So it seems:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service and other U.S. agencies, and South Korean government sites also came under assault.
South Korean intelligence officials believe the attacks were carried out by North Korean or pro-Pyongyang forces. U.S. officials so far have refused to publicly discuss details of the attack or where it might have originated.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that its own Web site was among several commercial sites also hit.
This is how small powers can damage large ones in an era of asymmetric warfare. The more dependent you become on the wonders of technology, the more vulnerable you are as well. We have already seen the fruits of addiction to that 19th century technology “the internal combustion engine” which even today forces us to maintain a military presence (or threaten one) wherever the fuel which powers such engines exists in the ground. Yet, we have less control today over that resource than ever before.
How much more vulnerable are we to cyber attacks on our electronic and online infrastructure, and how much less costly are the “weapons” against such targets for the attacker to employ. And if North Korea can do this, why won’t a future non-state actor adopt the same methods? Al Qaeda may already be a dinosaur with its strategy of massive terrorist attacks on symbolic structures and its tactics of using bombs and planes as missiles to effect mass slaughter. The real threat to any society is to destroy its ability to continue to exist. What happens if we lose the ability to manipulate all that necessary data and to transmit it when and where and to whom we need it sent? Which is the greater danger?
we did some substantial cyber warfare on Iraq prior to the invasion and Iran has done it to itself since the faux-election there. Come to think of it, McCain might have had a chance if he could have got Bush to shut down the intertubes.
The problem for disruptive small countries is that they depend on international switches to connect them to the global network. It is very easy for nations to block them from the global network, unless they are using resources outside the home country.
It is analagous to cutting free an area of electrical service that is having a blackout from the larger electric grid.
Now if the attacks are coming from Iran instead of North Korea, the situation of cutting service to the country becomes more problematic because of the high use of internet technology for providing news outside the country.
Is the implicit argument that we ought to abandon computers and return to doing everything by paper and postal mail? I don’t think you’re going to find many takers for that, though I do look forward to picking up my copy of the BooTrib from my doorstep every morning.
Thanks, but our problem isn’t that we use high technology, it’s that our government and our local software monopoly are too corrupt and incompetent to handle what should be relatively minor threats.
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North Korea is suspected of playing a part in the latest round of cyber attacks that paralyzed government networks and leading portal servers, sources quoted the National Intelligence Service (NIS) as saying in a briefing to lawmakers Wednesday.
A dozen Internet sites, including those run by Cheong Wa Dae, the National Assembly, the Ministry of National Defense and top Web portal Naver, were hacked with their sites down from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning.
China, North Korea and Russia were initially thought to be possible culprits. But the NIS briefed the lawmakers about its analysis that tentatively concluded that Pyongyang or its sympathizers were behind the cyber attacks. It was not immediately available how the NIS came to such a conclusion.
Earlier in the day, the Korea Communications Commissions (KCC), the nation’s telecom regulator, said tracking will be difficult as DDoS attacks, by nature, are hard to pin down as they involve a huge number of sources.
Several major US and South Korean government websites were disabled by a North Korean denial of service attack beginning on July 4.
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
North Korea devotes nearly all of its resources to military and nuclear efforts, and cyberspace is simply another battleground. It would be unwise to underestimate the North Korean ability to launch cyberattacks on government websites, particularly DoS attacks, given that there are hacking communities that devote themselves to discussing these very scenarios.
That’s on the heels of a report saying that US cyberdefense systems don’t work. In fact, the latest iteration of the system (Einstein 2), which alerts officials that an attack is underway, isn’t going to be ready for another 18 months. The system can’t thwart attacks that it isn’t familiar with. One of the biggest problems is concerns over privacy, particularly since the system is being rolled out on telecommunications networks operated by various companies, including AT&T. A third iteration of Einstein may be able to thwart attacks, but there’s no roll-out date.
Then again, federal authorities aren’t doing much better in protecting government buildings as undercover investigators had no problem sneaking bomb materials into federal buildings.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
WASHINGTON – The powerful attack that overwhelmed computers at U.S. and South Korean government agencies for days was even broader than initially realized, also targeting the White House, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.
Other targets of the attack included the National Security Agency, Homeland Security Department, State Department, the Nasdaq stock market and The Washington Post, according to an early analysis of the malicious software used in the attacks. Many of the organizations appeared to successfully blunt the sustained computer assaults.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This talk of cyberwar is mostly hysteria. Most of these things are simple DDOS attacks–flooding a network with so many demands that the servers buckle under the strain. It’s hardly rocket science, hardly mysterious, and hardly a threat to civilization as we know it. It’s what happens to the New Jersey Turnpike on the Friday of a three-day weekend.
But call it “CyberAttack” and suddently it sounds oh so scary.
For a properly configured network, it is at most an inconvenience, but an inconvenience that allows consultants who specialize in FUD to make work for themselves by talking about persons taking down the electrical grid etc. If taking down the grid were so easy, someone would have done it by now.
Rob Rosenberger has been following this sort of stuff for years.
Anyone who is seriously concerned about this stuff should not rely on general news media for enlightenment. Non-tech reporters don’t understand computers any more than they understand quantum physics and are as susceptible to FUD as anyone else.
Exactly. The difference between bombs and “cyberattacks” is that the damage is to commerce, not humans or vital infrastructure, and the effects are quickly and easily mitigated. There will be losses and inconvenience, but it’s hard to imagine any “cyberattack” doing anywhere near the damage done by our own patriotic financial sector and all the assorted bribester subversives infesting our politico/economic power centers. But we do so love the looming threat from foreign enemies.
The spectre of Asians or Africans or South Americans just makes such a good story compared to some kid in Michigan doing the same thing in his mom’s basement. If we were really so concerned about cyber sabotage, that first thing we’d do is take closed-source software out of governmentally and commercially crucial data centers.
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SEOUL, South Korea – Cyber attacks that caused a wave of Web site outages in the U.S. and South Korea used 86 IP addresses in 16 countries.
Japan has a “cyber clean center,” set up in 2006, to protect its government computers from attacks, including a decoy computer to analyze possible viruses, Kazuaki Nakakoshi, an information security official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, said Friday.
“No attacks targeting Japan have been confirmed,” he said in a telephone interview.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."