Cyber Warfare

[coolzeldad]

So someone is doing a speech on cyber warfare and asked me to be interviewed for the content portion.

I thought it was an interesting topic and wanted to see what you guys think about it yourselves and also to give you an idea if you were curious.

Question #1:  What is your stance on Cyber warfare and how real of a danger do you think it is right now?(Your experience etc)

It is more of a danger than it was last year, the year before, and will continue to escalate as information becomes more concentrated into electronic systems. It is not necessarily a new way to war but a safer way to war; with the right strategies attacks can be constantly performed in large scales and organizations/government's involved can easily deny their association. Unfortunately the performance, scalability, and accessibility of electronic networks outweigh these attacks; in no way do I see people reverting back to another medium for communication and data storage because of electronic threats even though it can be quite dangerous. The majority of effort against these attacks is not only securing systems to the best of knowledge but also even more to mitigating attacks. There will always be someone smarter than you and no solution is fool proof so do the most you can do and keep tabs on it and the key to that is a solid mitigation plan; worst case scenarios are always a good consideration.

Question #2:  Do you think Cyber warfare is an act of war?Terrorism?Espionage? or something else?

You can call it a fight, battle, or something else. It is really just an attack of some sort; the motive behind the attack defines its more descriptive label and there are a plethora of motives. An example of terrorism possibly includes the remote controlling of nuclear power plants, altering traffic systems, botnet style denial of service to important hubs of information. An example of Espionage possibly includes a clever worm on a worker's flash-drive from home or silent execution of code from some online vulnerability from an employee's workstation leading to data mining trade secrets and calling home or something along those lines.

Question #3: Is there any tips or anything people can do against cyber warfare and the militarization of the internet.

I think the most concern people should have is toward the limitation of their freedoms as large governments and organizations attempt to construct around the internet and other forms of electronic communication to secure their own interests whether it be national security, throttling users for some convoluted criteria, or blocking some information entirely. Your most sensitive information is something you should always be 100% aware of. Do not store passwords on your computer; even writing them down is in most cases safer. Do not store credit card or monetary account information online; yes it makes some things easier, but also easier for an attacker to potentially get that information. Never use week credentials; a lot of people have problems with this because they find it too difficult otherwise, however your information can only be as secure as you try to make it. Also be wary of cloud services, using a cloud service puts your information on a computer somewhere else in this world. You may never know if when you deleted it they deleted it, or if one person is targeted using the same cloud service that your data is most likely being searched through. There have been multiple cases in the last few years where large organizations were caught violating their privacy policy and keeping data for much longer periods of time then they promised. You can get data storage for really cheap now that it may pay itself off in about 1 year of a decent cloud service. The more you release control over your data to them the more you should be concerned with your private information. A good example of that is a social networking site, you profile yourself for large companies to profit and potentially sell your personal profiles to larger organizations that link that profile to all the searches made by this address in this area during this time... etc. There are a few legitimate uses of this information however I would still be concerned in how much it could be potentially used against you. Be smart and do not let your guard down because it is most likely not worth it. Also, consider your field and position, depending on who you work for, who you talk to, or even someone you are related to might make you a larger target than someone else. While the world we live in is dangerous the cyber world is much more dangerous. Never do something you are not sure of, make sure of it before you do it.


what do you think of USCYBERCOM and the other countries divisions and you probably heard that as of last month,an act was passed that said that cyber war hackers can be dealt with leathal force (black ops)..kinda of changes the playing field....

I don't think it really changed the battlefield
that stuff was happening for years but
they just got justification for all of it now basically

[Tezuni]

While cyber warfare can be extremely costly, (just google most costly viruses/worms, etc) I think deadly force against a non-physical threat is insane and a crime.

They should definitely be imprisoned depending on the severity and impact of their actions though.

I searched that act, that's crazy.  Can't believe I didn't hear about it in the news.

Makes me wonder just how much control the government has over the media.  Who heard about it in the news?

[Frank]

I think lethal force is inappropiate unless met with similar actions. And on the bright side, maybe the concept of soldier will change. However, as more and more things are run with easily accessed software, it could conversely become worse, if places such as very digitalized hospitals were targeted.