Re: US Cyberwar Policy

[Anonymous-Remailer@See.Comment.Header (Anonymous)]

You Wrote:

>"The Pentagon plans to make cyber blitzes on a foe's computer networks a
>standard war tactic, the incoming No. 2 U.S. military officer said
>Wednesday.

Why is this surprising?  This has been an active area of military research
since the 1987 proposal by Battelle.

<snip>

>OK, this has a lot of implications.  If this "info war" is carried out in
>the operations theatre (ie: in Kosovo or wherever) by soliders physically
>present (or via nothing but goverment networks linking to the local access
>points) that's one thing.  But there's a whole nother can of worm that get
>opened up if these attacks are carried out across the public internet.
>And more likely, the relatiatory attacks carried out across the same
>internet.
>
>The NSP's in the middle of this little battle will probably get ticked off
>a having to carry this wartime traffic (all of EvilCountry tries to DoS
>some critical public info site like...  eBay in retaliation for a cyber
>attack) and start shutting off ppl and hammering routes to the floor.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and assume that the Battelle model has
not significantly changed (as there is no reason I can envision why it
would).  What makes you think that this "Cyber-Action" will be a high
bandwidth DoS?  Since we have been using micro-bandwidth worm technologies
for over a decade - successfully - it would not make sense.  Besides, a
DoS does not gather intel.  A DoS does not significantly destroy enemy
resources, rather, it merely provides a temporary disruption.  Remember,
it was the intel angle that began this.  And BTW, since the ARPA network
was not designed as a delivery or transport medium at the time of the
original development, what makes you think this has changed?  The [ARPA]
net does not necessarily extend to all potential points of conflict.  It
is an inherently insecure and unstable delivery platform.  In short, it is
good for little else than distracting folks like you (not meant
maliciously) from the way things actually work.

>Any way you slice it, this is gonna be a mess.

It's been "a mess" since Ft. Monmouth discovered that intersector gaps
could reliably hold information...  Your precious public network is a
small time player here - you can relax and go back to using it for what it
does best: _civilian_ war _games_  :-)

>bruce

Anonymous