[LINK] Cyberwar: Hypothetical Scenario for Teaching ICT Ethics

[Roger Clarke]

At 8:49 +1100 25/2/16, Tom Worthington wrote:
>Last week I attended a series of seminars as part of the "Securing our 
>Future in Cyberspace" Conference, hosted by the Australian National 
>University. This gave me inspiration for new material to teach ICT 
>Ethics at ANU. Here is a draft. Comments are welcome: 
>http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2016/02/cyberwar-over-south-china-sea.html

Presumbly you want 'softer' alternatives to emerge, rather than lead them by the nose?

My lay understanding is that Stuxnet was intended to (and maybe actually did) cause the centrifuges to go out of control, resulting in physical damage (and the risk of physical harm to people).

In that context, you can see the rationale for physical damage - 'we get one shot at this, and we need to slow down their work'.

In the scenario you're running, the purpose is 'diplomatic' rather than 'military' per se, i.e. embarrassent will do.  Is there a way to disable / disrupt without damaging, and without risking harm to the other country's military personnel (who, we understand, are still at this stage people).


Another angle is the ethics of disclosing to a possible future enemy the country's capability to disable, disrupt and even damage military kit.  The recent, poorly-named but good-fun film nominally on Turing's Bletchley years gave another run to the WWII dilemma of not using all the available intel, in order to avoid disclosing that Enigma had been cracked.

It also causes 'the other side' to close up at least one current access path that might otherwise have remained available for future use.  (At any given time, there are only so many zero-day - stupid term, call them 'vulnerability' - exploits available).


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			             
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University