CIA's Info Ops Team Hosts 3-Day Cyber Wargame 279
ScentCone writes "The CIA has booked some conference rooms and is working through a simulated 'digital Pearl Harbor' to see how government and industry handle a monster net attack from an imaginary future foe composed of anti-American and anti-globalization hackers. Having been accused of lacking imagination about potential terror attacks, they're using the exercise to better shape the government's roles in a variety of attack scenarios. The networking industry, it seems, is expected to always play a big part in detecting and thwarting such threats, as 9/11-scale economic disruption is a likely bad-guy objective."
Re:The Truth Is Not Out There (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Comparison in slightly bad taste... (Score:5, Informative)
"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds... The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space. While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy. Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the operation."
You could wreak a lot of havoc on the American economy if you chose to. At present, I doubt many nations would be interested in that- it's just not in their interest. China, for instance, is making just way too much money off the U.S. economy to want to touch it. Even if we started exchanging shots over Taiwan I think they'd think hard before trying that. But what what about Al Qaeda?
"All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All Praise is due to Allah. So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah."
Bin Laden's ultimate goal probably isn't to kill American civilians, kill American troops, or defeat us militarily. He wants to attack our economy. That was definitely a large part of what 9/11 was about, and it's a very large part of what the ongoing insurgency is about (200 billion for this invasion by the end of 2005, with no end in sight. What's really shocking is that everybody is puzzling over the Iraqi insurgency's strategy, when bin Laden explicitly lays out his strategy). And it will be a very large part of any future attacks, which could concievably move into internet attacks. Carnage is part of it, sure. But if he can't bleed you physically, he's perfectly happy to bleed your bank account. Incidentally, I had to go to Al Jazeera to find that passage- CNN, those J-school dropouts, post a heavily edited version without even mentioning that it was edited.
Actually... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Anti-American and anti-globalization hackers" (Score:3, Informative)