I have been talking about cyber warfare for several years, as many of you know. Last Saturday an interesting article was published in the National Journal which goes into some detail about recent events and the logic of cyber warfare. The article is relatively accurate in my opinion. It underestimates the ability of both Russia and China, but does a fairly good job of explaining some of the complexities in cyber warfare.
What does it all mean for you and I? Simply put, it means that we all live on the edge of a precipice when it comes to computers and our daily lives. When I was growing up I lived with "duck and cover" drills. We used to hide beneath our school desks and cover our heads to thwart off the effects of a nuclear attack by the "red hordes of aggression". Many of our neighbors built bomb shelters in their back yards to protect them from the blasts. In retrospect, I have to laugh at our stupidity... like being 8 feet underground will protect us at ground zero (where I lived... my home town was surrounded by missile silos and hosted a SAC airbase). It was inevitable we would go up in a rather large plume of smoke upon first strike. But I digress...
In those days there was "nuclear detente", today there is cyber detente. We have the capability to destroy almost any nation's infrastructure, and many have the ability to destroy ours. One only has to take a cursory look at the Heartland debacle to fully understand how malicious activity can cause chaos in our society.
Computer information rests on three simple pillars: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. If one attacks any of these three, the system collapses. If we cannot rely on the accuracy of information (Integrity) we cannot use it to make decisions; if we cannot trust our private information will remain private (Confidentiality), we will not disclose it; if the systems are down or difficult to reach (Availability) we cannot conduct commerce. An attack on any of the three legs of information is an attack on the basis of our information driven society.
That others have the ability to easily attack and affect each of these three legs of information is a given. That they do not is a testament to both IT security professionals and those engaged in cyber warfare. Those who can, do not - simply because we can do it in return. Moreover, as the world moves toward one integrated network, it is as problematic for nation states and organized crime to disrupt the infrastructure as it is to us for it to be disrupted.
When I think about this situation, I am reminded of the writings of Howard Bloom ( The Global Brain). He outlines 5 forces of change throughout history. He summarizes them as 1) conformity enforcers; 2) diversity generators; 3) inner-judges; 4) resource shifters; 5) intergroup tournaments. They are at play now. To whom the resources shift and who wins the intergroup tournaments is yet to be decided in our world. But rest assured, the competition is on :-)
We live in a exciting time and the threats we are exposed to should energize us to learn and explore. It is through knowledge that we gain competence over our environment. The "cyber threat" is but today's manifestation of the challenges we have faced throughout history. It is a frontier to be explored, understood, and - eventually - managed. Like nature itself, we cannot protect ourselves from it entirely, but we can learn to "live with the bomb" (to quote the movie with tongue in cheek).
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