Be ready for both defense and offense. Cover all routes of attack. Practice careful surveillance. All of these would seemingly be logical paradigms for our nation’s cybersecurity efforts. However, a new report takes a different bent and says that the nation shouldn’t make cybersecurity its top priority and instead should focus on reallocating limited resources to defence of critical infrastructure.
The new report from the RAND Corporation (pdf) says that electric power, telephone service, banking, and military command and control in the U.S. are all accessible and able to be attacked from the internet.
[…]
Martin C. Libicki, the report’s lead author and senior management scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization, adds, “Adversaries in future wars are likely to go after each other’s information systems using computer hacking. The lessons from traditional warfare cannot be adapted to apply to attacks on computer networks. Cyberspace must be addressed in its own terms.”
[…]
According to the report, military networks should be top priority when it comes to defense, as attacks on military networks are potentially the most potent. They describe a hypothetical scenario in which an enemy could silence missile defenses of a nation and then pound its critical targets with rockets.The report says that offensive cyberwarfare is largely useless as it tends to bother, but not generally disarm adversaries.
On the other hand, if you got a bunch of 10-year old script kiddies together they could probably do some interesting hacking. Between milk and cookie breaks, of course.
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What next ?
Strobe lights in front of your home
Emails monitored
Leave us alone ,let me get back to work
Its 2009 not 1984
look to cyber activity to engage in every area of life. Cyber warfare is already with us. We just don’t recognize it as such.
Alvin Toffler was right.
A lot of infrastructure hardware/software needs to be running on dedicated machines and roms. That way the idiot running it can’t download that music track with the malware in it nor would the malware run if he did.
I suspect the biggest threat is a major solar flare of the size recorded in the 1800s. If your side of the planet is facing the sun at that point in time all of your computer chips are going to be fried continent wide. Everything with a computer in it: the computer, tv, microwave, car, mp3 player, etc. will be trash as will the electric power grid and nobody has done anything to prevent it.
It will be 1890 over night and decades to centuries to recover if we do.
I am taking resumes for an assortment of technical positions for work in my secret underground lab/missile silo. Applicants must have a degree in Evil Science or an equivalent in Political Science. Although most positions are highly technical we do have a few Henchmen positions open. If we are unable to find you a Henchman position, please check back periodically as we have a high turn over rate for this particular job.
“…offensive cyberwarfare is largely useless as it tends to bother, but not generally disarm adversaries.”
So, we should devote all our resources to stopping it?
deowll,
Can you provide a link about that 1890(?) solar flare event? Thanks!
#6 – Isn’t that when all the steam powered cell phones went dead at the same time?
Remember when you had to be physically on some network to have access?
What about separate networks for critical functions? with no outside access?
Just pull the plug?
I agree that the infrastructure should be hardened! And like bill (#8) said why are these on the internet?
It should also be legal to contact/fix computers unknowingly compromised and used in botnets!
It staggers me that this critical infrastructure is even CONNECTED to the internet. What are these people thinking. Is it just laziness, or are there some seriously stupid people in charge?
They keep trying to fan the flames of this but the fact is that there’s never, NEVER been a credible cyber attack.
Any way to get a copy of hardened Windows XP?
#10,
do we really need to answer?
This is a stepping stone.
It is to SHOW that every computer needs a BOT on it to monitor WHATS happening..
TRY to tell they to other nations.
THEN get MS on the bandwagon as the major SPYWARE maker.
# 11 Milo:
“They keep trying to fan the flames of this but the fact is that there’s never, NEVER been a credible cyber attack.”
Tell that to the Estonians.