Europe Simulates Total Cyber War 80
Tutter writes with this quote from the BBC:
"The first-ever cross-European simulation of an all out cyber attack was planned to test how well nations cope as the attacks slow connections. The simulation steadily reduced access to critical services to gauge how nations react. The exercise also tested how nations work together to avoid a complete shut-down of international links. Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for the digital agenda, said the exercise was designed to test preparedness and was an 'important first step towards working together to combat potential online threats to essential infrastructure.' The exercise is intended to help expose short-comings in existing procedures for combating attacks. As the attacks escalated, cyber security centers had to find ever more ways to route traffic through to key services and sites. The exercise also tested if communication channels, set up to help spread the word about attacks, were robust in the face of a developing threat and if the information shared over them was relevant."
cyber attacks are launched from botnets, ergo... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since cyber attacks are launched from pwned machines, what is needed is:
(1) More diversity. We need around 5 major OS families with roughly equal market share, not one with 90% and a few others begging for scraps. Lack of genetic diversity makes life much easier for botnets and malware.
(2) We need people to start taking ownership for their machines. Running random shit that random untrusted web sites thrust at you (whether exes or just scripts used as an attack vector) is just idiotic, and people have got to start realizing this. I'm not sure how to do that. Any possible way I can think of seems inherently evil because it would do things like cut infected people off the net until they fix their box. And *that* means granting more control and central authority over the net to powers that can use it for evil as well as good. Anyway *everyone* surfing the web should be whitelisting scripts from important and trusted sites and running *no others*. Not doing that is a primary reason there are so many pwnd boxes.
Maybe we need a cultural change. We (tech geeks) need to start exerting pressure on our non-tech friends and family to not fall into the digital tragedy of the commons. No one feels like securing their own machine because, well, it's just one infected machine, and alone can't cause great harm. But when it's millions of them, they *can* piss in our collective cheerios.
Re:How is this different from a DDoS sim/pen test? (Score:1, Insightful)
How is a mock cyberwar different from a DDoS simulation from the outside and other points, combined with a thorough penetration test?
I think it sounds more expensive when you say "mock cyberwar".
Peace protests (Score:2, Insightful)
cyber - nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
the whole cyber- prefix is getting old and useless.
cyber-crime (it's crime)
cyber-war (it's war)
cyber-stalking (it's stalking)
cyber-bullying (it's bullying)
you get the picture.