[ NNSquad ] More "The Internet is a Threat" Security Screaming from the Usual Suspects

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

More "The Internet is a Threat" Security Screaming from the Usual Suspects.

--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> -----

Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 16:41:05 -0500
From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: [IP] Trouble in Cybercity: What Canada Can Do
Reply-To: dave@farber.net
To: ip <ip@listbox.com>




Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jeffrey Hunker <hunker@jeffreyhunker.com>
> Date: January 4, 2011 4:12:13 PM EST
> To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>
> Subject: Trouble in Cybercity: What Canada Can Do
> 

> For IP if you wish. This op-ed is an extension of my thinking in Creeping
> Failure: How We Broke the Internet and What We Can Do to Fix It (McClelland
> and Stewart,2010).
> 
> 
> Globe and Mail 4 January 2011
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/trouble-in-cybercity-wh
> at-canada-can-do/article1854625/
> 
> TROUBLE IN CYBERCITY: What Canada Can Do
> Jeffrey Hunker
> 
> We have seen the future of the Internet, and it isn't very pretty.
> 
> When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced the release of sensitive
> U.S. government documents, he also sparked a vigilante war reminiscent of
> the Wild West. Just before the release, the WikiLeaks site was shut down
> briefly by denial-of-service attacks. In return, "hacktivist" groups
> attacked U.S. government sites, as well as those of Amazon, PayPal and
> MasterCard that had distanced themselves from WikiLeaks.
> 
> Whatever one thinks of Mr. Assange's actions, the seemingly blithe
> acceptance of hacktivism may be the most troubling sign. Private groups that
> seized copies of U.S. newspapers carrying the Pentagon Papers would have
> been reviled, but the WikiLeaks cyberattack groups seem to elicit only
> indifference.
> 
> In a separate development, there's a new cyber superworm called Stuxnet.
> Speculation is that some nation or nations launched Stuxnet to disrupt
> Iran's nuclear program, and that Stuxnet did so by damaging nuclear
> centrifuges. Stuxnet marks a new era of cyberwar: For years, experts have
> warned that any nation's critical infrastructure and industrial processes
> are vulnerable to cyberattack. Now we have a visible demonstration.
> 
> Here's what ties WikiLeaks and Stuxnet together: Just as the vigilantes
> attacking WikiLeaks-related websites have not been identified, neither have
> the Stuxnet perpetrators. Both show that events on the Internet can have
> serious consequences, yet are largely outside the framework of
> accountability.
> 
> This doesn't bode well for the cybercity we call the Internet. And the
> Internet really is a city, with an immense tangle of highways, interchanges
> and addresses. Whatever your Internet abode, you pay rents and fees. But the
> Internet is not a truly modern city. It's more like the early Industrial Age
> London that Charles Dickens described - a place of rapid growth but filled
> with garbage, criminals and ineffective governance. London was perilously
> chaotic then because the city had grown far beyond the ability to manage
> such a sprawl. So it is with our cybercity.
> 
> With vital government and economic activities relying on the Internet, users
> need better security and choices about privacy. The Internet won't collapse
> if serious reforms don't occur. But its future may come to look like
> Detroit, where growth has atrophied, or like Lagos, where runaway growth has
> made conditions nearly unlivable for many.
> 
> Reforms need not mean heavy-handed government regulation or the end of free
> speech. The way Canada dealt with the Y2K challenge of 2000 provides a
> partial model. The federal government didn't spell out what companies had to
> do about possible Y2K bugs. Instead, it made clear that such problems
> wouldn't be an excuse for violating laws. It was the sense of public
> responsibility that encouraged companies to act.
> 
> Today, there's an opportunity for Canada to lead the world in developing a
> common framework for accountability. We have a start in the Council of
> Europe Convention on Cybercrime, a document signed but not yet ratified by
> Canada and many other nations. The convention should be updated, and Canada
> could then set an example through speedy ratification. Canada and its allies
> also need a coherent doctrine for collective security in cyberspace; NATO
> provides a possible framework for Canadian leadership.
> 
> But institutional reforms are only part of the solution. The Internet's
> technical foundations need to be rebuilt, as they were never designed to
> support security for the massive welter of public and private uses that
> constitute today's traffic. A new parallel network should be brought into
> service.
> 
> Numerous R&D projects in Canada are already developing "future Internet"
> technologies. What's needed is a concerted effort to move the work from the
> realm of "this is what's possible" to "Let's do it." With its high-tech
> universities, Canada could lead a community of nations in launching a small
> demonstration of a new security/privacy network. Then, following a path
> similar to that which launched the Internet in the U.S., the network could
> gradually open to users of different kinds.
> 
> The WikiLeaks battle and Stuxnet are only the most visible harbingers of a
> new age in which beyond-the-pale acts in cyberspace could threaten our
> societies. Like the people of Victorian London, we have to face up to
> reforming both the institutional and technical architectures of the
> Internet. Not to do so invites a kind of chaos that even people in the 1800s
> found unacceptable.
> 
> Jeffrey Hunker is the author of Creeping Failure: How We Broke the Internet
> and What We Can Do to Fix It, and was the senior director for critical
> infrastructure at the White House National Security Council under Bill
> Clinton.
> 
>