http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/25/IN6K18S60M.DTL By John Arquilla San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Insight July 26, 2009 When it comes to national security, our leaders are overly focused on nuclear weapons of mass destruction; more thought should be given to the looming threat of cyber "mass disruption." Yes, Russia has lots of warheads, but so do we. The situation is stable. North Korea might have a few big weapons that work, but our retaliatory capability would wipe them out. The same would hold for the Iranians, should they ever get the bomb. But in the virtual world of debilitating logic bombs, fast-spreading viruses and remotely controlled "botnets" of thousands of slave computers, a grave and growing capacity for crippling our tech-dependent society has risen unchecked. And all the warning signs have been evident for years. A decade ago, one of our own military exercises - still classified, so little can be said openly - revealed serious vulnerabilities. This was soon followed by actual intrusions into our defense information systems, apparently emanating from a site in Russia, that were persistent and wide-ranging. More exercises followed, to test new security standards, with names like Silent Horizon and Cyber Storm. They showed that we were still quite open to attacks against crucial infrastructures. And more real events came into play - this time apparently connected in some way to China: a swarm attack that nearly took down the power grid in Southern California several years ago and, more recently, another series of cyber raids on sensitive military data. [...] _______________________________________________ Attend Black Hat USA, July 25-30 in Las Vegas, the world's premier technical event for ICT security experts. Network with 4,000+ delegates from 50 nations. Visit product displays by 30 top sponsors in a relaxed setting. http://www.blackhat.comReceived on Mon Jul 27 2009 - 02:22:56 PDT
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