The word attribution always crops up when experts debate the challenges of deterring a cyber attack. It simply means determining just who is responsible for nefarious acts online — where anonymity has long been a prized asset. Here, I discuss the challenge of finding such digital fingerprints with James Lewis, a cyberwar expert at …
Cyber
“Is a Cyber Pearl Harbor on the Horizon?”
This week on Command Post, John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and I discuss the potential horror — and the potential hype — of cyber war with James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kristin Lord of CNAS. Key question: now that the Cold War has melted into history, is the …
Cyberwar fears: disaggregating the threat
My man Mark Thompson puts up a cheeky post yesterday that I most heartily approved of. In it he speaks of cyberwar worrywarts and rightly fears that, as the terror war recedes in some priority, new little piggies approach the DoD trough. And as these cyberwar advocates find such a prime target in China, I would note that their …
Cyber War Worrywarts
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta whipped up the cyber-threat Friday during his get-acquainted visit to Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base, home of the U.S. Strategic Command. “We could face a cyber attack that could be the equivalent of Pearl Harbor,” he said. Such an attack, Panetta warned, could “take down our power grid system, take …
Dear Hackers…
The Pentagon has announced a new Cyber Strategy Website. Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said about the site, “The centrality of information technology to our military operations and our society virtually guarantees that future adversaries will target our dependence on it.”
Bets on how long it’ll be till this puppy …
As You Approach #1, The Catch-up Tactics Need to Cease
NYT story on how the Defense Department suffered a massive loss of data during a hack last March. Pentagon won’t say which country is to blame, which makes it either China or Russia. Why tell us now? The cleared version of the new US cyber strategy is being released, as Mark just noted.
Odds are it’s China, because that’s what a …
Pentagon Unveils Defensive Cyberwar Strategy
The Pentagon rolled out its new cyber-defense strategy Thursday, hyping it with the news that foreign hackers (from an unidentified country) invaded the computers of one of its (unidentified) contractors in March and pilfered 24,000 sensitive documents in one fell swoop.
Cyber-security is a Pentagon growth area, make no mistake …
Is the Cyber-Terror Threat Inflated?
So I’m reading the August-September issue of Reason magazine (a well-crafted periodical of libertarian bent) when I came across a fairly compelling piece on the threat, or lack thereof, posed by cyber-terrorism. Unfortunately, Reason’s latest issue isn’t on line, but I found the working paper on which it is based. It’s well worth a …