AP/MSNBC: U.S. cyberwarfare takes the offensive

**Arcángel** · #1 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 11:15 AM

By Anick Jesdanun

NEW YORK - U.S. military officials seeking to boost the nation's cyberwarfare capabilities are looking beyond defending the Internet: They are developing ways to launch virtual attacks on enemies. But first the military will have to figure out the proper boundaries. "What do we consider to be an act of war in cyberspace?" asked Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., who heads the Air Force's cyberoperations command. "The military is not going to tend to do that (use virtual strike capabilities) until you cross some line that constitutes an act of war."

Elder said initial uses likely would be limited to diverting or killing data packets that threaten the nation's systems, the way the military may intercept a foreign ship carrying arms in international waters. The remarks came late Friday during a New York chapter meeting of the Association For Intelligence Officers, a nonprofit group for current and former intelligence agents and their supporters.

Complete Story:
U.S. cyberwarfare takes the offensive - Security - MSNBC.com

**Opunaya** · 05-13-2008, 11:26 AM

After this, we're gonna blow up space!

**Arcángel** · 05-13-2008, 12:08 PM

After I read this article, I ahve to say that I was very un-nerved at the very idea of governments using things like DoS attacks, sniffing around for security vulnerabilities to render entire networks unusable.

Quote:

Hackers with a foreign government or terrorist group potentially could bring down military and civilian Web sites using what is known as a denial-of-service attack _ flooding the computer servers with fake traffic such that legitimate visitors cannot get through.

Enemies also could look for security vulnerabilities to break into key systems that run power plants, refineries and other infrastructure.

Already, the Chinese government has been suspected of using the Web to break into computers at the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies in what was dubbed Operation Titan Rain. Since 2001, Chinese "hacktivists" have organized attacks on and defaced U.S. Web sites to oppose what they call the imperialism of the United States and Japan.

This sounds a lot like Live Free or Die Hard. The thing is, everything that happened in that movie is definitely possible, by anyone, anywhere, at any given time, even with all the security measures you can think of, are in place.

A firewall can crash or rules on the firewall can be altered from a remote client.

An antivirus can be corrupted so that it won't pick up on any suspicious behavior that are indicated by the definition files and basic heuristic analysis by the AV application or server.

So, you tell me why I am not surprised that government are resorting to these sort of tactics.