I've been reading a book: "Information Warfare" by Michael Erbschloe. A great book that looks at the various kind of cyber attacks by various kind of "Information Warriors," from both the "Good Guys" side, and the "Bad Guys" side.
One of the conclusions in the book is that ultimately the government(s) will likely want/need to control the Internet access to their country, so that in the event of an all-out cyber war / massive cyber attack, they can close inbound access at the soonest possible instant .... basically "Martial Law" gets declared on the Internet (on a per-country basis).
The attack scenarios mentioned by the author involve globally-dispersed teams, such that just "pulling the plug" on one or two countries would not be sufficient to block a coordinated focused attack.
I'm thinking there are maybe a few holes in that thinking. For example, if that attack was decided and planned, what would keep a terrorist organization from buying a few store-front "businesses" and setting up some point-to-point lines between other storefront business around the world ...basically a private distribution system for whatever attack mechanism they choose to implement.
The only way absolute way to prevent this (as far as I can figure) would be a total and complete shutdown of ALL Internet traffic (in the USA / wherever), and perhaps ALL WAN / MAN traffic as well.
SO, whaddya think? How should the US (or any nation) handle the possibility of a massive, coordinated cyber war? How would you / your business handle restricted Internet access (or no Internet access at all)? Does the company you work for have some contingincy for no Internet / no WAN access between sites?
Do you think that if the government positioned itself to have possesion of "The Big Red Button" that turns off the Internet, should they also have some kind of assistance / insurance to cover the Online businesses that would almost certainly go bankrupt?
If you think about it, something like this almost seems inevitable, doesn't it? There are already some instances of "cyber terror" on the books; isn't it likely that it will become one of the weapons-of-choice sometime in the future?
Opinions anyone?
Scott
One of the conclusions in the book is that ultimately the government(s) will likely want/need to control the Internet access to their country, so that in the event of an all-out cyber war / massive cyber attack, they can close inbound access at the soonest possible instant .... basically "Martial Law" gets declared on the Internet (on a per-country basis).
The attack scenarios mentioned by the author involve globally-dispersed teams, such that just "pulling the plug" on one or two countries would not be sufficient to block a coordinated focused attack.
I'm thinking there are maybe a few holes in that thinking. For example, if that attack was decided and planned, what would keep a terrorist organization from buying a few store-front "businesses" and setting up some point-to-point lines between other storefront business around the world ...basically a private distribution system for whatever attack mechanism they choose to implement.
The only way absolute way to prevent this (as far as I can figure) would be a total and complete shutdown of ALL Internet traffic (in the USA / wherever), and perhaps ALL WAN / MAN traffic as well.
SO, whaddya think? How should the US (or any nation) handle the possibility of a massive, coordinated cyber war? How would you / your business handle restricted Internet access (or no Internet access at all)? Does the company you work for have some contingincy for no Internet / no WAN access between sites?
Do you think that if the government positioned itself to have possesion of "The Big Red Button" that turns off the Internet, should they also have some kind of assistance / insurance to cover the Online businesses that would almost certainly go bankrupt?
If you think about it, something like this almost seems inevitable, doesn't it? There are already some instances of "cyber terror" on the books; isn't it likely that it will become one of the weapons-of-choice sometime in the future?
Opinions anyone?
Scott