If there’s a Congressional hearing on cyberwar always view it as a scripted exercise, one in which the “experts” are carefully chosen to throw a scare into laymen.
Such was the case with House meetings on the matter last week.
Computer attacks on South Korea underscore the growing threat of cyber warfare that starts with the flip of a switch, computer security experts told federal lawmakers Wednesday.
North Korea is a “wild card??? when it comes to computer attacks because the country has the desire to launch attacks and a growing capability, said Frank J. Cilluffo, co-director of the Cyber Center for National and Economic Security at George Washington University.
Although North Korea is certainly a suspect behind attacks that shut down some South Korean banks and TV stations, President Obama and South Korean officials have not officially indicated that North Korea, China or any other nation is responsible.
Hacking by China and Russia is “brazen, wholesale and significant,??? and Iran poses a growing threat, Cilluffo said.
“Both our national security and our nation’s economic security are at risk,??? Cilluffo told the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies. “It’s literally as easy as flipping a switch to attack.???
Note the use of the “flip the switch” meme twice, the idea that the US can be turned off, or at least parts of it, like a light bulb, from afar.
Iran’s cyberwar capabilities keep Texas Republican Michael McCaul “up at night,” the story adds. Iran, claims the politician, is “testing us,” seeing just how far it can go before we respond.
It’s outright lying by omission, a feature common to cyberwar discussions.
Iran has been the target of a US cyber-sabotage and espionage operations aimed at its nuclear program, one in which malware specifically written for the purpose has been put into its networks.
As I’ve written previously, the US is in a lousy position to make arguments, or even recommendations, on proper conduct in cyberspace. This is because it is an untrustworthy international partner, one which will not be held to standards of conduct it publicly demands from others. (The majority in American power find this of no consequence under the rationale that as the preeminent and transcendent world power, the United States can always act any way it wants and that hypocrisy or an establishment of untrustworthiness does not apply.)
Ours is a country that routinely uses feeble actors in cyberspace — like Iran — as bogeymen in public statements on the dangers of cyberwar without including in the narrative the fact that we provoked them.
Summarizing, I put it this way (it’s necessary to repeat stuff as part of any public information service):
However, in cyberspace the US government, in developing and unleashing malware on its enemies in the Middle East, has made a world environment where vulnerabilities are commodities and capabilities, information not to be shared because of applications in cyber-weaponry …
Paradoxically, the US government has contributed to the creation of a global Internet security environment where information is not to be shared because there is value in [hoarding and secrecy]. Critical vulnerabilities have great worth in cyber-weapons development. This has created a gray market in which the vulnerabilities, information of zero social value, are sold at good profit.
As with [any] discussions [going forward on] cyberwar and the creation of cyber-weapons, the American government, by its actions, has cut the ground from under its feet on being in position to take the high [position], right from the start. . .
Congressional hearings call panels usually top-heavy with “experts” who are merely there to mine and spread fear.
Frank Cilluffo, for example, goes way back to the time when the propagandizing fell under the phrase “electronic Pearl Harbor.”
December 15, 1999: “Future War in Cyberspace” was the title of a special broadcast on the Voice of America US government radio station. Disclosure: Crypt News made an appearance in it.
“At least twice this year, [the Pentagon’s] Dr. John Hamre has said the United States was in the middle of a cyber war — and the pace of attacks on US Military computers has increased since then,” read the announcer
John Hamre said: “We are in a day to day, virtual cold war. In that sense that we have people trying to disrupt the Department of Defense’s computers on a daily basis. So far, we are staying ahead of the problem. But just barely.”
Frank Cilluffo, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said the danger of cyberterror “is real and constant.”
“The myth persists that the United States hasn’t been invaded since 1812. I’d like to inform you otherwise. And that is the fact that invasion through cyberspace is now a daily occurrence,” Cilluffo said for Voice of America.
” . . . George Smith is skeptical that offensive military operations will work very well in cyberspace.”
“For years, Mr. Smith has been writing a newsletter on computer break-ins . . . He says Pentagon officials are overstating the danger from computer hackers and intruders.”
“Nevertheless, [Smith] expects the United States and many other nations to try to create ‘cyber-attack’ forces: ‘I think it is likely that people will try, I think it is unlikely they will have any impact.'”
“Mr. Smith says armies in Bosnia and the Gulf War faced computer problems, including viruses. He says they coped with them in much the same way they coped with flat tires on vehicles, or worn out parts on aircraft.
