[Opportunist]

And you think whatever country that attacker lives in will sit by and nod as you fly your drone over their territory?

Do you think the US would not retaliate? Imagine someone came and bombed away, oh, let's say, some skyscraper where they think an "attacker" is located in...

Re:Certainly

[Opportunist]

Blow up a 12 year old and depending on the size of his family you may just have created a lot of terrorists who will gladly give their life just to make yours miserable.

Re:Well sure

[Opportunist]

Worked great in the US independence war, during the German occupation of France, in Vietnam, and just look how great that tactic is working out in the current wars!

No army in history has ever won a war on foreign soil unless it either had the support of the local population or committed genocide.

Cut off their hands!

[meburke]

After cleaning off malware that has damaged some clients' systems and destroyed data, I am fully in favor of finding any system intruder and cutting off their hands. Government sanctioned intruders don't warrant an exception. If you don't have sword, a Sidewinder missle will see the job done.

Re:So long as attribution is reliable enough

[Opportunist]

Quite dead on, the US stomped over Afghanistan and now it is a country where you could carry gold openly because they are so afraid of the US military force now. You could wave the Stars and Stripes from the top of the mosque in any village and they'd start praying towards it.

You should really go there and try some time.

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[couchslug]

Since morals are subjective there was never a moral advantage.

For example, in the Cold War the opposing sides simply chose different moral sets and got on with business.

Of course drone pilots are valid targets, just as EVERY FIGHTER on either side is a valid target.

The way one deters targeting one prefers not to suffer is to punish it sufficient that the enemy doesn't poke the bear.

Why is it any different?

[Guru80]

In the end, it's the same thing as the classic spy scenario. Instead of going all Bond with miniature cameras and fast hands stealing classified or highly sensitive documents you have someone sitting in an air conditioned office slamming caffeine 3/4's of the day doing the same thing. Doesn't matter how it's done, it's all the same.

They will make it legal

[Torodung]

If they don't have the legal right now, they will make it legal after the fact, or bury the hacker in a hole so deep even the Great Firewall would be jealous of the media blackout.

This is how governments operate, effectiveness determined by whatever powers we afford them, including sheer size. Good night and good luck.

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[girlinatrainingbra]

True about morals being subjective, but what I'm pointing out is that even with people on the side of the USA in general and on the side of the USA military in specific and on the side of soldiers even more specifically, there have been people who despite being on the USA side of things can actually see that the USA does not hold the moral high ground, even vis a vis or relative to the moral subjectivity and moral point of view proclaimed by the USA. We do not even follow our proudly proclaimed standards that are in the Constitution of the United States of America.
.
Look at what Pat Tillman had to write about it, even when he was willing to voluntarily join the armed forces and serve, and ended up being a victim of fratricide. (damn, that would also be a lousy outcome of the worst possible ever toga party in college, fratricide... ? ...)
.
Look at what Bradley Manning did, and what he claims are the reasons for doing it. Look at the USA's overzealous assistance to the MPAA/RIAA for attacking (and isn't "attacking" the apropros word for it) Dotcom in New Zealand after his company did what was asked of it by retaining the files it was told to retain.
.
Look at the USA claiming the right to summarily execute those it wishes to with drone attacks impinging upon the sovereignty of other nation-states based upon the un-reviewable and un-knowable decision-making and machinations behind closed doors and solely upon their say-so ("their" being the executive branch of our constitutiobal tree trident).
.
Look at the USA claiming that it is above review by others, and look at the executive claiming that its actions in selecting drone targets is above review by the Legistlative or Judicial branches of government. Look at it going back to "if the president does it, it cannot be illegal" type of beliefs and idolatry.
.
That is what I mean by that the USA cannot hold a moral high ground when it cannot stand for the proud and good things for which it used to stand and for which it still loudly proclaims to still stand for. /rant. Sleepy-bye.

Blinky says: No problem!

[Kevin Fishburne]

I can't wait until a database entry like 173.15.223.255 is interpreted by a school of drones as "disperse and engage". Maybe if 127.0.0.1 is injected they'll take out the white house. In any case, just put a cigarette-style warning on all new computers and at least no one can be sued.

Re: IUD's !== IEDs

[dwye]

On the other hand, the British redcoats saw the American militias as terrorists,

Banastre Tarleton aside, the British DID see members of the American militia and the Continental Army as legitimate soldiers, because they took them as prisoners of war rather than just bayoneting them. Of course, they stored the PoWs on hulks in conditions that would make Abu Ghraib at its worst look like the Marriott, and a large portion of those prisoners died of various diseases (e.g., typhus) before they could be exchanged, but that is more the fault of the 18th century army and lack of sanitation in the pre-Pasteur, pre-Lister era.

Re: IUD's !== IEDs

[girlinatrainingbra]

Egads! You're making me learn new things before I get to A.P. U.S. History next year! Thanks for the information. I had not considered that: the British DID see members of the American militia and the Continental Army as legitimate soldiers, because they took them as prisoners of war rather than just bayoneting them...

so thanks for informing me. I have to agree with you there. I assume that there was not as much gratuitous torture being performed in the Revolutionary War as there was at Abu Ghraib, but otherwise, yes, the accomodations were probably more sanitary in the Iraq war though much less humane, considering that the levels of humanity possible are much higher in this modern era.
.
:>) (btw, I have to admit that this is the part of slashdot which I really like: when responses even to small phrases in postings can be very educational and informative, particularly when they are also well-written and composed and presented in a thought-ful and sincere manner. I thank you for your courtesy and for your educational reply. Lister and Pasteur are names which I'd already heard of: one's listed on my fridge milk, and the other's name is on a mouthwash, but I do know a little bit about them!)

