Continuing to my post earlier The U.S. Ready For A Cyberwar ??
Earlier this month, the Bipartisan Policy Center held a mock cyber war game in which the US came under cyber attack. By the end of the exercise, the power grid was down in much of the East Coast, telecommunications were severely disrupted and the Internet was virtually useless. The war game demonstrated some of the severe difficulties and challenges that would arise in the event of a cyber attack and helped to underscore that the US is not currently prepared to handle such an attack.
It now appears that the British are in a similar bind. According to an article in The Register, the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) has predicted that a cyber attack that caused even minor damage would prove “catastrophic” for public confidence in the government.
As use of the Internet becomes even more interconnected with daily operations, “any interruption of broadband access becomes intolerable and will have serious impacts on the the economy and public well being,” according to the CSOC. “A successful cyber attack against public services would have a catastrophic impact on public confidence in the government, even if the actual damage caused by the attack were minimal.”
The report for Whitehall is part of a report produced by the CSOC about future threats.
CYBER WARS: A PRIMER
TIMELINE
1999 NATOWeb sites are attacked from within Serbia after alliance warplanes begin bombing Yugoslavia in an effort to stop then-president Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo.
1999 China attacks a Canadian Internet service provider that had been hosting a Web site of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is outlawed by Beijing. The attacks temporarily shut down the site.
2000 The Internet sites of the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah and Hamas are attacked after three Israeli soldiers are abducted. In an apparent act of retaliation, the Israeli Knesset, ForeignMinistry, Bank of Israel and Tel Aviv Stock ExchangeWeb sites are taken down.
2005 Peru and Chile engage in hacker attacks against each other during a dispute over a fishing zone between the two countries. Targets include the Web sites of the Peruvian judiciary and Chilean National Emergency Office.
2005 Cyber attacks increase between Japan and China after a controversial visit by Japanese lawmakers to a SecondWorld War shrine.
2007 The Russian government mounts a cyber war against Estonia in apparent retaliation for Estonia's decision to relocate a SecondWorld War memorial honouring the Soviet Red Army.
0 Visitor Reactions & Comments: