Government-Sponsored Cyberattacks on the Rise

jbrodkin writes "A new McAfee report finds that 120 countries, notably the United States and China, are regularly launching Web-based espionage campaigns. Government-sponsored cyber attacks against enemy countries are becoming more common, targeting critical systems including electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and government computer networks. This year, Russia allegedly attacked Estonian government news and bank servers, while China was accused of hacking into the Pentagon. A McAfee researcher says this trend will accelerate, noting 'it's easier to attack government X's database than it is to nuke their troops.'"

Huh?

[Otter]

"Cyber assaults have become more sophisticated in their nature, designed to specifically slip under the radar of government cyber defenses," McAfee states. "Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded and well-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage."

I'm completely not understanding how the linked article is derived from this "McAfee's Virtual Criminology Report". The version I'm seeing has nothing to do with "government-sponsored cyberattacks" and doesn't contain this quote.

My biggest concern

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

I think it's quite likely that the threat of these sorts of attacks will be used as justification by the governments of more and more countries to try to wall off their part of the internet, the erection of things like the Great Firewall of China, and so forth.

Gotta stop those so-called terrorists, after all.

Re:No

[Vanden]

Given your assumptions of "correctly set-up network" and "sysadmins have been doing their jobs", I would agree.

However, most of us know that many networks are vulnerable to attack because they're neither correctly set-up nor are their admins doing their jobs. In these cases, even a no-talent script kiddie could break in easier than a government could launch a nuclear attack.

+1, Funny

[rodentia]

Part of our "evil" plan to control the entire world involves us performing acts of espionage against just about every other country.

Nothing *evil* about our plans or anyone elses.

because that's how a country survives.

I consider rather that countries survive by learning how to evade history, the hysterical story of global capitalism. See another of my replies to TFA.

Your primary mistake is not to overstate the risk, but to misplace it. *Nations* do not function as discrete moral units in social interaction with each other. The accidents that constitute *nations* are acting in accordance with the collective expression of their political class's historical imaginary.

The only thing that threatens our national accident is the realization on the part of its constituents that the formalism is a parasitic drag upon our potential as individuals and as elective political groups, that is: history itself.

It is not a matter of *nice* [sic--ethics] but of ignorance.

Re:which is better?

[l4m3z0r]

Completely not joking, a physical attack is better and heres why. Physical destruction of lives and things pisses off the populace. People will get up in arms about ending the war and making peace. If its "just" some cyber attacks people will be apt to let it go on a long time or indefinitely being a constant strain on the economy. The economy as you know is what feeds us. If cyberwar destroys the economy to the point where unemployment is riding high thats much worse off than a few thousand killed before we get upset about the conflict.

Re:which is better?

[aztektum]

Yes I'd much rather have hundreds/thousands of people killed, hundreds/thousands/millions maimed, and hundreds/thousands/millions of survivors grieving and scarred for life than face up to the fact that "Oh shit, the economy is swirling the drain. My money is now worthless and I can't buy that $SHINY_GIZMO."

Economies are far more easily rebuilt. Placing an economic system above lives is utterly naive and shows a complete lack of self-sufficiency, IMO.

If the concern over economic collapse through hack attacks, maybe businesses, banks, the Feds should keep that shit on networks that are in no way reachable through the regular Internet.

Re:Here's a thought

[bhmit1]

Maybe they break into the home computer of Sam Gov Lacky who is fond of downloading iTunes and putting them on CD. Sam takes it to work, slips it in, his supervisor wouldn't care if they noticed, and now everything Sam's computer touches is trying to bundle information into an invisible location on the hard drive. Now all they have to do is bribe for or luck into the hard drive with the information they want and decrypt.

Not that this is impossible, but it's a lot more difficult than that. Friends that work there in secure places like the pentagon don't even take in their cell phone, let alone a laptop. When a vendor wants to see logs to troubleshoot an issue, there's a month lag while the logs are de-classified. And if you aren't cleared for a machine, you aren't allowed to physically touch the keyboard or mouse, someone else is assigned to type everything for you. Back in the old days, floppies were color coded which made for some interesting stories about non-cleared people picking the wrong color from a store bought rainbow pack.

Don't forget that these people tend to be very in demand as long as they keep their clearance, they've gone through their share of background checks and polygraphs, and that all goes away and replaced with a treason charge if they decide to do something that puts national secrets at risk. This isn't to say it's impossible, just not as likely as it would be if the geek squad was their model employee.