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Us: If You Hack Us, We May Use Military Action


Infiltrator

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By Emil Protalinski, TechSpot.com

Published: May 19, 2011, 10:00 AM EST

The US this week revealed its "International Strategy for Cyberspace" with the subtitle of "Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World" (via Ars Technica). The 30-page PDF document praises cyberspace and generally says nothing too exciting. It does, however, mention how the US government could respond to cyber-attacks, especially if someone were to pull off a serious cyberspace hack against the US, its allies, its partners, or in a way to threaten its interests.

In fact, the document says that military force is now an option. It's thus possible that the US will one day start a war in response to corporate or governmental computer systems being breached. If that sounds scary to you, that's because it is, especially if a hack isn't attributed to the correct party. Here's a relevant excerpt:

us_president_seal.jpg

When warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country. All states possess an inherent right to self-defense, and we recognize that certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners.

hat being said, this is a last resort, and other policies will be attempted before such an attack is even considered. These alternative means include diplomatic, informational, and economic. The US makes three more related declarations: it will exhaust all options before military force whenever it can, it will carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs of inaction, and it will act in a way that reflects its values and strengthens the country's legitimacy, seeking broad international support whenever possible.

It's also worth noting that the US is focusing on dissuading hackers from their motives. In other words, the cyberspace security strategy is more based on defense rather than offense. That's great to hear, because in this case we don't think the best defense is a good offense.

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43863-us-if-you-hack-us-we-may-use-military-action.html

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Does seem a worrying concept to be honest, I wonder what level of cyber-attack would push them to this? Stuxnet level you think?

In order for the USA to call in for military support, there would have to be a large scale cyber-attack like in the Die Hard 4 movie. Or something that could put the national security at immediate thread. Besides Stuxnet was only designed to attack SCADA systems in Iran, but if the worm had been designed in such a way that it could attack other systems in a large scale, like taking baking systems offline or causing other vital network systems to crush then that would been a whole different story.

I know that hasn't happened but Die Hard 4 to me was more like a wake up call to alert authorities, that cyber-attacks have evolved in a whole new sophisticated way and it needs to be addressed or else we will crash and burn.

Edited by Infiltrator
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Were talking the whole package here, then and not just SCADA systems, so basically you can look at it Die Hard 4 way really, I guess.

Power, Transport, Finance etc if all were hit at once, Die Hard4, otherwise if some were hit individually think that it would have the same effect? I'm not sure tbh......opinions?

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Were talking the whole package here, then and not just SCADA systems, so basically you can look at it Die Hard 4 way really, I guess.

Power, Transport, Finance etc if all were hit at once, Die Hard4, otherwise if some were hit individually think that it would have the same effect? I'm not sure tbh......opinions?

I agree, and I wasn't just talking about SCADA systems, I was also referring to a lot more than just that. Basically if a worm could be designed to take down a power plant system, then everything else that relies on that power plan to operate will stop functioning, "Power, Transport, Finance etc".

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