Easy answer...

[otaku244]

The fair answer is to put hackers in military facilities. Think about it: a gun in any other setting is for multiple purposes. When it is on a military base, it is now a military weapon. The machines used for this work and the people who operate them should be no different. I would like to think this line of logic would make it easier to square up this sort of war fight

Re:So long as attribution is reliable enough

[dbIII]

It just looks like a failed attempt at parody of McCarthy or similar self serving "reds under the beds" idiot. It's far too stupid for it to be serious.

DAFUQ

[thejynxed]

This truly is a stupid question, when we have bunches of children and teens doing quite a bit of this stuff on their own "for the lulz" all over the world.

What next, we're going to drone strike the next kid who defaces a health ministry web page?

These stupid warmongers need to get a fucking grip.

Keep it simple

[houbou]

When a hacker. works for the government or military and uses his/her skills at 'hacking' other nation's computer system, this person is pretty much a soldier. So rules of war should be applied.

The Art of War

[Sait-kun]

This question has been answered a few hundred years ago by the strategic genius Sun Tzu.

One of his most famous quotes is relevant to this question:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."

Knowing who your enemy is, where his troops are stations, what tactics he uses, what plans he has, how he leads his military and people.
Especially in the past but still valid to this days are spies and saboteurs who often physically go into enemy territory in order to gather information, sabotage important processes or assassinate important people.

Even though the old fashioned spies and saboteurs of course still exist but in this time where information is shared trough computers over networks it's the most obvious systems for spies and saboteurs to use and we coined these specialists "Hackers".

They still have the same basic function of gathering information, disrupting the enemy or (politically) assassinate someone important by leaking information.

Hackers are tools of war and very crucial ones at that and countries that invest in these spies will have an major edge over other countries that don't.
If played well even the smallest countries or even individual groups and people can start and end a war.

In the end war is nothing more then a tool used to further a political agenda, it always has been.

Who is

[Servercide]

Who is Clip and why are they firing him?

obligatory

[CaptainNerdCave]

Or they're operating from their parents' basement...

Am I too late?

Re:Wrong idea

[Quila]

There will always be someone to step in to fill the power vacuum. The point is that after a while self-preservation will ensure that those who do fill it will be extremely averse to initiating violence against another country.

The problem is of course finding and killing these people. Israel has a hard enough time tracking down the Palestinians who make the bombs and order the attacks.

Software attacks on infrastructure

[coyote_oww]

Infrastructure is real, and often controlled by software. You can do insidious, and potentially deadly things with software, from shutting down critical machines, to altering medical records (knee surgery changes from "fixed ligiment" to "amputate"). If you live as a web developer, you may have problems seeing how taking down/defacing websites could be serious. But software does a lot more than that. Critical failures or changes to databases can have life changing impacts for individuals, companies (lots of individual livelyhoods), and cause actual deaths.

So, yeah, hackers should be subject to retaliation, not just in kind. If you manage to kill someone with a computer, you should expect someone's friends/relatives/government to come looking for you, probably willing to do violence to achieve justice. And they shouldn't have to duel you with the weapon of your choice to get justice.

Balance

[whitroth]

If the "enemy" hacker is trying to say, launch missles, or cause a flood from a dam, or drop planes (other than planes attacking *them*, directly), I guess.

If there's nothing comparable to "violent criminal behavior", or if it's informational or monetary, hell, no. Even Hammurabi, thousands of years ago, wasn't approving of killing someone for stealing a loaf of bread.

                mark

Re:Yes. Proportional Force

[lsatenstein]

What is meant by proportional force? The killing of a hacker by hacking his site or killing him?

Re:So where are the US hackers.

[HornWumpus]

We didn't hack their code. We left hacked code laying around were we knew they would steel it.

The Ruskys complaining would be like a car thief complaining the car he stole had bad brakes.

Re:They killed Aaron Swartz

[CanHasDIY]

Yes, those people are/were dicks. However, no one is responsible for you but you.

Suicide is more complex them people think.

Take it from someone who's been there, and overcame - no, it really isn't.

I feel strangely unconfortable with this

[davydagger]

I feel uncomfortable with this, being that context is not brought up.

I do feel its OK to shoot at ALL enemy soliders durring an actual shooting war.

Its NOT ok to intiate a shooting war over a cyber war

Re:Yes. Cynicism begin. Valid targets everywhere..

[davydagger]

"Look at what Pat Tillman had to write about it,"
Pat Tillman? you mean that spoilled little brat who wanted to play hero, but got mad when he had to earn his spot on the starting team over again?

Sure, we do a lot of stuff wrong, but only to bring it up when some dumb rich kid got fragged????? Thats a slap in the face to everyone else who's served. Seriously fuck that guy.

The rest of it is pretty spot on.

No

[AK Marc]

Nations have no rights, and "hacking" is almost always non-violent.