A New Type of State-of-War
Cybercrime has become a serious misnomer, insofar as the word subverts the real seriousness of the act, and its implications in a global security context. The crime of hacking into computer systems, ten years ago, was considered exactly that: a crime. It resulted in a police investigation, maybe a few apprehensions, and imprisonment or a fine. But cybercrime has now evolved to the point where governments probe the security of the very infrastructure of other countries; where operatives, working on the behalf of a sponsor nation, attempt to penetrate and disable critical systems, such as a power grid, a utility network or even a financial entity. ‘Cybercrime’, taken in this context, is not a crime at all – it is war .
And this reality is exactly what the worlds’ leaders don’t want to face. The idea that governments actively engage in attacks on another sovereign nation’s critical systems is the white glaring elephant in the room. It is the risk realized, the fundamental lack of deterrence, the full engagement of weapons, without provocation, that makes the defense planners shudder and the diplomats squirm in their cozy corners. For diplomacy has already failed; shots have already been fired – not across the bow – but right into the hull.
Granted, that ‘hull’ may merely be the network hub that controls the switching of train tracks along a major commuter line. It may only make up a small part of a vast database storing proprietary records and passwords for a military entity. It may be a mainframe at the Federal Reserve, or a Blackberry in someone’s pocket that just happens to have recently downloaded national security data.
Or, maybe that ‘hull’ is the networked interface to the coolant reactor controls, for a nuclear power plant.
In 2005 and 2007, Brazil was attacked by cyber-soldiers, bringing down its power grid, affecting millions of people and causing considerable monetary loss to an ore company. And last year, someone unknown penetrated the U.S. military network, CENTRON, and monitored critical data traffic for several days. The actual damage caused by this breach has not been fully assessed, but it is believed that the intruder used a memory stick to gain backdoor access. (source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/60_minutes_cybersecurity_reality_of_sabotaging_critical_infrastructure/ )
The current paradigm, to fight cyber attacks on critical infrastructure through a strategy of defensive and offensive cyber counterattacks, misses the whole point behind what is happening, on a regular basis: someone, (or some sovereign entity), probes, penetrates, then attacks its target. But the end result of this attack is not just to hack into a computer or network; it is to disable, damage, or otherwise destroy a part of that country’s well-being. And if a cyber attack can take out a nuclear reactor just as effectively as a missile or a paramilitary assault, wherein lays the distinction between a ‘cyber-war’ and a real war? Or more concisely, does suffering a cyber-attack constitute a state of war between sovereign nations?
It is this very question that gets to the core of the issue of national defense. The public policymakers, the world’s leaders, and the U.N., all must face the new reality about what establishes the limits of security for a sovereign entity. The means and modes of unprovoked attacks have changed radically in the information/Internet age. The expectation that physical intrusion and assault, by foreign operatives, is the only way to define a state of war is no longer up to date. The threat exists to a nation, and the danger to a country and its people persists, equally as both a physical and cyber assault. It’s time to stop ignoring this reality.
Jake desJardins