Cyber Warfare may be the next frontier for tactical hacking. It has already reared its head in Estonia, Russia, and Georgia, and some say it has been used by North Korea, China, and other world powers. The implications and the potential are both fascinating and scary.
i did a few weeks research into this topic for a book on "internet terrorism" that i didn't end up writing - primarily because it turns out people like Al Quaeda don't use the Internet to plan attacks much, and the book would have been quite dull. What i learned along the way was that anyone who claims to know what's happening, and is happy to talk about it on the record, or at a conference, doesn't. Takes a lot of digging and a lot of generating trust before people will start to reveal the sources who really know what's happening.
Part of a wider effort, that would be my bet. Denying resources, or intelligence gathering - the more a country relies on a cyber infrastructure (and fails to adequately protect it), the bigger a target it becomes.
But how much of a capability would either the attacker or defender want to advertise via the media if they could avoid it? I'm sure that Israel, the U.S. and even Iran would prefer not to confirm a capability or deficiency for an opponent.
I too am looking forward to your going more in depth.
Those are good points, Insultant. I probably will dive down a little bit more as I'm doing some more research. Personally, I do think we hacked their systems years ago -- remember, what they said in the article (NY Times) was that they stopped making the warheads, not the weapons and not the capability. As for the Syria thing, yes, that seems speculative, as do some of the other items, but this all so clandestine, who knows.
One of the big debates is whether there really is such a thing as Cyber War. Personally, I think there is -- or maybe it's a tactic of a larger war. But these trapdoors and taking out grids all strikes me as part of what war would look like in the 21st Century. However, this video is a very entertaining (albeit poor quality and lengthy) discussion of the topic by Marcus Ranum. http://vimeo.com/3519680
Nice vblog Fritz... I'd love to see you drill down into some of the many, many interesting topics covered here...
One of the things that concerns me is that there are so many unknowns and unprovens about cyberwarfare right now. And the mainstream press doesn't seem to be doing a super terrific job of debunking the myths or getting to the truth... at all.
Take the stuff from the NY Times about how the US was allegedly able to hack Iran's computer systems in 2003 and prove it wasn't working on a nuclear warhead. Really? Do you think we actually did that? I'm spectacle. And didn't we just find out that actually (hey, who knew?!!? not us, apparently) they ARE working on nukes after all??? So maybe instead of celebrating our prowess we should be asking how we got that one wrong.
Same thing with the whole "Syria couldn't stop Israeli warplanes because there was a backdoor into the system which allowed the Israelis to turn off their missile defense system" ... really? you think? Isn't it just waaaay more likely that the Syrian missile defense system was 35 years old with rabbit ears and a wet fuse?
But I'm coming over all negative when i don't mean to be. I really liked the blog... especially the topic of tech backdoors in chips and so on. That could explain why the CIA is funding all of these technology startups via In Q Tel, right? I tried calling some of these companies and unsurprisingly they don't call you back.
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US counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, who came to prominence with his prescient warnings before the 9/11 attacks, tells Smithsonian Magazine the US was responsible for the Stuxnet supersmart worm that attacked parts of nuclear reactors in Iran – and in the process, has given away one of the world's most sophisticated cyberweapons.
The FBI recently issued a warning to smartphone users, highlighting two mobile malware applications: Loozfan, which steals personal information, and FinFisher, which is spyware that takes over a smartphone's functions.
Law enforcement agencies are poised to use iPhones as facial recognition systems in the coming months. The technical advance promises efficiency but has created a backlash among civil liberties proponents.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
Sean Smith, a US Foreign Service IT manager, gave his life in service of his country and the world. His life and death are a humbling example for all of us who work in IT.
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