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.'"

Re:Have we been hurt in this "war"?

[Johann Lau]

How does mass surveillance of private communications prevent DDOS attacks?

Blackhats are on the same "side" from the perspective of the innocent people they are attacking, even when they fight against each other.

Billions of dollars?

[c0d3g33k]

Stockpiles of exploits? Sounds like some reporter is out of his/her depth and can't understand the difference between physical weapon stockpiles and software vulnerabilities. Welcome to the new Yellow Journalism. FUD, FUD and more FUD.

Re:Have we been hurt in this "war"?

[king neckbeard]

Yes, he hurt the attack side, which is the side we don't actually need. Give the military and spook budget to security research, and the code war becomes no more of a threat than a literal pissing contest.

Re:Joke of a comparison

[MerlynEmrys67]

He may know what he is talking about, or maybe he just doesn't understand how good Kissinger was at his job. A master of a profession makes it look so easy that even someone with mediocre grades at Yale (He was outscored by W. after all - and see what people think of him) can do it. Turns out there are a lot of subtleties that I don't think our current batch of diplomats understand.

Re:Joke of a comparison

[Kjella]

Technically speaking, most of those nuclear weapons everyone was afraid of back then are still there, just waiting to be fired. Now, rather than the Soviet Union, they're in the hands of Russia. A least nothing is going on that might increase tensions between Russia and the rest of the world right? Oh, and fortunately Russia isn't run by some hard-right authoritarian, obsessesed with projecting strength.

The Soviet Union with half of Europe as allies was a superpower. Russia is barely in the top 10 biggest economies of the world, they have 140 million men against 900 million in NATO. Their military technology and spending suffered during the reforms, by all means they're powerful but they got no chance of pulling off a victory. Putin is gambling that nobody wants to pick a fight with Russia over a few areas in Ukraine, if he's called on it they'd lose but probably not before a hundred million people have died. Unless of course China were to join on the Russian side, 1.35 billion people and the world's second biggest economy along with Russia's nukes would give NATO a real run for their money. Personally I think what's happening in Ukraine will push all the other countries in the "buffer zone" between NATO and Russia to seek NATO membership over Russia's objections.