[ISN] Air Force Aims to 'Rewrite Laws of Cyberspace'

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/11/air-force-aims.html

By Noah Shachtman 
Danger Room
Wired.com
November 03, 2008

The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on 
its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even 
locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its 
advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the 
rewriting the "laws of cyberspace."

It's more than a little ironic that the U.S. military, which had so much 
to do with the creation and early development of internet, finds itself 
at its mercy. But as the American armed forces become increasingly 
reliant on its communications networks, even small, obscure holes in the 
defense grid are seen as having catastrophic potential.

Trouble is that even a founding father can't unilaterally change things 
that the entirety of the internet ecosystem now depends on. "You can 
control your own networks, rewrite your own laws," says Rick Wesson, CEO 
of the network security firm Support Intelligence. "You can't rewrite 
everybody else's."

But the Air Force Research Laboratory's "Integrated Cyber Defense" 
program, announced earlier this month, is part of a larger military 
effort to accomplish just that. "The 'laws' of cyberspace can be 
rewritten, and therefore the domain can be modified at any level to 
favor defensive forces," announces the project's request for proposals. 
Some of the rewrites being considered:

[...]


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