[ISN] The nation needs a clear cyber war doctrine

[InfoSec News]

http://gcn.com/articles/2009/11/30/cybereye-cyberwar-doctrine.aspx

By William Jackson
GCN.com
Nov 30, 2009

A recent study from McAfee on cyber crime and cyber warfare concluded 
that, like it or not, the world.s information infrastructures are 
becoming theaters of war, as nations develop offensive and defensive 
capabilities to wage cyber warfare.

"Cyber weapons exist, and we should expect that adversaries might use 
them," said James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy 
program at the Center for Strategic and International studies. Lewis is 
one of 2,000 national and cybersecurity experts who were interviewed for 
the study.

The threat of cyber war is not comforting, but more disturbing is the 
fact that we do not know how to use the weapons we are developing. Our 
ability to defend ourselves and to take the struggle to our enemies is 
hindered by the difficulty in understanding the sources and motives 
behind what might be considered hostile action against our networks and 
systems. Unlike attacks by conventional and nuclear military weapons, 
cyber attacks tend to be asymmetrical, remote and hidden. It is 
difficult to tell who is behind an attack and what its objective is.

It is easy to blame North Korea or China for intrusions that seem to be 
launched from computers in those countries, but the location of a 
computer or network launching an attack says little about who is behind 
it.

[...]