How the Code War Has Replaced the Cold War

An anonymous reader writes "After years on the defensive, governments are building their own offensive capabilities to deliver digital attacks against their enemies. It's all part of a secret arms race, where countries spend billions of dollars to create stockpiles of digital weapons and zero-day flaws. But is this making us any safer, or putting us and the internet at risk? 'Estonia is a small state with a population of just 1.3 million. However, it has a highly-developed online infrastructure, having invested heavily in e-government services, digital ID cards, and online banking. ... The attacks on Estonia were a turning point, proving that a digital bombardment could be used not just to derail a company or a website, but to attack a country. Since then, many nations have been scrambling to improve their digital defenses -- and their digital weapons. While the attacks on Estonia used relatively simple tools against a small target, bigger weapons are being built to take on some of the mightiest of targets.'"

good

[stenvar]

Instead of global thermonuclear war, we now have to worry about WoW going down. Seems like a good tradeoff to me.

Re:Lots of challenges in dealing with this

[Hognoxious]

The even worse part is that it is possible to make it look like it was someone else that started the attack by going via insecure third-party systems and covering your tracks.

That's always been possible, even with conventional attacks.

For example, The Mossad & 9-!! ,$@#
no carrier