Cyber War

While doing some unrelated research, I came across an article written by Dr. Dave Pearson exposing how tenuous our cyber security situation really is.

In July 2009, thousands of “zombie” computers awoke at once and launched a massive attack against multiple U.S. targets, including the network-heart of the U.S. Department of Defense. The goal of the attack was to overwhelm the target networks with excess internet traffic, thus forcing a total shut down.

The attack raced through the Internet, hitting the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the White House, the New York Stock Exchange, the Treasury Department, the Federal Trade commission, the Secret Service, and the Department of Transportation.

According to the article, indications point to North Korea as the likely source of at least one of the attacks, but we have seen lately that pinning something on the Norks can be about as easy as convicting Rod Blagojevich of corruption.

And speaking of Chicago Democrats, it sounds like our hacker enemies merely applied the Cloward-Piven strategy — whose tactics are currently hard at work overwhelming and dismantling American capitalism —  to our sensitive DoD networks. In fact, the 2009 attack did shut down several sites. As vulnerable as we are, it could have been much worse.

Each hour, the Pentagon’s computer networks are probed over a quarter million times by unauthorized users. In fact, if a deep weakness was found, the ensuing digital battle could be lost within seconds.

This is where an over-reliance on technology gets us. DoD can have all the firewalls, anti-virus, and other protections in place, but our enemies only have to be right once. U.S. Cyber Command – actually a sub-command under U.S. Strategic Command – has around 1,000 members working to secure the DoD’s seven million computers and 15,000 networks. USCYBERCOM became operational in May, but won’t be fully functional until October.

[…] the resources needed to initiate a devastating attack on the U.S. information infrastructure are no longer out of reach of terrorists. Cyberspace is the ideal realm for cyberterrorism, including terrorist networks and organizations like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. And the Internet is the ideal tool by which to attack the U.S. on a massive scale, both militarily, as well as the entire U.S. civilian infrastructure, including the U.S. financial centers, electrical grid, telecommunications, air traffic control, and multi-national corporations.

If al Qaeda and Hizballah can conduct crippling attacks simply by pointing and clicking a mouse, we are in trouble.