Thursday, August 08, 2013

Vanity Fair article on Cyber Wars

Silent War long article about cyer wars maily between USA and Iran "Fundamentally, cyber-warfare is a story about proliferation. Iran’s nuclear program crossed a line that Israel and the U.S. deemed unacceptable, so the U.S. and its allies used a secret new weapon to try to stop it. With Stuxnet becoming public, the U.S. effectively legitimized the use of cyber-attacks outside the context of overt military conflict. Stuxnet also appears to have emboldened Iran to mount attacks on targets of its choosing. One former government official says, “What did we anticipate that Iran’s reaction [to Stuxnet] was going to be? I bet it wasn’t going after Saudi aramco.”
The paradox is that the nuclear weapons whose development the U.S. has sought to control are very difficult to make, and their use has been limited—for nearly seven decades—by obvious deterrents. In the years since August 1945, a nuclear weapon has never been used in war. Cyber-weapons, by contrast, are easy to make, and their potential use is limited by no obvious deterrents. In seeking to escape a known danger, the U.S. may have hastened the development of a greater one."
It seems that many countries will develop capabilities similar to that of NSA of US and more local internet systems will develop.

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