U.S. would lose cyberwar

[mikepdx]

February 23, 2010 (IDG News Service) The U.S. government, if confronted in a cyberwar today,
would not come out on top, a former U.S. director of national intelligence said Tuesday.

"If the nation went to war today, in a cyberwar, we would lose," Mike McConnell told a U.S. Senate
committee. "We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose."

Security expert: U.S. would lose cyberwar

 

[Squad10]

I like this part the best:

"In the many discussions on what the government can do to fix cybersecurity ... it is worth noting that no single proposal will save us, and certainly not any time soon," she said. "There is, however, one thing we can do today: Stop making cybersecurity worse by rushing to use technology in ways we know very well we cannot secure."

Davidson said she worries about when the U.S. electrical system is fully controlled through the Internet and when people working with SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems fully embrace their ability to turn the systems on and off through a smartphone.

"We know that people have built personal digital assistants that 'talk SCADA' because 'it's so expensive to send a technician to the plant,'" she said. "It won't be long before we hear: 'Move the control rods in and out of the reactor? There's an app for that!'

"Some day we may have a power plant meltdown when all someone was trying to do is answer the phone," she added.

 

[shaft]

Oracle must having something in the lurch ready to sell the gov't that will win the cyberwar. :roll:

Don't under estimate the response of network operators in times of crisis. Whether it be a large scale attack on systems, or networks, theres quick action to mitigate those attacks.

 

[dracer777]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

I think that the moment we hear an emergency press release that (insert country here) has begun to attack us and is winning, you will have every kid at his computer that knows a whole lot more than these guys that do it for a "job", at the very least, performing DoS attacks. I know I will be. More than DoS, but you get the picture. Also, it is much easier to hide advanced AI firewalls and personel in a cyber security control room than it is to hide a missile defense system. You can very easily prepare for full cyber warfare(and win) in stealth, than you can nuclear warfare. I think it's a great move to appear helpless in cyber warfare. It's relatively cheap to be extremely potent in that type of warfare. With the top 10 computer crackers(or "hackers") in the country, and some massive computing power, we could do ALOT of damage, don't you think?

 

[iMONITOR]

Secret Service Computers Only Work at 60 Percent Capacity; Agency Uses 1980s Mainframe


System Is 'Fragile' and Cannot Sustain Tempo of Current or Future Operational Missions

U.S. Secret Service Using Outdated Computer Mainframe System from the 1980s - ABC News

 

[nova1010]

This parts a little scary "Some day we may have a power plant meltdown when all someone was trying to do is answer the phone,"

 

[N_Jay]

This parts a little scary "Some day we may have a power plant meltdown when all someone was trying to do is answer the phone,"

I thought that part was actually a little stupid.:wink:

 

[JnglMassiv]

I think that the moment we hear an emergency press release that (insert country here) has begun to attack us and is winning, you will have every kid at his computer that knows a whole lot more than these guys that do it for a "job", at the very least, performing DoS attacks.

Thing is, if they take out, say, our electrical power grid, they take out our ability to mount the counterattack you describe.

 

[Citywide173]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)
With the top 10 computer crackers(or "hackers") in the country, and some massive computing power, we could do ALOT of damage, don't you think?

Could? What makes you think that they aren't already doing that?

Thing is, if they take out, say, our electrical power grid, they take out our ability to mount the counterattack you describe.

Most high tech hackers have backup power plans, as do ISP's and government agencies.

 

[shaft]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

I think that the moment we hear an emergency press release that (insert country here) has begun to attack us and is winning, you will have every kid at his computer that knows a whole lot more than these guys that do it for a "job", at the very least, performing DoS attacks. I know I will be. More than DoS, but you get the picture. Also, it is much easier to hide advanced AI firewalls and personel in a cyber security control room than it is to hide a missile defense system. You can very easily prepare for full cyber warfare(and win) in stealth, than you can nuclear warfare. I think it's a great move to appear helpless in cyber warfare. It's relatively cheap to be extremely potent in that type of warfare. With the top 10 computer crackers(or "hackers") in the country, and some massive computing power, we could do ALOT of damage, don't you think?

Chances are the incident will be over with by the time you hear about it. I've never seen any such incident broadcast sent out for a DoS attack and doubt there ever will be one. DoS attacks are pretty easy to spot these days and are handled fairly quickly.