Is There a Cyberwar, and Is the US Losing It? 320
kenblakely writes "BusinessWeek is running a story asserting that the 'US
is Losing the Global Cyberwar.' This whole
cyberwar thing has been discussed a few times on Slashdot where the Chinese are asserted to be using
cyberwarfare to attain military superiority. And, of course, there is
the whole Russia-Georgia thing. Even
the US military is getting in on the action, and the fear
of a cyber
Pearl Harbor seems almost palpable. I'm curious
what the Slashdot crowd thinks about the growing fascination with 'cyberwar':
hype to get more money and create new force structure, source of the next
world war, or somewhere in between?"
let me get thsi straight (Score:5, Insightful)
they are worried about chineese hackers but are not worried about china owning most of the US and buying out banks?
source of the next world war (Score:5, Insightful)
That may be correct - but what would they do? Destroy the economy using computers? We do seem to be doing that rather well without the need for any outside help.
How could we tell? (Score:5, Insightful)
With Pearl Harbor, the civilians living in Hawaii could see the smoking ships and Japanese bombers. Newspaper reporters could do interviews.
With cyber-warfare, none of the relevant parties will typically admit what's going on. It's also hard to know whom to counter-attack.
- Attack source locations can be spoofed.
- (Relatively) innocent people's computers can be taken over and used in an attack.
- Victims are often unwilling to admit they've been attacked.
- Unlike Pearl Harbor, the attack can be perpetrated by jerky private citizens or criminal organizations within (or across) a country. It's always been hard to decide whether or not to hold a country's government responsible for that country's criminals. (For example, terrorists trained in Pakistan, or suicide bombers trained in Iran.)
And for some reason, the U.S. government often takes a surprisingly passive role when China acts aggressively towards it. So we're unlikely to see the U.S. government hold a press conference showing evidence that China has been intentionally attacking U.S. business and military networks. Not that we'd believe a statement like that until January 21, 2009 anyway.
Idiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
The "masses of probes" are just normal automated botnet attacks, and the "unidentified attacks" are probably just unwashed masses of skiddies. If you want me to believe that a real cyberwar (in this case more aptly named "computer espionage") is up and going you better give me or assure me that you have some sort of evidence (like captured transmissions showing that the attackers know what they are looking for in terms of intercepted/exfiltrated data) showing that you're actually being attacked by foreign governments or skilled people with an actual terrorist agenda. There is nothing in TFA except buzzwords, hyperbole and "x declined to comment".
We would never know (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no cyberwar.
For the first time in human history a situation where people benefit from what is essentially anarchy has appeared in the form of the internet.
Despite the spam, the hackers and the botnets the internet has functioned extremely well without governments sticking their noses in. In the case of the hackers it's often the guys who were hacking in 10 years ago using the same knowledge to keep the next generation out.
The internet is not perfect but that's a technical problem to be solved by technical means.
Now that more people use it however governments around the world are trying to stick their noses in and so we need RULES and REGULATIONS and CONTROL.
If it ever came to any kind of digital attack on the US from china that went on and on and on and on and outweighted the financial benefits of having the connection to china at all it could all be solved by having a few hundred guys with axes knock out the various data pipes.
But it doesn't. We make more money by having a connection to china than we ever lose from attacks a hundred times over.
It's not war. it's petty theft/extortion and companies trying to get one up on each other.
Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing that people are slooowly getting tired of THE WAR ON EEEEVIL TERRARISTS, here's the next Great War.
The state needs this to:
a) Support their friends in the industry
b) Grab more power for themselves
c) Bask in the warm glow of feeling important
Ignore this babble.
Computer Security isn't Cyberwar (Score:2, Insightful)
The article and practically every person or entity mentioned in it conflates commercial computer security with military operations. Commercial espionage, theft of intellectual property, garden-variety identity theft - these things are significant issues, but they aren't military threats. I view the article as a combination of people who have a vested interest in making the situation look as scary as possible in order to show that they (the writers, the commission, the groups the commission worked with, etc.) are all doing Important Work.
Yes, the military needs to be serious about computer security - and to develop offensive computer security abilities. Yes, we need to improve security in the commercial sector. But I don't see any sign that we need some huge overarching military establishment to address both. If nothing else, the debacle that is the Department of Homeland Security should teach us that overreacting to even significant threats is a great way to do more damage than the initial threat itself.
