Here is the abstract of a paper called “Manufactured Consent and Cyberwar” (pdf):
Over the past year, there have been numerous pieces that have appeared in the press alluding to the dire consequences of Cyberwar and the near existential threat that it represents to the United States. While these intimations of destruction can seem alarming at first glance, closer scrutiny reveals something else. Ultimately, the gilded hyperbole of Cyberwar being peddled to the public is dangerous because it distracts us from focusing on actual threats and constructive solutions. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain says the ball of fire named Oz. In this presentation, I’ll pull back the curtain to expose the techniques being used to manipulate us and the underlying institutional dynamics that facilitate them.
If the public fears a cyberwar because the powers that be says there is danger, that makes it easier to put into place systems that watch and record everything you do online, provide justification for cutting off the Internet during an “emergency” and other measures. Wait, look over here…
Found by Brother Uncle Don
In a word: YES.
Its easy to create fear in the unknown.
It’s basically the same sort of fear we had with y2k. And we know all the preparations made no difference because countries who did next to nothing (like Russia) had a similar outcome (ie not much).
Duh, have you met our government?
No. But just like every other threat facing the USA, our response is inappropriate and usually against the wrong issues/target.
Like Churchill said: the USA will do the right thing, after it tries all the other options.
Yes, every war is overblown. The Cyberwar, the war on terror, the war on drugs…. you name it. War is big business and you have to get the public behind spending billions of dollars to line the war mongers’ pockets.
i like # 5’s analysis, but we need to call this what it really is, The War on Taxpayers.
Everyone wants what we have when it comes to secrets and cutting edge technology; Especially the Chinese.
The Chinese subscribe to the doctrine of asymmetric warfare where they engage a technologically superior enemy at their weakest point. In our case, our networks. The military has become ever so network-centric.
The Chinese are also responsible for manufacturing a lot of the circuits that go into COTS (which the U.S. military also uses).
If kill switches, back doors, and inferior build quality weren’t enough, the POTENTIAL damage that could result from a compromise in our networks could reach catastrophic levels in a very short amount of time.
Want to fix this problem? For starters, mandate that all DOD / DOJ electronic circuits be manufactured domestically with U.S. parts. Prices will of course be higher, but this would foster job creation as well as making our networks more secure.
It would be stupid to wait until a major breach to happen before deciding something should be done about it.
So no the Cyberwar threat isn’t overblown… but if we do take things more seriously, the flip side of this is where people belly ache about their privacy / civil liberties being violated. Unfortunately privacy is an illusion because people don’t gripe about things they don’t know they don’t have.
And on 9/10/2001 if the government/media had been saying that a terrorist attack from some fundy islamics was going to happen any day now there would have been lots of very smart people saying that it was over hyped.
Richard Clarke thinks a cyber is an under-rated threat.
As you may remember, he was ignored by the Bush administration BEFORE 911 and attacked by the conservatives AFTER 911 — but he did call that one right.
So, he has credibility on this issue, too.
I’ve heard him on book tour but haven’t read his book on cyberwar. It’s here: http://tinyurl.com/27gxm5e
When I heard him speak he told of a BUNCH of incidents and attacks that I had never read in the news… which makes me think this threat is not overhyped.
>> admfubar said,
>> we need to call this what it really is, The War on Taxpayers.
But conservatives ALWAYS prefer to save a few bucks for prevention and then shell out BILLIONS in tax dollar later to clean up some predictable disaster.
Then they cry, “but NOBODY could have predicted this!!!”
Actually I agree with Bobo on this. The danger is real the response shows massive ignorance.
The idea of shutting down the grid to protect it isn’t very bright and should never even be considered as more than temporary stop gape because then we can’t use it.
1) They need to be able to fire wall the country.
2) They need to have some segments of the grid isolated from the rest of the grid.
3) Some segments of our infrastructure should be running on dedicated hardware and soft ware running on rom in machine code with very little to no capacity to be hacked by any method short of pulling the chips and re-burning them. In the normal meaning of the word this stuff should not have an OS to hack.
4)Even if something has an OS if it and the software are in Rom behind a firewall the most you should have to do is hit reset to clear any malware. Now that is a feature I’d like on all my computers. Okay if they beat the firewall/server you would no doubt need to adjust it.
5) The fact that way to much of this stuff comes from China or off shore somewhere means we don’t know what back doors may have been stuck in it and that is a staggering security issue.
6) The idea that seems to be in the rather empty minds of some that email, and browsing are real risks is not all that insightful. They might do a denial of service but you can kill those with firewalls/routers if you have to then isolate offending sources. That needs to be worked on.
Although there surely are bad guys out there, the antivirus / antispyware vendors and other software vendors have been overhyping the dangers for decades, when reasonable prudence is all that’s ever been needed.
The problem with the so-called cyber-war problem is that our representatives know NOTHING about technology, so they are more likely to react worse than most computer users. Ignorance and votes – can’t be seen as soft on (fill in the blanks) can they? Lethal combination.
Water supply, electrical grid, communications, etc. The more sophisticated a society is, the more fragile it is.
International Politicians Handbook, lesson 101
Promising to make things better hasn’t worked
everyone can see the world isn’t getting better.
So plan B, scare them into needing us and paying us.
Threats are everywhere
Should we fear, or OPENLY
Demonstrate Resolve?
The infrastructure that’s hooked to public networks can easily be well-protected, but isn’t because the cost is hard to justify to the ignorant. Sounds like just the sort of bill to stick to the taxpayers! Keep govt hands off business until we f it up completely! Then bitch that the govt didn’t fix it fast enough!
Most programmers are only interested in writing the code that services the “happy path” through program execution. That’s why OSes are full of holes.
As I may have said before: in 1986 I got an email on a BBS, I helped develop, saying that the author was going to hack into my code and take control of the system. I responded to him/her to go ahead and try.
I knew every line of code, badly written that it was, and knew exactly what that moron could and couldn’t do. I also knew how the computer would react to anything he/she tried. Like someone else suggested, this computer didn’t have an operating system, so it wasn’t “smart” enough to have holes in the OS.
yes
What about cyber war do they wish to control?
SPAM?? please do.
FREEDOM to be anon? NEVER
Wow , makes the cpu explode like a large hand grenade!
Back to interacting with real people again for me.
read this bullshit http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-and-megaupload-escape-domain-seizure-by-us-100707/
Clifford Stoll (#15)
Are you the Clifford Stoll that wrote “The Cuckoo’s Egg”?
If so, I want to thank you and let you know how much I enjoyed it. I bought several copies and gave them as gifts.
(If the writer of the #15 post is not really named Clifford Stoll, he/she is a jerk.)
[Based on his email address, I would say it is highly unlikely. — ed.]