Cyber-collateral

ARTICLE: Halted '03 Iraq Plan Illustrates U.S. Fear of Cyberwar Risk, By JOHN MARKOFF and THOM SHANKER, New York Times, August 1, 2009

Good example of why I feel that cyberwarfare will go the way of nuclear warfare (and before that, chemical warfare): it's just too hard to control the collateral damage.

Instead of the frequent, comprehensive use imagined by its proponents, I think it'll end up being highly circumspect in its offense, highly focused on its defense, and generally an issue of deterrence.

Comments

[David Emery]

What I think is needed is "offensive counter-cyber", i.e. means to take down the zombies that do DDoS attacks like those that crippled Twitter and Facebook yesterday, and have been used operationally against Georgia and the Baltics. And of course we need to do a much better job hardening our own infrastructure and the network backbone. Things like secure DNS (DNSSEC) need to get aggressive government backing and even mandates. Another thing that needs to happen is to start holding the computer vendors liable for bugs and weaknesses in their products. I've been a firm believer that software engineering licensing and software product liability -is coming-, it's just a matter of time and the scale of the catastrophe that will move the politicians to act.