Hmm, they really don't have to. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally agree with this. The governments are stoking fears and the media are playing along, as they can use fear stories to sell more media. This Cyberwar story has been brewing for months in the media, now the governments are brewing it up to the point they can start to bring in controls, to help save us all from this "growing problem", as they so often call these kinds of manipulation stunts.
Its not so much the governments and media are working together. Its more a symbiotic like relationship, where media and governments both feed us with the same stories, for their own gain. The media gain attention and so more sales with fear stories, while the politicians gain greater power, to control others. Of course, the extra control we are told, is to help us all escape the fears they keep telling us about.
Its a disturbingly insidious feedback loop thats emerging between large scale corporate media organizations and ever better political manipulation techniques
Pedos on every corner, Terrorists in every mosque. (Score:2, Insightful)
and now China is putting our beloved leaders in a position where they HAVE to regulate the internet. If we don't act now, (preferably by turning the intetrnet off at 10pm and raising taxes), it's only a matter of time before the baby-murdering commies come over here and take our jobs/eat our children/drink our oil/make us look bad.
In all seriousness, no, there is no "Cyberwar", if there was I'm fairly sure the US would lose rather quickly.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:1, Insightful)
You completely neglect the fact that a lot of botnets, the machines that would actually perform any attacks, aren't actually in China. They are in the US.
The command and control machines are pretty much everywhere.
A bunch of guys with axes cutting the cord to China from the US would accomplish nothing. Besides, so what if the direct connection to China was cut? The internet is designed to re-route when there are problems. Anyone wanting to get to US machines can just take any number of alternate routes.
I give you .... rule 36 (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule 36 [encycloped...matica.com] states:
"There will always be even more fucked up shit than what you just saw"
Clearly, if you can imagine it, someone is probably trying to do it or has done it. Cyber Warefare, like Web 2.0, is a bloated term with multiple meanings. The trouble is that when you dismiss it because it is not like some famous battle of WWII, you risk falling foul of it through inaction, lack of preparation, and lazy security.
This is the 'new cold war' and they won't cut the wires because without them the USA could not spy on China. Silly boy. It's not just about money, it's about control. In international negotiations a little extra information is always good and the USA will be trying to collect as much of it as anyone else will. period. no exceptions.
Lately there has been a bit more in the news where 'cyber warfare' has been used to demonize the Chinese among others. I think this is not so different from the build up of bad PR we saw against Iraq and now Iran. Looking at the collective picture I think that the news we hear is propaganda and that the part we hear is what the government wants us to hear. We hear 'warfare' 'China is bad' etc. What we SHOULD hear is "The US is engaged in technological spying techniques, and in our efforts we have noticed that the Chinese also do this". You should also hear that "Any dirty technique you can think of with computers: We're trying those, but those damned Chinese have ruined it for us, they are forcing everyone to use RedFlag Linux and we have no back door in that OS".
Expect new 'kernel patches' soon and complete Chinese language updates as well.
Yes and No (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is undoubtedly a 'cyberwar' of some kind somewhere. It is most likely being fought by one group of 'intelligence' people against another group of 'intelligence' people.
In other words, there is no war, just a bunch of cyber-spooks playing spy.
Oh, they want more money, too.
Espionage (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not war, that's the usual espionage. Happens all the time.
If it's really anything warlike, the US would make an announcement that China should stop messing about if they know what's good for them.
If that doesn't work, then they would be starting military exercises off the coast of Japan, with the usual aircraft carriers, fleet etc.
So all that talk about cyberwar is just propaganda and bullshit.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:5, Insightful)
Secure NASA systems were rooted by a guy who sent 30 gigabytes of data to a location in Taiwan, where it probably was sent to China.
1. The NASA boxen weren't 'secure'. No box is secure while connected to the public internet.
2. Maybe critical, life-or-death, classified, Really Important Stuff (tm) shouldn't be on the internet? Seems to me they should stop trying to pound that square peg into the round hole on this one and (re)build their own damn network where they control all the access points, instead of taking ours.
