11.06.12

Pot-Kettle-Black Disease

Posted in Cyberterrorism at 12:36 pm by George Smith

Unintentionally laughable quote from Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and CIA, on US vulnerability to cyberwar:

Gen. Michael Hayden, principal at security consultancy The Chertoff Group, was director of the National Security Agency, and then the CIA, during the years leading up to the event. “I have to be careful about this,” he says, “but in a time of peace, someone deployed a cyberweapon to destroy what another nation would describe as its critical infrastructure.” In taking this step, the perpetrator not only demonstrated that control systems are vulnerable, but also legitimized this kind of activity by a nation-state, he says.

The [Stuxnet] attack rattled the industry.

What’s amusing is Hayden’s tying himself into a knot trying to avoid saying that his unnameable example, Stuxnet, was written by US virus labs. And in so doing tacitly recognizing the country is in a poor position to argue the perfidy and danger of cyberattacks on our infrastructure by others — like, say, Iran.

In other words, Hayden is perfectly aware of the details and that we started the war.

“For example, if the DOD is planning a cyberattack abroad against a type of critical infrastructure that’s also used in the U.S., should information on the weakness being exploited be shared with U.S. companies so they can defend against counterattacks?” reads the article.

Haw. That’s one way of theorizing on the issue.

The piece, at CIO magazine, also illustrates of phenomenon of government defenders against cyberwar who immediately go into the private sector to lobby for more cyberdefense spending.

While it may not be the case that everyone is out to immediately engorge themselves on taxpayer-funded contracts for national cyberdefense, the general appearance is now of a standard and straightforward influence-peddling avarice.

Hayden, for example, is played as part of the ubiquitous Chertoff Group (Yes, that Chertoff.)

Also standard — the compilation of enemies lists, made up of foreign groups generally much smaller, weaker, and poorer.

The Somali pirates, Michael Hayden would have you believe, will be able to threaten the US from cyberspace, along with many, many others. It is a story with no resonance in the middle class, meant only to help keep the computer security industry at full employment:

“Over the next five years, low-level actors will get more sophisticated and the Internet [will expand] into areas of the Third World where the rule of law is weaker,” says Gen. Michael Hayden, principal at security consultancy The Chertoff Group. “The part of the world responsible for criminal groups such as the Somali pirates is going to get wired.”

The rule-of-law, eh? Which naturally and rightfully is abridged when we find it convenient and necessary to attack someone else.

There’s no more rule-of-law in our cyberwarriors than there is in a stewed prune.

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