[LINK] CERT May get New "Tools" to combat Hackers... With any luck

[Tom Koltai]

In the tea leaves I see... Kinect mounted Quadracopters guiding hacker
nullifying EMP producing missiles...


http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/06/01/Pentagon-Cyberattacks-deemed-a
cts-of-war/UPI-17821306915200/
Pentagon: Cyberattacks deemed acts of war
Published: June 1, 2011 at 4:00 AM

WASHINGTON, June 1 (UPI) -- Cyberattacks may be deemed acts of war,
giving Washington a peremptory right to retaliate against hackers with
conventional military strikes, the Pentagon says.

Washington is widening the laws of armed conflict to keep up with a
changing world in which hackers attacking, say, a nuclear reactor or
mass-transit system can pose as grave a threat to U.S. security as a
hostile country's military, unclassified portions of a U.S. Defense
Department report expected to become public next month indicated.

The new understanding includes cyberweapons in the broadened definition
of armed attacks against the United States.

"If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one
of your smokestacks," a U.S. military official told The Wall Street
Journal, which disclosed the Pentagon report Tuesday.

The report is a significant step toward the militarization of
cyberspace, with huge implications for international law, analysts said.
It follows the White House's May 16 release of an International Strategy
for Cyberspace report signed by U.S. President Barack Obama that said,
"When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in
cyberspace as we would any other threat to our country."

Washington reserved the right "to use all necessary means," including
military, "to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our
interests," the May 16 report said.

In a May 29, 2009, speech, Obama called the U.S. digital infrastructure
a "strategic national asset" whose protection would, "from now on," be
considered "a national security priority."

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs
magazine's September-October 2010 issue that "as a doctrinal matter, the
Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare
... [which] has become just as critical to military operations as land,
sea, air, and space."

The new Pentagon report leaves unaddressed how Washington could be
certain about an attack's origin, since attacks are usually difficult to
trace, making it often impossible to determine who is behind them, the
Journal said. In addition, it doesn't define when computer sabotage is
serious enough to constitute an act of war.

An idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence,"
the Journal said. If a cyberattack produces the death, damage,
destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack
would cause, then it could lead to a "use of force" retaliation, the
newspaper said, explaining the equivalence notion.

The Pentagon has set its sights particularly on China and Russia as
potential sources of state-sponsored cyberwarfare, analysts said.

Other countries claiming cyberwarfare apparatus include Israel and North
Korea, The Economist reported July 1, 2010. Iran boasted of having the
world's second-largest cyberarmy, the magazine said.