If the nitwits in the Govt/Military would understand and accept those two points, minimally, there would less instances of '30gb of top secret NASA data was sent to Taiwan', and less reason for anyone to even bother cyberwar-ing for National defense (or offense). This whole 'lets save some $$$ by leveraging the Internet' isn't working out too well for them.
Corporate attacks/espionage however would still be fair game, but that's the risk corporations must assess for themselves. The .gov/.mil shouldn't even have to make that assessment because they shouldn't be here in the first place.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:3, Insightful)
you read the article you'd understand there is a cyber war and it isn't just script kiddies or digital anarchists attacking secure computer systems. Secure NASA systems were rooted by a guy who sent 30 gigabytes of data to a location in Taiwan, where it probably was sent to China. That's not anarchy; it's an attempt to steal confidential data.
Um, I hope that I'm not the only one to say it, but that's not war. That's just friendly neighborhood spying that nations always do to each other.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not.
Try to remember one big thing here: There's Knowledge, then there's Downtime. When you're attacking eBay or Amazon, the goal is downtime, since eBay loses money every second they're offline and will pay you handsomely to get their connectivity back.
However, when your target is the pentagon, downtime isn't the goal. China has nothing to gain from taking the US defense network down, nor does Russia nor anyone else, because their own systems rely too heavily on the internet, just as ours do, and at the end of the day, a certain core portion of the net is still under US DoD control (several million IPs, in fact). If, however, the Chinese could manage to get the chemical formula or metallurgy or whatnot for the armor on an Abrams tank, that's worth a LOT to them. After all, China can mass produce just about anything they can dream up, but China is in modern days what Russia was during the cold war - twice the factories and half the big brains of the US. Indeed, many have said that the US acquiring Von Braun after WWII may have cost Russia the cold war more than any other single man or machine ever did. Now, if the Chinese could simply hack our brains - or at least hack what our various scientists have come up with - then they would have both the technological edge and production edge in any future real-world war. The US DoD's strategy revolves solely around every 1 US soldier being the equal of 3, 4, 5, or even 100 enemy soldiers. Without the technological edge we currently have, that strategy falls apart in a hurry. Now, if you imagine the combined threat of a technological superiority or equality with a complete economic Embargo with little or no warning, China has the ability to own us overnight without firing a single shot. This is why a single hacker in the modern world is worth 1,000 riflemen.
So yes, a cyberwar is no doubt raging and it is important, but nobody wants to take down anyone's network. The goal is to pinpoint a single, hard to patch weakness and exploit it by gathering as much data from that weakness as possible, not to denial of service everything off the net.
Re:(OMG) "Pearl Harbor" (LOL) (Score:2, Insightful)
Needs citation.
Cry me a river (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Build inferior, insecure platform on shaky technological underpinnings
2. Cheat, bribe, lie and threaten your way to 97% market share
3. One company profits!!!!
4. Lose cyberwar
5. Oops
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:2, Insightful)
Leave the internet alone and build separate, secure command and control networks for the military/government.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason why you run two networks in a location. You have an isolated from the Internet network which all your classified/important info is kept on, and the "public" network which has access to the Internet for those reference purposes. There's no circumstance that would warrant connecting those Top Secret servers to the Internet, patches can be downloaded and places on removable media (the need of patches is debatable anyway if most patches are just addressing security flaws). You put in and enforce a policy of disabling removable media on all machines connected to the private network.
Simple, secure.
Re:(OMG) "Pearl Harbor" (LOL) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd presume he's talking about the US embargo of oil sales to the Empire of Japan after they invaded French Indochina, which prompted the attack.
Somehow, I think not selling oil to an imperialist power noted for raping villiges is one of the least bad things the US has ever done.
Re:Espionage (Score:5, Insightful)
You can believe the propaganda if you want. I'm just pointing the correct terms.
If you have an espionage problem you don't usually fix it by going to war.
Countries execute spies every now and then, and people die in car/plane crashes etc.
As you should see the US is not going to war with China over espionage. They are using it as a propaganda opportunity though
The US is not going to war with its allies either, they spy on the US and the US spies on them all the time.
Maybe the US people like wars so much and thus only see things in those terms - War or not war.
And that's why they have "war against drugs", "war against terror", "war against cancer", "war against obesity".
