Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Tue Nov 17 07:28:19 PST 2009


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8363175.stm


Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning'

US soldier, AP

Increasingly, hackers fight alongside ground troops

Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report.

Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of
recent net-based attacks.

Analysis of the motives of the actors behind many attacks carried out via the
internet showed that many were mounted with a explicitly political aim.

It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war
and readying forces to conduct their own attacks.

While definitions of what constitutes cyber war are not shared, it was clear
that many nations were preparing for a future in which conflict was partly
conducted via the net.

"There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this
kind of conflict," said Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee
Europe.

The UK, Germany, France, China and North Korea are known to be developing
their own capabilities.
	
If it is someone stealing information or planting logic bombs, it's far more
difficult to find them Chris Wysopal, Veracode

The US is known to have an operating manual governing the rules and
procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics. It is known to have used
hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war and has
continued to use this cyber capability while policing the nation.

Mr Day said there was evidence of a growing number of attacks that could be
classed as "reconaissance" in advance of a future conflict. The ease with
which the tools of such attacks can be gathered and used was worrying, said
Mr Day.

"To go to physical war requires billions of dollars," he said. "To go to
cyber war most people can easily find the resources that could be used in
these kind of attacks."

The targets of such future conflicts were likely to be a nation's
infrastructure, said Mr Day, because networks of all kinds were now so
embedded in peoples' lives.

In response, he said, many nations now have an agency overseeing critical
national infrastructure and ensuring that it is adequately hardened against
net-borne attacks.

Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode which advises many
governments on security, said cyber war presented its own problems when it
came to deciding motive and finding the perpetrators.

"In physical warfare it's pretty clear who has which weapon and how they are
using them," he said. "In the networked world that attribution is incredibly
difficult."

The same is true for cyber crime, he said, where following a trail of money
can lead investigators back to a band of thieves.

"If it is someone stealing information or planting logic bombs, it's far more
difficult to find them," he said.

Mr Wysopal said many governments had woken up to the threat and were starting
to put in place systems and agencies that could help protect them.

However, he said, they still had some weaknesses.

"The thing about governments doing this is that they have a time horizon of
many years," he said. "But the criminals are doing it in a matter of months." 





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