Cyber-warfare: prelude to an arms race?

How difficult is it to take generic cyber warfare tools and aim them in this
direction or that? Probably easier than changing targets of physical weapons.
It is commonly assumed that we have contingency plans for invasions, nuke attacks, etc.
aimed at various places, yes, even friends and allies.
Why would analogous cyber warfare contingency plans be any more alarming?

There will be a cyber arms race, but I doubt if anyone considers it a new
policy, or a violation of trust with allies and friends.
After all, allies have always spied on one another. We can assume that they
also have contingency plans to attack one another.

I sense a subtle dig at Bush here, as though he is recklessly offending
allies by starting a "hacking contest" with them.


Think of it as a computer security "war game". The result of cyber warfare research
will be the identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities that have been there
all along. You can't stop progress. For some people, progress is defined
as discovering new ways to crash systems.
:cool:

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How difficult is it to take generic cyber warfare tools and aim them in this
direction or that?

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Actually it is very difficult if not outright impractical.

The majority of the cyber-warfare system is real time monitoring of an initial infrastructure map. It may take months or years to find the most efficent weak points in a given system.

This monitoring and detection consists of active, covert invasion and investigation of other nations' systems. That is the whole value of a cyber-warfare program, the planning is already done all the prep work is in place, this gives the system tremendous speed, faster than any other offensive manuver in fact.

None of this exactly justifies an arms race, but still things happen.

cheers,

catch

I believe we are rather busy right now just trying to understand/mitigate our own vulnerabilities. As I read the papers, the most recent East Coast blackout wasn't caused by hackers, but could have been if the utilities incompetence hadn't caught up with them first. Recent grades issued for US cabinet agencies in cyber security were embarrasing to a number of top officials. Whatever their staffs may have thought they were doing, you can believe they are now trying to raise their Fs and Ds to a level more in keeping with their bosses' self image.

I assert that our side of the arms race is on at least tempory hold while reputations are repaired.

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I assert that our side of the arms race is on at least tempory hold while reputations are repaired.

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The US has long been a believer that the best defense is a good offense. Offensive programs are still actively being worked on. The contracts were awarded in lat 2001 and run through late 2006 as of this moment. Who knows what'll happen after that, I've since changed industries.

cheers,

catch

I think the biggest danger from one of these type of programs, is the possibility of one of the "hackers" using what s/he has been taught to take a pop at their employer (America) through vulnerabilities they learnt about/discovered while in these programs that have not been patched yet.
Correct me if I am very wrong, but many of the things these people will be doing will be possible with freely available open source tools. If one of them decides he doesn't agree with America's cause, then how hard would it be to abuse the knowledge that the US Government have given him?
The other question is how hard are these people to bribe/convert to your cause?
I have no problems trusting the US Government with these sort of programs, just when the participents are able to recreate the possible outcome alone that I worry.

Most of you probably think I am completly wrong, but that is just my opinion.

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None of those nations have the capacity to develop the type of cyber-warfare the US is.

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I disagree, I think our actions are a reactiion to their outpacing us. A defensive maneuver to cover lost ground.

Show me a foreign cyber-war team that knows how to compromise a SecureOS, SMG, or STOP system... and I'll show you the US's plans for the moon bomb.

Foreign teams are likely just versed at reading bugtraq and applying that to corporate America. Nothing compared to the US system involving electronic warfare and physical attack.

Only a first world nation could pull together comparable resources... as this goes way beyond knowing how to use nMap.

cheers,

catch

Catch...show me a US cyber-war team that knows how to compromise a SecureOS, SMG, or STOP systems. all we have is rumors from news sites and a presidential order to develop one.

if we're allowed to make projections based upon news 'leaks' and hear say then china, russia, etc. have these teams too, unless you believe that the folks in these countrys are not as intelligent as we are. saying all they are capable of doing is reading bug-track is a pretty big assumption. this kind of thinking allowed 911 to happen...the far superior americans.

BTW the biggest atomic blast was a 250 Megaton Hydrogen bomb detonated above ground in syberia in the mid 1950's by the USSR. the fallout circled the earth three times. Mothers were urged not to breast feed their babies and not to allow their children to eat snow that winter.

Do I smell Tom Clancy?


Since wars are controlled by technology, it would make sense to interupt command and control of either enemy, regardless of who or what circumstance would start hostile action. The US has had a formalized "cyber warfare" unit since the mid 90s.

Wow...

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BTW the biggest atomic blast was a 250 Megaton Hydrogen bomb detonated above ground in syberia in the mid 1950's by the USSR. the fallout circled the earth three times. Mothers were urged not to breast feed their babies and not to allow their children to eat snow that winter.

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"the so-called Czar-Bomb of 1961, the most powerful device ever exploded on Earth."
- http://www.aip.org/history/sakharov/hbomb.htm (American Institute of Physics)

"Soviet footage of the test of the largest hydrogen bomb ever tested (the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba)"
- http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/VCE.html

"Tsar Bomba device: 50 Mt — USSR, largest yield explosive device ever"
- http://www.answers.com/topic/nuclear-weapon

Answers.com even has a special section on it:
http://www.answers.com/topic/tsar-bomba

"the largest nuclear explosive device in history" & "It was a fusion bomb with a yield of ~50 megatons"

Next...

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all we have is rumors from news sites and a presidential order to develop one.

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The US has had a formalized "cyber warfare" unit since the mid 90s.

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Look up BAA AIA-04-002. (I've already mentioned this announcement in this thread.)

Look at what it is and when it was solicited.

cheers,

catch