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Sun Tzu 2.0: The Future of Cyberwarfare
An anonymous reader writes: Cyberwar and its ramifications have been debated for some time and the issue has been wrought with controversy. Few would argue that cyber-attacks are not prevalent in cyberspace. However, does it amount to a type of warfare? Let's break this down by drawing parallels from a treatise by 6th century military general, Sun Tzu, who authored one of the most definitive handbooks on warfare, "The Art of War." His writings have been studied throughout the ages by professional militaries and can be used to not only answer the question of whether or not we are in a cyberwar, but how one can fight a cyber-battle.
If Sun Tzu had one of those shiny new laptops !
and know your enemy's secrets and you will win a hundred battles. Or a hundred blackmails. You know what, forget about the 'thyself' bit, just know your enemy's dirty laundry.
Sun Tzu 544 BC - 496 BC
You win the war. You kill your enemy's technical experts and programmers. They're soft targets. You don't even need to kill them all, after the third decapitated body found with a keyboard up the ass and the head stuck on a pole and used as a toilet, they'll get the message and call in sick. Computer pedoweirdos are cowards.
"Cyberwar and its ramifications have been debated for some time and the issue has been wrought with controversy"
No serious techie uses 'cyber' in a sentence. If you do want to go online and stay safe from hacking, then buy a computer that can't be compromised by opening an email attachment or clicking on a malicious URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
I wouldn't be surprised if it's closest to a guerrilla war.
It's hard to recognize the attackers before and after the battle, they are part of the crowd.
With Anonymous and these other groups from for example Russia or Arabic countries, they might have no (direct) affiliation with any state. Just the 'cause'.
New things are always on the horizon
No serious techie uses 'cyber' in a sentence
I'm a Doctor Who fan, you insensitive clod!
(Also, cybernetics.)
"However, does it amount to a type of warfare?" Listen to Sun Tzu himself define warfare: " All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him." – Sun Tzu, the Art of War "Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain." – Sun Tzu "In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack – the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle – you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?" – Sun Tzu
This really is a load of crap. Extract a bunch of fairly obvious stratagems from a received text, an English translation of generally dubious worth, and apply it to cyber warfare.... unsurprisingly it fails to stack up particularly well. Sunzi was almost exclusively fixed on the idea that armies were controlled by single entities and that virtually all actions under taken by them had cost, and thus could be factored in a set of trade-offs, or expert application of game theory, before game theory was a thing. It was insightful at the time, to say the least, it can still be useful to state the more obvious strategems of any conflict but to claim relevance today where the agents existiing in dramatically different contexts is weak sauce indeed. Sunzi, in particular, would be horrified that any engagement would essentially exist in perpetuity, if the sunzi bingfa (art of war) was indeed written by one person, then he would be horrified by the layout of modern cyber warfare, and would certainly be quite unable to add anything to the idea that one may have to defend against any number of actors, each of which potentially using different strategies at virtually no cost..
And there is nothing artful to it. It's an atrocity.
If your operating system isn't smart enough to require a list of resources to feed a program you want it to run, you lose.
If you built your entire civilization on such a stupid foundation, you lose.
Anyone smarter than that can wipe you off the face of the earth, unless you can survive long enough to correct your deeply embedded mistake.
Disclaimer: Like many other, I abhor and reject all terms including "cyber" except "cyberspace" in its proper meaning (see William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer") which has very little in common with the Internet or any other present-day technology.
That said, yes - "cyberwar" is entirely possible and would be immensely harmful. But no, we have not seen anything even slightly related to full-blown "cyberwar". If it happened, we would notice: trust me. It would blow the doors off computer systems most people have no idea exist: systems that give them power, light, water, network access (of course), banking, medical services, education, food, etc. etc. Our present posture in this respect is basically that of a person camping in the woods who has been told there are grizzly bears around, and whose response has been to tie himself up stark naked and hang himself from a tree at convenient nibbling height.
It must have been about 20 years ago that I began lecturing and writing about the security risks of software systems. I always kept it as short and simple as I could, since I realize that security is not only very counter-intuitive but (to most people) appallingly boring. But I usually wound up with a warning: there were many threats, ranging from the trivial to the extremely serious; there was hardly any defence; and hardly anyone was taking the trouble or investing the resources to put up any defence at all. The only good news, I added, was that so far criminals had made no real efforts to exploit all the juicy vulnerabilities spread out before them. That wouldn't necessarily last, I warned.
The same remarks, mutatis mutandis, apply to "cyberwar". It would cause far more harm than criminal exploitation, because the objective of war is to bring about complete defenselessness and unconditional surrender. Look at Iraq after the second Gulf war, and imagine that happening to all the IT infrastructure you know about (and that you don't know about). And, due to the design of the Internet and the amazingly insouciant carelessness of governments and corporations, our infrastructure is almost completely unprotected. What we have seen so far is analogous to a few spies and skirmishers probing the most obvious weaknesses. They have deliberately refrained from even hinting at what they could really do, because (as Sun Tzu pointed out)
"Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
To join the growing number of cyber-warfare units, or maybe a radio / radar (and internet?) jamming unit?
What a splendid idea!
if your enemy doesn't like you on their networks, they can always disconnect or turn off their machines.
the only way to win is not to play.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
We need to allocate more cyberresources to our cyberwarriors fighting these cybercriminals. Cyberwarfare is serious cyberbusiness.
It's not actually that different.
He posts a point like "intended target must stay the same" or and then gives more support for the opposing side.
I could easy take every one of his points and argue the exact opposite probably more effectively than him.
Most of the cyber attacks today seem to be undirected from rogue disconnected parties with undefined or
constantly changing goals and no way to achieve any sort of victory unless victory is defined as "causing chaos".
Sun-tzu stressed in general that a good part of winning was being able to choose the ground and conditions under which battle is joined.
So connecting anything to the Internet that you want to be secure is stupid.
1.The art of deception, is to control your enemies perception. 2.Stretch your enemy too thin, he can't possibly win. 3.When in doubt, draw your enemy out. Hamsterz1:)
Personally I subscribe the writings of Shan Yu, "Live with a man 40 years, share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano's edge, and on that day, you will finally meet the man"
Sun Tzu is for idiot alpha male management types. The equivalent of "brogrammers." Quit reading this crap and just do your work.
That's because "cyberattacks" today take the shape of acts of sabotage (Anonymous and assorted small children) with no strategy behind them. This is because proper strategy entails measurable goals and some kind of control behind it. There can be none of this because Anonymous and assorted small children cannot have any goals. They know they can't win, the "enemy" has already conquered all of its objectives, and all they can do is some half-assed vandalism thinking it might spoil the victors' feast. It is not. Grow up.
Off by more than a thousand years...
No serious techie uses 'cyber' in a sentence.
That is the term being used by politicians and the military, so (as with "hacker") techies will just have to get used to the popular usage.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
@tehcyder: "That is the term being used by politicians and the military, so (as with "hacker") techies will just have to get used to the popular usage."
..
Only if you're happy to go into a room full of techies and sound totally stupid
Don't forget the propaganda/spin department.
The article talks about websites down, DoSs etc. and that's just Internet politics by mainstream media, to legitimize laws, retaliate, rehabilitate "victims" etc.
The real cyberwar is infiltration of personnel, persistent backdoors, data exfiltration etc. and that's mostly discussed between insiders.