Re:troll flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)
The US were just clever enough to find someone stupid enough to do the dirty work for them.
I guess you can argue with results. The US may or may not have benefitted from the actions you describe, but the other parties, the "stupid" ones often did quite well. Pinochet certainly moved ahead using his connections with the US, for example.
Re:How could we tell? (Score:3, Insightful)
AH but we have billions if not trillions invested in our own (US) business operations in China. They didn't get all that money they have on their own.... we invested in them. So yes we could move operations to anywhere in the world (except the US or the EU) but it would come at a very high price.
Re:Espionage (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be funny (Score:1, Insightful)
When all of the naysayers in the comments above can't get money out of their ATM machines after the banking system gets infiltrated and brought down. Or a fighter jet takes out a civilian aircraft over LA because of hacked communications. Or, your local power plant stops sending you power because their computer safety systems have been triggered.
To think that a "cyber war" won't affect you and affect only the "government" or the "spooks" is incredibly naive. Think about all of the ways your life uses technology today and think about what could happen if that went away suddenly. You might not even be able to post your tinfoil hat thoughts to Slashdot anymore!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Espionage (Score:4, Insightful)
And China's response would be "Hey, how about the billions of dollars you owe us. When you planning on paying up?"
Re:Espionage (Score:3, Insightful)
Well thank God China isn't using propaganda to further their political agendas. That would just be terrible. (I mean, it's not like they block every objectionable site on the internet or anything. Oh, wait.) Too bad they couldn't even join this discussion if they chose to.
"The US is not going to war with its allies either"
China is one of the US biggest economic allies. They are the ones making the war in Iraq possible. Do you have any idea how much money the US owes them, and how much of the US they actually own? The US could never go to war with China because of economic ties. A war would be detrimental to both countries economies.
"Maybe the US people like wars so much and thus only see things in those terms - War or not war."
Maybe the Chinese people hate freedom so much and thus only see things on those terms - Freedom or not freedom. You can believe the propaganda if you want. I'm just pointing the correct terms.
See how easy it is to change a few words around and make the propaganda work the other way???
"And that's why they have "war against drugs", "war against terror", "war against cancer", "war against obesity".
Unwinnable wars against undefinable, intangible objects are never a good idea for any country. The US certainly doesn't have a monopoly there.
Re:let me get thsi straight (Score:3, Insightful)
the purposes of spying - from an asian perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results. ~ Sun Tzu
Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories. ~ Sun Tzu
Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. ~ Sun Tzu
Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge. ~ Sun Tzu
Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations. ~ Sun Tzu
Re:Espionage (Score:5, Insightful)
You honestly think that there are no US friendly computer experts probing the chinese systems with the intent to discover what the Chinese know and selling that information to the US?
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember how the US gained it's independence? We had a "guerrilla" army that didn't have official uniforms, and the redcoats weren't sure who exactly was their enemy at all times either. Just goes to show you that one man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter". They are just words that are propaganda that can vary in meaning depending on your point of view.
Re:Cyberwar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its more a symbiotic like relationship, where media and governments both feed us with the same stories, for their own gain.
You are missing an important actor - the corporations, mostly defense contractors, who supply the products, offensive and defensive, in the "war". It's not so much the government directly manipulating the media as it is the corporations with the government contracts. They have every incentive and the public relations expertise to exaggerate the situation.
The feedback loop goes something more like (1) gov hands out some limited contracts; (2) contractors stoke the media; (3) media scares the public; (4) public demands more protection from the government; (5) government expands contracts. And away we go...usually without anyone seriously questioning whether the situation justifies any of it. If the ball gets rolling fast enough it doesn't matter. There are now jobs, votes, etc., to be protected.
This is not to say cyber threats aren't real. They are, and deserve concern and funding. We need to remember, however, that as we disengage from the real (i.e. shooting) wars, a lot of Beltway Bandits are going to be looking for their next feeding ground. There is a lot of money to be made in hyping a Cyberwar.
Cyber TERROR (Score:1, Insightful)
My favorite term is "Cyber terrorist". Computers can cause many emotions, such as frustration, anger, etc. - but very rarely does anyone experience a fear for their lives from a computer. But the term cyberterrorist is a great term for getting more funding.