[ NNSquad ] Re: Dangerous ramblings from Malone

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

If I led a paranoid dictatorship with a primary concern of not being
attacked by the U.S., it's hard to see any logic in conducting
cyberattacks that to the uninitiated appeared to obviously be generated
from my own country.  At the very least I'd hire some criminal botnet
operators to run attacks so that they appeared to come from somewhere
else entirely -- sort of like SPECTRE, pitting the West and East against
each other and hoping to pick up the pieces.  

But how much is really gained by conducting DDoS attacks against these
sorts of government and even commercial Web sites in the first place?
Will the U.S. be crippled if access is cut off to whitehouse.gov for a
while?  OK, it will harder to see the latest Obama feel-good video.
So what in the scheme of things?  Despite some of the public spin, we
know that critical U.S. military and intelligence communications
infrastructure is at least nominally partitioned away from easily
targeted Internet sites and facilities.  There's a lot of confusion
among the public about the differences between sites dealing with
"Sensitive" data vs.  Secret, Top Secret, TS/SCI, and all the rest.

The attacks that the cyberwarmongers (there, I've coined it as a
single word at last!) try to use as fuel for their fire could have come
from anywhere.  There are people who get their kicks triggering false
911 calls.  You don't think there are people out there who wouldn't
get their jollies by triggering a cyberwar -- or at least lots of
associated consternation?

For that matter, if we *really* want to play conspiracy, who's to say
that deep in some D.C. beltway agency basement the minions of CRAP
(Cyberwar Retaliation And Planning) aren't triggering the attacks
themselves to create a politically viable excuse for conducting their
own cyberwar retaliations?

OK.  The point is that we just *don't really know* where these kinds
of attacks are originated from most of the time, nor who is really
behind them.  So equating these attacks with inbound missiles or other
munitions whose firing origins are generally pretty straightforward to
determine is a fool's game.

Perhaps instead we should be putting our efforts into improving our
technology, in particular our Internet infrastructure and associated
Internet services competition, to make these kinds of cyberattacks,
regardless of their sources, less effective.

--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator

 - - -

On 07/11 13:19, Rahul Tongia wrote:
> Lauren,
> Your post made me read his entire column.
> 
> The way his quote (excerpted below) reads is as if he is claiming there were
> millions of teenage, broadbanded, laptop users in N. Korea, who, his logic
> goes, clearly weren't spontaneously attacking other nations.  Ergo, it's a
> state act.  This is another blatant case of false dichotomies.  Are there
> even that many broadband users in N. Korea? As you point out, it doesn't
> take a nation to coordinate an attack, just a bunch of coordinated machines.
> These could be anywhere.
> 
> India and Pakistan have had decades of rivalry in cyberspace (and the
> physical space).  People I have talked to mention that there are many
> attacks on Indian govt. websites, far fewer on Pakistani.  This is NOT (per
> private discussions) because of governmental policies per se but also
> because of the disaffected youth, who get implicit or tacit blessings only.
> In Pakistan, they have few outlets. In India, they can get a real job.
> 
> So, when any country's disaffected/misguided youth pull a stunt like this,
> at what point are we able to say the nation is to blame?  The nation may
> enjoy the fruits, but they didn't do it directly...
> 
> Rahul