Security News > 2011 > April > Are we talking "cyber war" like the Bush admin talked WMDs?

Are we talking "cyber war" like the Bush admin talked WMDs?
2011-04-28 07:33

http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/04/are-we-talking-cyber-war-like-the-bush-admin-talked-wmds.ars By Matthew Lasar Ars Technica April 27, 2011 Turn any corner in the complex metropolis that is Internet policy and you'll hear about the "cybersecurity" crisis in two nanoseconds. As a consequence, the public is treated to a regular diet of draconian fare coming from Sixty Minutes and Fresh Air about the "growing cyberwar threat." Former National Security Adviser Richard A. Clarke suggests a thought exercise in his hit book Cyber War: imagine you are the assistant to the president for Homeland Security. The National Security Agency has just sent a critical alert to your BlackBerry: "Large scale movement of several different zero day malware programs moving on Internet in US, affecting critical infrastructure." As you get to your HQ, one of the DoD's main networks has already crashed; computer system failures have caused huge refinery fires around the country; the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control center in Virginia is collapsing, and that's just the beginning. "The Chairman of the Fed just called," the Secretary of the Treasury tells you. "Their data centers and their backups have had some sort of major disaster. They have lost all their data." Power blackouts are sweeping the country. Thousands of people have already died. "There is more going on," Clarke narrates, "but the people who should be reporting to you can't get through." This sort of scare-the-children prose has become something close to the norm, complain George Mason University Mercatus Center researchers Jerry Brito and Tate Wakins in a new working paper about what they see as the real problem -- "threat inflation." [...] ___________________________________________________________ Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management, Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure. http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/


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http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/04/are-we-talking-cyber-war-like-the-bush-admin-talked-wmds.ars