Cyber War, Cyber Espionage, Cyber Threats

Should we be worried about a cyber war? An excellent article that summarizes the cyber threats we are facing (or not).

Many military leaders view the Chinese penetration as a warning about present and future vulnerabilities—about the possibility that China, or some other nation, could use its expanding cyber skills to attack America’s civilian infrastructure and military complex. On the other side are those who argue for a civilian response to the threat, focussed on a wider use of encryption. They fear that an overreliance on the military will have adverse consequences for privacy and civil liberties.

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A great deal of money is at stake. Cyber security is a major growth industry, and warnings from Clarke, McConnell, and others have helped to create what has become a military-cyber complex. The federal government currently spends between six and seven billion dollars annually for unclassified cyber-security work, and, it is estimated, an equal amount on the classified portion.

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American intelligence and security officials for the most part agree that the Chinese military, or, for that matter, an independent hacker, is theoretically capable of creating a degree of chaos inside America. But I was told by military, technical, and intelligence experts that these fears have been exaggerated, and are based on a fundamental confusion between cyber espionage and cyber war. Cyber espionage is the science of covertly capturing e-mail traffic, text messages, other electronic communications, and corporate data for the purpose of gathering national-security or commercial intelligence. Cyber war involves the penetration of foreign networks for the purpose of disrupting or dismantling those networks, and making them inoperable. (Some of those I spoke to made the point that China had demonstrated its mastery of cyber espionage in the EP-3E incident, but it did not make overt use of it to wage cyber war.) Blurring the distinction between cyber war and cyber espionage has been profitable for defense contractors—and dispiriting for privacy advocates.

Sam Biddle at Gizmodo thinks the cyber war fears are blown way out of proportion:

They do it. We do it. We've both been doing it. At best, maybe this is just wasteful—though it does keep a lot of Beltway types in fresh Dockers. But at worst, this obfuscating Maypole dance of bureaucracy and private consulting keeps our heads in the (CYBER!) clouds, and not pointed at anything that will keep the world safer. It'll be of the utmost importance to keep from mistaking trade tensions and dirty economic rivalries with outright warfare—a word not to be dropped or appropriated lightly.

More worthwhile debate at The Atlantic Wire.

Update: Here's an article with more detail on the Stuxnet worm, mentioned in the articles above.