[ISN] Security Guru: North Korea Better Prepared For Cyberwar Than US

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:52:42 -0600 (CST)
http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/2010/02/25/security-guru-north-korea-better-prepared-for-cyberwar-than-us/

By Andy Greenberg
Velocity
Forbes.com
February 25, 2010

How vulnerable would the U.S. be if a global cyberwar broke out today? 
Vulnerable enough, according to Richard Clarke, former anti-terrorism 
czar under Presidents Bush and Clinton, that he rates our odds behind 
even those of our most Luddite adversary: North Korea.

That's because, as Clarke writes in a new book, Cyberwar: The Next 
National Security Threat And What To Do About It [1], cyberwarfare 
preparedness isn't just a matter of training a crack team of 
superhackers. It's also a matter of how porous a nation's cyberborders 
are. American corporations and government agencies are more integrated 
into the Internet than their counterparts in North Korea, where most of 
the country has access to only a tightly controlled Intranet known as 
Kwangmyong. Clarke says that even China would be better prepared to 
batten its digital hatches in the event that nations began hitting each 
other with waves of Internet traffic designed to overwhelm servers 
offline, as he writes:

     China can limit cyberspace utilization in a crisis by disconnecting 
     nonessential users. The U.S. cannot...North Korea can sever its 
     limited connection to cyberspace even more easily and effectively 
     than China can. Moreover, North Korea has so few systems dependent 
     upon cyberspace that a major cyber war attack on North Korea would 
     cause almost no damage.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061962236/c4iorg

[...]


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Received on Sat Feb 27 2010 - 00:52:42 PST

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