US Cybersecurity Plan Includes Offense 101
z4ns4stu writes "Shane Harris of the National Journal describes how the US government plans to use, and has successfully used, cyber-warfare to disrupt the communications of insurgents in Iraq. 'In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military "botnet," an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. "America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere," he wrote. ... Responding to critics who say that by building up its own offensive power, the United States risks starting a new arms race, Williamson said, "We are in one, and we are losing."'"
Wait what? (Score:5, Informative)
"America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere,"
Well that's just it you can't build a razor wire wall and laugh as people cut themselves trying to get through it. It seems to me the first mistake to be made is to treat a digital front as if it was a front in an actual war. All you're doing it guarding secrets most often, or sometimes vital services. Best way to protect them is physical separation from civilian networks. I know my friend who does communication translation for the military works on a network where they mirror a hand full of sites (wiki among them) every week and host them in house simply because having the network connected to the internet at large is just to risky.
Re:Reminiscent of the Cold War (Score:3, Informative)
While it's true that we severely overestimated their number of ICBMs and their production capabilities, there were a number of places where the Soviets were ahead of us:
* fighter aircraft maneuverability
* Lunakhod (decades before the Mars rovers)
* tanks
* Sputnik
And Sputnik was indeed a military coup. If you've seen the boost vehicles blowing up while we tried to match them, I'd ask you to consider the panic that that created. Sputnik proved the Soviet capability to put a package into a low orbit - kind of a major part of ICBMs. The ensuing space race was a thinly veiled response to improve our boost vehicle and command and control capabilities.
Sputnik spawned the NDEA of 1958 -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act [wikipedia.org]
I agree with the spirit of your post - just the details need polishing.
Re:Just give it time (Score:2, Informative)
It's "das Vaterland".
Just saying.