[ISN] Georgia Cyberwar Overblown

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/150021/georgia_cyberwar_overblown.html

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Network World 
August 19, 2008

Last week Russian tanks rolled into South Ossetia while Russian bombers 
were taking out critical communications infrastructure. But even before 
the first tank rolled across the disputed borders, another war was 
brewing in cyberspace.

Armies of hackers started attacking critical cyberinfrastructure in 
Georgia. A counter-offense of Georgia hackers fought back to control 
major routing exchanges. Then a disturbing escalation: Georgian hackers 
were able to take control of Russian strategic launch capabilities. The 
Russian defense AI was defeated and forced to begin the launch sequence 
of ICBMs toward strategic targets everywhere. At the last moment, a 
Russian teenager with top-secret network access gained over an open 
Wi-Fi in his high-school network was able to persuade the Russian AI to 
back off by showing it the futility of war through a game of 
tic-tac-toe. Oh, wait a second -- that's a movie plot! None of this 
actually happened

For all the reports of cyberwar between opposing arming of 
cyberwarriors, you'd think that a big part of the war was being fought 
in cyberspace. A few instances of denial of service (DoS) were being 
amplified by the media into a cyberwar. I got e-mails and calls from 
journalists asking me about the implications of cyberwarfare, the 
vulnerability of U.S. infrastructure and the potential for electronic 
Pearl Harbor. What a load of [redacted:TOPSECRET]!

[...]


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