“[Smith] said] the idea that small groups of people, armed only with keyboards, could seriously hurt a powerful military force belongs in Hollywood — not the battlefield.”
Take time to review the entire archive. It’s the only one like it on the Internet, the only record of US (and western) cant on the then emerging subjects of cyberterrorism and cyberwar. You’ll see how the arguments have remained fantastic, self-serving and delivered for maximum scare.
There was one dissident in a House hearing entitled Cyber Attacks: An Unprecedented Threat to U.S. National Security, convened by the House subcommittee Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, Martin Libicki of the RAND Corporation.
Reporter Andrew Conte of the Albany newspaper mentions him not at all although, mysteriously, he is included in the photograph accompanying the piece cited above.
This is standard behavior in US press stories on alleged, emerging or immediate threats. Critics, even the mildest, are edited completely out of the discussion in favor of direst claims. This is the way it has been for the past decade. Occasionally someone who goes against the assembled received wisdom of calamity is brought in. But the overall trend has been to stamp out anything like that.
In the House hearing, Libicki essentially testified that government ought to be careful with the fear-mongering talk of cyberwar.
Earlier this week Martin Libicki, a senior management scientist at the RAND Corporation, warned the House Homeland Security Committee to be wary of the line between realistic projections regarding cybersecurity and fear-mongering.
“The more emphasis on the pain from a cyberattack, the greater the temptation to others to induce such pain — either to put fear into this country or goad it into a reaction that rebounds to their benefit,??? he said. “Conversely, fostering the impression that a great country can bear the pain of cyberattacks, keep calm and carry on reduces such temptation.???
Libicki argued, very briefly (he was the last to testify), for the House hearing on the “unprecedented threat” — that if a “cyber-9/11” were to occur, because it is a cyberattack the US doesn’t have to rush off and do something rash. The inference, here, being baldly obvious. It was a worthwhile issue to take up, he said.
In doing so he cited the cost of the actual 9/11 attacks, in excess of 250 billion dollars, and a further trillion in the Iraq war.
In a cyberattack is is possible to “take the time to think things through,” Libicki told the committee. “Even though a computer is taken out, another may be close at hand…”
We should not back ourselves into a corner where we always have to respond, he continued.
“In some cases the narrative must allow the attacker to back down gracefully.”
“What are the norms of conduct?” he asked.
Substantively, in creating a public impression that cyberattacks have the most extreme consequences, an expectation has been created in which the country may be compelled to respond out of proportion to the actual impact. (The House page is here. However, the reader will find that the links to the text copies of the testimony are, conveniently, 404s. The video record is more difficult sledding.)
The fear-mongers of cyberwar have now latched onto the stratagem of using monetary figures to describe the losses to Chinese espionage. Currently, their story is that such espionage has cost the United States more than the 9/11 attacks.
This left the committee in a quandary. California Republican member, Dana Rohrabacher, who took the opportunity to give a little speech [1] on the perfidy of Chinese “elites,” was discomfited by it at the end.
Rohrabacher seemed unable to completely endorse the idea that Chinese cyberwar against the United States was more damaging to the country than 9/11.
However, Greg Autry, Senior Economist for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, used the committee to launch a full frontal attack on China. (The organization has a footprint of virtually zero in the news media. And its organizational website “about” page sheds no particular light on who funds or is behind it.)
Excerpted (all errors in transcription, mine):
“[China sees] us as weak and foolish, to be controlled …
“[We] need to make sure the internet is not debased by hoodlums or nations who do not appreciate the rule of law. The Chinese government cannot think of enough things to do from the money they are earning
from the economic warfare they have been executing against the United States …
“[Their] cyberattacks against the United States are in the same financial class as the 9/11 attacks. They are costing clearly billions
and, I believe, hundreds of billions of dollars … This results in loss of life of Americans as well …
I believe that if the [Chinese military cyberwar building, PLA Unit 61398] was a segment of the Iranian Republican Guard located in Tehran, that building would be a smoldering pile of rubble before I could testify…”
Near the end of the hearing RAND’s Libicki had this to say about the financial figures.
Digested:
“I think we need a better understanding of the impact of Chinese economically-motivated espionage on the US economy. We hear a lot of numbers being thrown around. We don’t really know how they’re derived or how consistent they are with how economics works.
