[LINK] cyber cold war preparation

[Tom Worthington]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> Report: Countries prepping for cyberwar
> http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/cnet.cyberwar.internet/index.html?eref=rss_world&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_world+%28RSS%3A+World%29
> By Elinor Mills ...

It should not be surprising that nations would be preparing to both
defend and attack via the Internet. "Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar" by
Martin C. Libicki of RAND for the US Airforce discusses this in detail:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/10/cyberdeterrence-and-cyberwar.html>.

Libicki argues that cyberwarefare is not a very effective weapon for
the USA and I suspect it would not be for Australia either. Developed
nations are at risk of asymmetric cyber warfare, as their computer
controlled military and civil infrastructure will be more
vulnerable to attack than less developed nations and terrorists.

RAND point out that retaliation in kind does not act as a
useful deterrent with cyber warfare. You can't threaten to attack
someone if they attack you, because you can't be sure who attacked or
that your counter strike will be effective.

There are some things we can do, such as make new infrastructure, such
as the NBN, and new wireless networks, less vulnerable to attack 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/11/unifying-nbn-fibre-and-wireless.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274