McAfee warns of Cold War-style computer attack

The threat of warfare spreading into the digital realm is no longer just a possibility, according to a McAfee report released Tuesday.
The Santa Clara computer security firm concluded that countries like Russia, China, France, Israel and the United States have the technological capabilities to coordinate state-to-state online attacks and are quietly building their computerized arsenals.


"We believe we're seeing something a little like a cyber-Cold War, where these nations have the ability to integrate these capabilities to their military strategies but are still very hesitant to launch these attacks," said Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee. "They know the Internet is the ultimate equalizer, and there's still a great chance of a strategic attack blowing back and affecting the country that launched it."
As the digital arms race threatens to escalate, the report's authors expressed the most concern for the vulnerability of privately owned critical infrastructure, such as power grids, transportation, telecommunications, and health and financial services.
"There's considerable evidence that vulnerabilities exist," said UC Berkeley information management Professor Doug Tygar.
The report, which collects interviews from more than 20 experts in international relations, national defense and computer security, also noted that politically motivated online attacks, network infiltrations and digital espionage are on the rise.
No known computer attack has been severe or sophisticated enough to be considered an act of war, Alperovitch said, but some of the aggressions originating from nations have been testing the boundaries of what's acceptable.
During the war between Russia and Georgia over the region of South Ossetia, Georgian government and media Web sites were bombarded with denial-of-service attacks in August 2008- a common tactic in which overwhelming traffic causes a Web site to crash - started by Russian nationalists.
During the July Fourth weekend, several U.S. government Web sites temporarily went offline after they were hit by a denial-of-service attack. A few days later, a similar attack brought down several South Korean Web sites.
In late October, South Korea traced the attack back to North Korea and accused its telecommunications ministry of originating the aggression. Alperovitch said North Korea might have been trying to test its ability to disrupt communications between the United States and South Korea.
The report calls for a public discussion involving government officials, the private sector and academics with the goal of defining what constitutes computer warfare and determining what threats merit military responses.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/18/BUU81AM9R7.DTL#ixzz0XPYT3WRB