Cyber Warfare

[Gordian Knot]

When it comes to countries, there are no friends. There are enemies and there are non-enemies. That is about as good as it gets. Despite strong ties between the U.S. with the U.K. and Israel just to pick a few names, that has not stopped espionage on all three countries against each other.

I read a thriller novel which was rather action based, but had an interesting premise. At an American station in Antarctica an alien vessel is discovered locked in the ice. A crack American Marine squad is the closest and is rushed to protect the base.

Unfortunately the French have their own South Polar base and they send in their own team. The U.S. team must rescue the base from the French occupation. But before the dust even settles they find out that the best British assault commander is on the way to take the base for the U.K. More mayhem ensues.

The point being that when it comes to a situation where there is a chance to significantly alter the balance of power in the world, their ARE no friends between countries.

[Gordian Knot]

Cyber warfare hasn't really been defined yet. It obviously is an "attack" against another nation. But to me, it is kind of the opposite of espionage. Espionage being illegal gathering of information against other countries. Cyber attacks are an illegal destruction of information against other nations.

The gathering and/or destruction of information valuable to nations has been going on for as long as there have been nations. From that perspective it is not warfare in any traditional sense.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Gordian Knot

Cyber attacks are an illegal destruction of information against other nations.

It is much more than that if you include my hacking the drones by imitating the GPS network example I just gave. That would be a real military attack. The government uses encrypted GPS signals in military drone, of course, but that is simply a problem of cracking the codes used. The same method may have been used to bring down a US drone in Iran in 2011 which was the point of the exercise.

There will be other ways in which Cyber technology could be turned against an opponent by an aggressor. We just haven't thought of them here yet, but I'm sure many people are busy working on them right now, being paid large sums of money from the tax revenues raised from you and me.

[Vertigo]

E.G. hacking the controlling computers of a nuclear reactor.

There are all sorts of potential ways hackers could cause serious physical damage including loss of life, rather than just destruction of data.

[Moonbat]

It looks like Cyber warefare is now just part and parcel of being a nation state.
Iran have been subjected to attacks by the US-Israel and are looking to take themselves off-line, into a national intranet in an attempt to stop the attacks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...-sophisticated

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...-sophisticated

[Snowdog]

Once you start deploying these weapons and legitimizing their use, sooner or later someone is going turn that back on you. Unlike nuclear weapons, any country in the world can get involved in cyber warfare, at relatively low cost. You can bet that a lot of countries are looking into that right now. With the US as the target.

Iran is a small fish. Unleashing these weapons against them might bring immediate results but down the line the blowback for the US might be far worse. The rumoured Chinese attack may just have been a test or a shot across the bows, but China currently has no motive to bring down the US economy. Other countries may see things differently.

[K. Riehl]

I have a friend who is employed in evaluating the computer vulnerabilities of large corporations. As part of his job he would break into the clients system using his PC in his office. He never failed to get in. He would use the same attack methods that are common knowledge in the cyber-community and exploit known vulnerabilities. Most large corporations can't keep all of their thousands of computers up to date with security patches and he only needs to find one that isn't protected.

My favorite story from him was one where a IT director was boasting that his system was airtight. My friend got into the system in less than 15 minutes and in the initial meeting handed him a one page synopsis of his personal bank information, social security status, medical history, job history...

He has encountered eastern European gang attacks on his clients servers, he has analyzed drug gang communications that have better encryption than most countries.


He also worked pro bono with law enforcement and got information that led to arrests of child pornographers in Europe and the US.

He said the only computer system he couldn't eventually get into was the one not connected to the web.