We are fairly confidant that terabytes of data go from the United States to China …”
“I would suggest it’s an important issue. If it’s a trillion dollar issue, we treat it one way. If it’s a billion dollar issue, we treat it another.”
Excerpts of Dana Rohrabacher’s brief speech, given to the Chinese people from the floor of the House subcommittee meeting on Cyber Attacks: An Unprecedented Threat to U.S. National Security:
“If the Chinese people are listening and to the Chinese intelligence personnel:
“What differs from what governments did in the past [with espionage]
and what is being done now … is that they are using the intelligence apparatus to enrich themselves … They are using the cyber-intelligence to enrich themselves, they have a personal motivation …
“The people of China are being cheated in that the apparatus has been set up to protect them is being used to enrich the elite and at the
same time put China into a hostile relationship with the United States … On top of that, the elite in China are using this, not to protect China,
not to make it more prosperous, but to repress their own people …
“The elite in China, their vanity and desire for more wealth and power has led China down a wrong path. I would urge those people in China …
the people of good will, to push the elite who are putting us on a path of conflict, out.”
A particularly over-the-top example, distributed everywhere by Reuters.
This “news” video creates the impression, one reinforced by its unnamed talking heads, that a cyberattack on America’s power grid would be more devastating than the worst natural catastrophe. The attack would be untraceable, would take a second and would burn out tens of thousands of transformers around the country, it is alleged. It would take months, perhaps years, to recover from it.
American civilization crippled in a second, delivered in a “news” video about two and a half minutes long.
The Reuters reporter cites as a National Academy of Science report on the power grid to bolster its case. It seems reasonable to viewers but is a case of utter mendacity, if you actually read the report.
And the report was pointed to by by Steven Aftergood of the Secrecy blog here.
At the time, I wrote:
In the aftermath of the Sandy natural disaster, it has again been made obvious to some that the electrical grid can be damaged. And that electrical power, if it is disrupted for a long enough period of time, can result in death or the serious damage to the health of citizens in our modern world, particularly if they are old, sick and dependent on technological services.
For example, from the opening pages of the report:
“If such large [theoretically terrorism-caused] outages were to occur during times of extreme weather, they could also result in hundreds or even thousands of deaths due to heat stress or extended exposure to extreme cold.???
One of the recurring memes of the Cult of Cyberwar is the insistence that the electrical grid can be disrupted with little effort by cyberattack on the infrastructure.
This pernicious meme has created the impression that catastrophically turning off the electricity in parts or all of the United States can be done by many, simply by pushing software buttons from the internet.
The NAS report has this to say on “cyber vulnerability:???
If they could gain access, hackers could manipulate SCADA systems to disrupt the flow of electricity, transmit erroneous signals to operators, block the flow of vital information, or disable protective systems. Cyber attacks are unlikely to cause extended outages, but if well coordinated they could magnify the damage of a physical attack. For example, a cascading outage would be aggravated if operators did not get the information to learn that it had started, or if protective devices were disabled.
That’s about it, essentially.
The report describes the biggest hazard to the electrical grid as physical, not digital.
Physical attacks by terrorists, which are deemed not likely but possible, could — for example — destroy critical high voltage transformers. (The physical failure of such a transformer serving New York City, by Sandy and rising water levels, was recently and repeatedly on television and preserved on YouTube.)
“Although major terrorist organizations have not attacked the US power system, such terrorist attacks have occurred elsewhere in the world,??? reads the report. “Simply turning off the power typically does not terrorize people. However, the United States should not ignore that possibility of an attack that turns off the power before staging a large conventional terrorist event, thus amplifying the latter’s consequences.???
And there you have one clear cut example of outright lying in a news piece, an exercise in which a National Academy of Science report is used to buttress an extravagant claim when the actual report did nothing of the kind. The report was about the potential consequences of grid failure, largely as the result of either natural disaster or potential terrorist plots that successfully destroy large components of infrastructure, both in the physical, not digital, realm.
Readers please take note: Who are the two unnamed talking heads in this video? DD blog wants to know.
The US national security megaplex has set up a system rife with internal contradictions. As a consequence it has no firm ground to stand on when making arguments about what is and is not appropriate conduct by other nations.
And so it is with the shoeshine of cyberwar. NSA director Keith Alexander, or General Keith Shoeshine, now slightly infamous for making the absurd claim that cyberwar against the United States constitutes “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” is a man who can only make arguments from authority.
