UN warns of world war online
THE UN telecommunications agency chief Hamadoun Toure has told delegates at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom World 2009 conference that the next big war will most likely be fought online.
Delegates at the conference in Geneva were told that countries were becoming increasingly dependent on the Internet to control basic services and any future wars could focus more on the online world, since such a battle would allow weaker adversaries to fight on a level playing field with larger powers.
"The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower," Toure said according to AFP.
"Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack."
After examples of cyber attacks against Estonia and Georgia governments are increasingly aware that they need to beef up their online defences against attack. NATO has already started work on this and last week the US Department of Homeland Security announced ti was looking to hire a thousand new IT security specialists.
However, much of the problem with online security lies with poorly written software delegates were told.
"The real problem is that we're putting on the market software that is as vulnerable as it was 20 years ago," said Cristine Hoepers, general manager at Brazilian National Computer Emergency Response Team.
"If you see the vulnerabilities that are being exploited today, they are still the same. Universities are not teaching students to think about that. We need to change the workforce, we need to go to the universities..., we need to start educating our professionals," she said. µ
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Duh... Stop using LoseDoze!
In case of panic, pull the plug. Simple.
"The angel scrolled his mouse on the active window, zipped its trojans and threw them into the great world wide web of OS's wrath. They were forwarded in the subnets outside the DNS, and big brother's cousin thriced-removed, his Java flowed out of the Internet, rising as high as the mouse's optical."
How many punters will die at the BSOD?
Assuming the article is true, the scariest part is that the UN is being run by morons that actually think they know anything at all about the internet, network security, and software. Here's a hint - they don't.
"such a battle would allow weaker adversaries to fight on a level playing field with larger powers." .... Goliath meets David.
""The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower," Toure said according to AFP."
Quite so, but there would be Grand Masters with superpowers..... but Mastery of Unbelievable Power Control with Sublime Applications of Prime Stealth for Purging Sick Systems is always with AI a Dynamic Viral Work and ZerodDay Business Traders Art in Progress.
What damage is done by a catastophe in cyberspace? Are Earth Systems destroyed by negative destructive imagination shared in virtual environments?
You might like to consider some CyberIntelAIgent Security Operations Centres to ensure that just necessary damage is sustained.
The UN are clueless, and too late, as P2P, and DDoS, amply illustrate.
Properly secured organisations, including personal behaviour, are the only solution, and that will not happen due to cost, inconvenience, and stupidity. Just look at the hassle the "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)" is for retail businesses, how some big businesses ignore it, and how backward bank security still is, e.g. no PKI and encryption signatures, for end-to-end payment card transaction data, WTF!
A pure communication blackout (e.g. DoS or DDoS) could seriously reduce the response times of an organisation and block access to vital resources.
A intrusion crack attack could disable, damage, or destroy physical resources, even living people.
An even more effective offensive strategy can be found in the book "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez; in this scenario living people are compelled to cooperate with a distributed internet based corporate entity, even kill for it.
In the last instance, you would have to physical search for, isolate, sanitise, and secure of all computers, networks, and people(!), everywhere! Unfortunately lack of sufficient resources, security and coordination, and the presence of hostile/hidden wireless networks and agents, could easily wreck that strategy.