Bush goes looking for cyber battles

SIX BILLION DOLLARS is all President George W Bush is asking for in order to protect US government and private business networks from attack.

The plan, in as much as anyone knows for certain, is to monitor government and private networks for activity that looks like it will cause harm. The plan also calls for a secret communications network to be set up.

The US Homeland Security department told the Wall St. Journal that it had counted 37,528 cyber attacks on private and government networks last year under a programme called "Byzantine Hades."

The Chinese, naturally, were said to be behind cyber spying into areas such as quiet drive technology (for submarines, not laptops).

Cyber specialists who work for the administration and who know about this stuff said it was now becoming possible for spies, hackers and terrorists to take control of finanical (Wall St.) transport (subway) and energy (nuclear power plant) systems. This at very least begs the question that if a country has a nuclear power plant system that can be hacked, spied or cyber terrorised then should it be allowed to have a nuclear power plant?

The plan, such as anyone knows, would give US government security services such as the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon access to private company networks though no one knows yet who gets to monitor what?

The plan has not been universally welcomed. µ