This was on display on Tuesday of last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The chief of the military’s newly created Cyber Command told Congress on Tuesday that he is establishing 13 teams of programmers and computer experts who could carry out offensive cyberattacks on foreign nations if the United States were hit with a major attack on its own networks, the first time the Obama administration has publicly admitted to developing such weapons for use in wartime.
“I would like to be clear that this team, this defend-the-nation team, is not a defensive team,??? Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee. “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.???
General Alexander has been a major architect of the American strategy on this issue, but until Tuesday he almost always talked about it in defensive terms …
Since it was theater, no one asked a tough question.
A tough question would have been to ask our cyberwar shoeshine man why the US had created an environment in cybersecurity that was one big conflict of interest.
Last year Alexander spent a lot of time campaigning in support of cybersecurity legislation. That effort failed in Congress. But during it he lobbied for more instantaneous “information sharing” on cybersecurity threats, signatures and trouble between the government and corporate America.
However, in cyberspace the US government, in developing and unleashing malware on its enemies in the Middle East, has made a world environment where vulnerabilities are commodities and capabilities, information not to be shared because of applications in cyber-weaponry.
The history with regards to information sharing is fifteen years old.
It started with the Clinton administration where it was vigorously pursued by Clarke and assistant secretary of defense John Hamre. They argued for an exception to be added to the Freedom of Information Act, one to encourage corporate America to be forthright about its computer security intrusions, secure in the knowledge its secrets were safe from competitors and journalists armed with FOIA.
They got what they wanted. And it didn’t make a substantial difference. Subsequently, every year — between then and now — someone has always argued for ever more information sharing. Corporate America is not transparent. A frictionless system of information passage with it cannot be created.
Paradoxically, the US government has contributed to the creation of a global Internet security environment where information is not to be shared because there is value in that. Critical vulnerabilities have great worth in cyber-weapons development. This has created a gray market in which the vulnerabilities, information of zero social value, are sold at good profit.
As with discussions about cyberwar and the creation of cyber-weapons, the American government, by its actions, has cut the ground from under its feet on being in position to take the high ground, right from the start.
You can’t have operations reliant upon security information sharing and security information hoarding and develop trust. In fact, no one should trust you to do the right thing at all. It’s a natural and obvious conflict of interest.
Sorry, General Shoeshine.
Unfortunately, we have a press that gave up on pointing stuff like this out years ago. And the New York Times article on Alexander’s Congressional testimony did not mention it.
General Keith Shoeshine of the NSA believes cyberwar is causing the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.
Can you see the shaded area where cyberwar and Chinese hacking created the greatest loss of wealth in US history?
In England there are still a few people willing to call rubbish rubbish.
Cyberattacks pose more of a threat to the United States than a land-based attack by a terrorist group …
The warning by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper came in his annual report to Congress on the threats facing the United States.
“Attacks, which might involve cyber and financial weapons, can be deniable and unattributable,” Clapper said in prepared remarks before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
However, there is only a “remote chance” of a major cyberattack on the United State that would cause widespread disruptions, such as regional power outages, [the] report says
This is a worrisome facet of how the United States is entering the age of cyberconflict. President Barack Obama has signed off on a new doctrine, but it remains classified. There’s a new national intelligence estimate of cyber-espionage and its economic costs, but it remains under wraps.
From the New York Times:
It is imperative that nations come together to develop rules of engagement for cyberwar. These rules should:
• Protect a certain amount of critical infrastructure from attack;
• Declare botnets and irregular cyberforces as unlawful combatants;
• Prohibit countries from transmitting cyber-attacks through another country’s networks without permission; and
• Require countries to assist in the investigation of cyber-attacks.
Jody R. Westby is the chief executive of Global Cyber Risk, a security consulting firm, and is the chairwoman of the American Bar Association’s Privacy and Computer Crime Committee. She is a co-author of “The Quest for Cyber Peace.”
The quest for cyber-peace. Global Cyber Risk, a collection all white
upper class career lawyers, some of whom have written legal papers and books on cybercrime nobody not paid to pay attention to would.
Specialties: global business development and risk management, shoeshine.
During a recent off-the-record meeting, a senior government official warned that cyber attacks on United States in 2013 will be worse than they were in 2012, a year during which they reached a peak. (Participants were free to use what they were told, but not to disclose the names or venue).
