Latest Developments in the Ongoing, Global, Cyber-war

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — CNN was targeted Thursday by attempts to interrupt its news Web site, resulting in countermeasures that caused the service to be slow or unavailable to some users in limited areas of Asia…more

In a related story; www.news.com — Late Friday, leaders of the Revenge of the Flame called off a planned denial-of-service attack on CNN.com, according to The Dark Visitor, a Web site that follows Chinese computer hacker activity.

However, early Saturday morning, a post on The Dark Visitor contained detailed plans for various Revenge of the Flame participants, as though the attack were continuing.

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Wallace Reid’s opinion;

Cyber-attacks on commercial web-sites are becoming more frequent, as experts struggle to keep pace with their rapidly evolving virulent underworld nemesis. More than just extortion schemes, some recent attacks are politically motivated. So, what are our politicians, and cyber-cops doing about this escalating war on Internet?

From; The Council on Foreign Relations Evolution of Cyber Warfare;

In his annual threat assessment to Congress delivered in February 2008, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell discussed “cyber threats” before talking about the war in Afghanistan.

In that threat assessment, Michael McConnell is quoted;

“Our information infrastructure …increasingly is being targeted for exploitation and potentially for disruption or destruction by a growing array of state and non-state adversaries,” McConnell said.

Recently, the Air Force announced ( pdf ) a major effort to combat threats to American interests. So it would seem the Bush Administration is aware of the problem, but not yet able to prevent attacks fully.

Last January, Defense Tech.org introduced Lt Gen Robert Elder Jr. as the leader of the Air Force’s (AFCYBER) Cyber Command. The U.S. Air Force is currently training 40,000 Cyber Warriors, but how does that combat irregular assaults like the one against CNN? And there have been larger assaults lately, against entire nations. Can the Air Force defend?

Last year in Estonia, some of the best minds gathered to repair the damage done to that nations Internet service. Estonia, one of the most ‘wired’ communities in the world was forced to shut down all Internet traffic for days. Patrik Fältström from Sweden and Bill Woodcock from the US joined Hillar Aarelaid (  head of the Estonian computer emergency response team – CERT ) and Kurtis Lindqvist ( in charge of running Stockholm-based Netnod ) to identify, and neutralize that Denial of Service assault.

There are folks that know what to do, but are they able to work with Internet Providers and Web-site administrators effectively? Are some web-sites deliberately provoking the crooks, and dissidents that spearhead these assaults, and why?

Some nations view the Internet as a threat to their culture, and have gone as far as to block major web-sites connections. Indonesia recently blocked youtube, as Pakistan also did last year. When Indonesians, found other sites that hosted the material that was offensive to many in that country, other citizens found other hosts that had published the same material. And those other hosts, such as Multiply.com were promptly blocked.

While overt attacks are criminal, or sometimes a terroristic form of war-fare, passive efforts of censorship by governments may be aiding and abetting this new underworld.

Wallace Reid’s Confluence is currently research this aspect of Cyber-war; What nations host cyber crime, and cyber terrorism?