Been reading a couple of good articles on cyber-security/war/esponiage.
1. Bruce Schneier's blog post on the Stuxnet work - whether it was intended for Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran, or was it just an error, or was it a muscle-flexing? Quite good . Read it here.
2. Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker on Cyber War. Comprehensive look at all aspects, starting with the reverse engineering (?) of the custom-built OS built by the US Navy because of the capture of their spy plan (EP-3E) by China in 2001. Very interesting article, esp the capture and whether "zeroing it out" was enough.
He goes ahead to describe the fear-mongering and the various aspects of truth in the ongoing and oncoming cyber war - or is it just cyber espionage?
Interesting lines from the article:
“Current Chinese officials have told me that we’re not going to attack Wall Street, because we basically own it”—a reference to China’s holdings of nearly a trillion dollars in American securities—“and a cyber-war attack would do as much economic harm to us as to you.”
..they ordered all (USB?) ports on the computers on their bases to be sealed with liquid cement.
...the talk about cyber war as a bureaucratic effort “to raise the alarm” and garner support for an increased Defense Department role in the protection of private infrastructure. He said, “You hear about cyber war all over town. This”—he mentioned statements by Clarke and others—“is being done to mobilize a political effort. We always turn to war analogies to mobilize the people.”
"...Economic espionage on the Internet has been mischaracterized by people as cyber war.”
...military and intelligence eavesdroppers have resisted nationwide encryption ....for the most obvious of reasons: it would hinder their ability to intercept signals.
The Obama Administration is now planning to seek broad new legislation that would ..require manufacturers of equipment such as the BlackBerry, and .. Skype, to develop technology that would allow the federal government to intercept and decode traffic.
Diffie wrote "....The problem with the Internet is that it is meant for communications among non-friends.”
Read it here
Seymour Hersh is the pulitzer-winning investigative journalist, who is credited with exposures such as the My Lai massacre, KAL 007 bombing, Israel's nukes, etc. Read about him here
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