Representatives of private corporations in the audience were told that there is not one whose computers have not been hacked. The official appealed to self interest (“you spend scores of millions on brand ‘D’ and someone else brings it to the market at a fraction of the cost, after stealing the fruits of your studies???), communitarian concerns (“don’t let your computers be used as a basis for attacking others???), and patriotism (“our systems are only one-third secure???). He pointed out that beyond stealing trade and defense secrets, computer hackers destroyed the data of the computers of Saudi Aramco, and warned that they could easily bring down our infrastructure, from the electrical grid to banking.
The White House on Monday accused China of hacking U.S. companies on an “unprecedented scale” and demanded that the attacks stop, in the administration’s most pointed public criticism yet.
National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon called on the Chinese government to recognize the urgency of this issue, investigate and stop the alleged hacking, and be part of a process to create international rules of the road for appropriate activities in cyberspace.
“Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber intrusions emanating from China on an unprecedented scale,” Mr. Donilon told the Asia Society in New York. “The international community cannot afford to tolerate such activity from any country,” he said.
One almost pities the current administration.
The Republican Party refuses to recognize the result of the November election with the result being the president cannot govern, except when it comes to these types of petty exercises in reprimanding the alleged great menaces to corporate America. And the President cannot make such a frank statement without creating an international incident.
For a corporate America that threw all its support behind the Republican Party last year.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how our cyberwar and national security shoeshine boys sleep at night, inhabiting, as they do, a world that is all moral hazard. Well, they probably either were, or became, sociopaths a long time ago.
“With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening …” reported the New York Times a week ago.
“The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.
“The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.”
Oh, the Chinese are hacking Apple and everybody else, too! It’s really working!
From the wire, news that two of the biggest arms manufacturers in then world, Lockheed and Raytheon, are in the running to furnish a private army of cybersoldiers to the government.
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are vying with telecommunications companies to defend banks and power grids from computer attacks, in a program that gives them access to classified U.S. government data on cyber threats.
President Barack Obama’s Feb. 12 cybersecurity executive order authorized the Department of Homeland Security to let new companies get the government intelligence. Obama and U.S. officials have said sharing classified threat data with companies is essential to help prevent cyber-attacks that could cause deaths oreconomic disruption …
Under the program, the companies are provided — free of charge — computer threat “signatures,??? such as timestamps and coding used in attacks, which have been obtained by the National Security Agency and other agencies. The companies can use this intelligence to strengthen cybersecurity services they sell to businesses that maintain critical infrastructure.
“The demand is there. I think the priority is there, and the threat is serious,??? Steve Hawkins, vice president of information and security solutions for Raytheon, said in an interview.
Cybersecurity Market
Defense contractors like Raytheon view cybersecurity as a growing business as Pentagon spending stalls or declines on more traditional military programs …
To defend against economic disruption. Savor that one.
The President can’t even get the minimum wage raised but there are always initiatives to give more to arms manufacturers, or all of our cyberdefenders, to stop alleged economic disruption.
It’s clear evidence, stuff only stupid people can ignore, that the US has a government and corporate national security complex that forces people into moral crisis.
It’s simple. If you work for this while the rest of the country continues to be hung out to dry, you’re part of the machinery of theft, not the opposite. Got it?
Yes, great idea of benefit to everyday Americans. Give information from the NSA, bought by taxpayers, to arms manufacturers who will sell it for profit to customers. It’s called corporate capture and it’s everywhere in the 2013 US, the model perfected when the government gave free money to too big to fail banks who then turned it around to lend to others at much higher rates of interest.
Well done, parasites! It’s good to be evil!
Believe me, a daily dose of contempt for cybersecurity shoeshiners is not nearly enough.
The drop in the unemployment rate is also not as good news as it may initially seem. The Labor Department reported that 130,000 people left the labor force in the month so they are no longer counted as unemployed. The percentage of the adult population that is employed—the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) – was unchanged at 58.6 percent. This is just 0.4 percentage points above the low hit in the summer of 2011 and is unchanged over the last year.
While the unemployment rate has fallen back by 2.3 percentage points from its peak, reversing more than 40 percent of its increase, the EPOP is still down by 4.5 percentage points from its pre-recession level. The drop in unemployment is much more the result of people giving up the search for employment and leaving the labor force than workers finding new jobs …
The other big hit to the economy will be from the sequester, which will pull roughly $80 billion in federal spending out of the economy … While the economy is not likely to fall into a recession and send the unemployment rate soaring, the economy is not growing fast enough to meet the need for jobs from a growing labor force. As a result unemployment will be going in the wrong direction for the rest of the year.
