The coming cyber wars...

 

 

"If it is war they want, it is war they will get. They only problem is everyone will lose..."

Some think the North Koreans have fired the first shot in a cyber war. That what happened to Sony was the first battle on a new front. Sorry, it was not. Cyber "probing" has been going on for quite a while now. Probing is testing systems, looking for vulnerabilities, and maybe even planting a dormant virus which given the right command, could be very destructive.

What we are seeing now is the new battle arena. It is everywhere and will affect just about everything. Very few things or services will be immune. The effects of a cyber attack can range from nuisance, to financial chaos, to life threatening. The sophistication of today's code is absolutely mind boggling. It is measures, counter measures, counter-counter measures and on and on. In many cases, it is computers against computers. This new battle zone is looking more like the future portrayed in War Games or the Terminator series. It is where the computers take over, and life gets very, very tough.

Are we vulnerable? Absolutely. Are we trying to install the correct counter measures? Constantly. Can we launch a vicious attack or counter attack? You bet. The problem with an all out cyber war is simply this - everyone will lose. Think for a minute if some country was able to infuse a destructive code in some or all of our antiquated electrical grid. Suppose it was January, and took a month to restore service to everyone. The death toll would be staggering. All because of implanted code somewhere in the data stream.

Imagine waking up in the morning and finding out you have zero dollars in your bank account. Not just you, but everyone who is customer at that bank. The code not only infected the main data stream, but also got through the firewall and infected the mirror sites as well as the cloud. Everything is gone. Think of the mess it would create in the financial market. The stock market would tank. It would be a financial chaos of the highest order.

Am I concerned over this? Yes. This should be a concern for everybody. I don't know what safeguards Sony has on their data, but a Third World country like North Korea just came in and stripped them naked. Everything was exposed. E-mails, contracts, unreleased movies, everything. It was mind numbing to see the extent of the intrusion.

I hope this country is prepared for the future of data and potential data breaches. As bad as we all think this could become, I am afraid an all out war will be much worse. It will be a war nobody will win and all would lose.