Cyberwarfare – everyone’s doin’ it
U.S. military officials seeking to boost the nation’s cyberwarfare capabilities are looking beyond defending the Internet: They are developing ways to launch virtual attacks on enemies. (More from Wired.)
But I thought only the PLA was doing such things? At least, that’s what CNN, the AP, NYT, etc. keep telling me, so it must be true.
There were reports that US military was using cyberattacks on Iraq in the first Gulf War. I don’t think CNN, AP, NYT said US didn’t do this. I think they all consider US using such things is given.
Washington Post did an article on it back in February 2003 when the directive was first signed. The US simply hasn’t needed cyberwarfare capabilities because the rest of the world’s military systems either do not have heavily integrated network systems (our buddies), or don’t have any network at all (potential enemies and/or the vast majority of forces in the world). But the US has been waging ICT (IT, Communications and Telcom services) disabling since WWII. ICT disabling doesn’t need cyberwarfare because we have tactical bombers. The ICT disabling of Iraq in both of our conflicts there were heavily reported, and the disabling was key to our decimation of their conventional forces.
The risk of cyber warfare is real and the likelihood of a major incident is increasing. I was at a presentation by Kevin Coleman, he is one of the top cyber warfare subject matter experts in the US and he showed the data about current threats and forecasted the most likely scenarios of attacks. We are way behind and can’t rely on the government to do everything.