Feel free to explain in comments why our cyberwarriors shouldn’t be included in the cutbacks.
Dean Baker explains to newsmen that the only reason the unemployment rate is down is because many Americans have given up. The upper one percent and corporate America have so throttled the economy for their sole benefit labor force participation is dropping.
The U.S. unemployment rate is down, but that is because many Americans have given up looking for a job.
Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington, said Friday that the decline in U.S. labor force participation in this recent data release was “striking.???
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported unemployment fell to 7.7% from 7.9%, but the drop was at least partially attributable to a decline in labor force participation, Baker says. The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) was unchanged at 58.6 percent, exactly the same as the rate in February of 2012 and just 0.4 percentage points above the low hit in the summer of 2011. This compares with an EPOP of 63.0 percent in 2007, pre-crisis.
This is our world, the one president and the two parties made. The United States has a president who is powerless because the Republican Party has figured out — in the parlance of bdsm sexuality — how to dom from the bottom.
The GOP refuses to recognize the president was re-elected and, therefore, he cannot govern. And the government will shed more employment as a result.
The statistics are striking and merciless. They should result in more social unrest eventually. However the controlling powers and media were effective in convincing many that social unrest as a result of economic calamity is un-American.
The labor force participation percentage is just one more reason to despise our cyber-shoeshine men and the incessant talk about China stealing wealth.
The Internet is now a battlefield. China is not only militarizing cyberspace — it is also deploying its cyberwarriors against the United States and other countries to conduct corporate espionage, hack think tanks, and engage in retaliatory harassment of news organizations.
From China: Wondering what you’d comment on the [NYT/Mandiant] report.
One author [link below] says the Mandiant report on PLA is unconvincing and the timing of the report is too convenient.
Me: Yes, it’s convenient and self-serving. It was timed to maximize the current attempt to conflate espionage, which is real but longstanding, with cyberwar. [Mandiant’s] not the only company to do it. And it’s not surprising given the fact … the sequester budget knife may wind up cutting contractor cybersecurity and cyberintelligence business with the Pentagon.
The attached piece said everything I would have.
Chinese reply: To be realistic, both China and US have strong interest in cyber espionage or cyber war. But I think the US enjoys an absolute technology advantage, given the fact of the US being the center of technological innovation.
China, despite all its problems, is a sensible player in international relations. It’s impossible to imagine they are that reckless as to have an army unit working in the Shanghai building attack institutions in Washington.
Whatever, China has a concerted espionage espionage campaign, longstanding, against the US.
What’s the value? There’s the crux of it, which I wrote about a week ago.
Everyone has been propagandized on the miracles and potentials of cyberwar for so long it’s unsurprising that others want to be into our things, daily, and vice versa.
But this case, even by the low standards of shoeshine, was egregious.
Cyberwar, defined and declared by a handful of mostly private sector shoeshiners, people you’ve never heard of, our analysts and business people who depend on it. All in a few paragraphs. Have a cup of coffee and a pack of butterscotch krimpets while you read through.
“In the past month, several companies — Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and news outlets — have disclosed that their networks were hacked,” wrote the Times in the introduction. “Many of these cybersecurity breaches in the United States appear to be instigated by the Chinese military.”
China attacked Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Apple! That’s terrible!
If they stole Apple’s shit and started making it in China! Oh, wait. Bad choice. They’ll have all the inside poop on Microsoft’s new Outlook e-mail service, the thing everyone hates. Then they’ll take all Facebook’s accumulated shopping data on you so they can make a FB, or infiltrate it, fill up your feed with ads and not show your posts to your friends unless you pay up.
Well, then they’ll poison the water and cause a blackout. And don’t forget all the wealth stolen, all our many futures down the drain.
And you wonder why I hold cybersecurity experts and stories in such contempt. It’s a crime people are actually paid for it and after fifteen to twenty years, the spite is well-earned.
It’s a shame almost everyone who disagreed abandoned ship. Or maybe they had sense, I can’t decide.
The piece forwarded above, in an English language version of a Chinese News agency, Seven reasons why claims of PLA hacking fail the test.
