Destroying the US is easier than many people think.
As it turned out, the country that has accumulated mountains of nuclear and ordinary weapons, absolutely not ready for cyber war
The American nonprofit organization Bipartisan Policy Center conducted an experiment and tried to find out: what would happen if hackers around the world unleashed a large-scale cyberwar against the US? Exercises were held under the name “Shocking Cyberwave”, which clearly showed that the country is absolutely unprotected.
In the case of massive attacks by hackers from abroad, the infrastructure of wired telephone and wireless mobile communications, as well as the power supply system can simply fail, which paralyzes the normal functioning of the entire economy of the country overnight.
A training simulation of the cyberwar was conducted from the 230 computers of the experiment participants. All of these people are employees of defense departments, security agencies, private security companies, and public associations. Already from the first training, problems emerged: the state servers responsible for the country's power supply “lay down” after the most usual hacker attack.
During the exercise, two scenarios were worked out: first, mobile software began to distribute virus programs between phones, which began to actively infect each other. As a result, entire clusters of mobile networks collapsed under load. But why did the country's power grids stop working, analysts have yet to figure out.
A simulation of a real war on the Internet has shown: in the event of a competent attack, 40 million Americans in the east of the United States can be without electricity after only half an hour. In another hour, 60 million mobile subscribers will discover that their phones have turned into ordinary plastic key chains that are not capable of anything. In a couple of hours, the financial center of the world, Wall Street, will be paralyzed.
The participants in the experiment checked at the same time how prepared for crisis situations presidential advisers on security, who should respond promptly to attacks. Alas, the officials let us down. During the experiment, they simply fell into a stupor, especially after the "attacks" on the computers of the Pentagon and the US government services began.
Separate experiments have shown that and news US agencies are not able to quickly and accurately describe the events that will occur after cyberattacks, which indicates that there are practically no journalists in the country who can understand everything that happens in cyberspace and give adequate advice to the population.
The experiment's organizers warned that most such attacks are not carried out directly from abroad, but indirectly: first, computers of ordinary users, law-abiding citizens of the country, are infected, and from here the server, for example, the Pentagon, is attacked. At the same time, the owners of the computers themselves do not realize that.
But the biggest problem that was revealed in the Bipartisan Policy Center is the lack of legislation that would punish the distributors of malware. To put it simply, authors and distributors of mobile phone viruses in the US cannot be punished in a court of law.
Earlier it seemed that it was rather difficult to hack power grids, infrastructure of telecom operators, computer networks of economic, political and military departments of the USA - the systems are well protected from attacks, especially from computers of ordinary people. But the massive proliferation of mobile Internet and smartphones such as the Apple iPhone radically changes things, experts say.
At the end of the experiment, US National Security Secretary Michael Chertoff admitted that his state was absolutely not protected from the cyber threats of the modern world and promised that the state would soon take all measures to ensure its own security. At the same time, he stressed that in recent years the number of attacks on the United States from abroad is constantly growing - first of all, at the expense of China and the Muslim world, offended by the foreign policy of the United States.
“For this, Americans should say“ thank you ”to ex-President George W. Bush, says Michael Chertoff. - We recognize that not seriously prepared for possible threats from the virtual space. We are very vulnerable. Therefore, in the near future, we will take a number of legislative and military initiatives to restore order in this area and increase our defense capability in the event of computer attacks ...
The conclusion that was made in the Bipartisan Policy Center fit into the 43-second video, located on their website. It states:
“Over the past 10 years, cyber attacks have disabled the country's government and commercial sites. It did enormous damage to the US economy. It is about billions of dollars. When Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008, the Georgian government sites were hit first. January 2010 was marked by the fact that Chinese hackers stole information from Google and 30 from other major American and international companies. Who will get hit next time? .. ”
... The value of hackers in the modern world, meanwhile, continues to grow. The Washington Post newspaper writes that in January 2010, the largest massive hacker attack was revealed in stories Internet: 75 affected thousands of computer systems in 196 countries of the world. In the US, 2500 companies have been its victims.
In the course of smart attacks, hackers stole confidential information about credit card transactions, and were also interested in the service logins and passwords of defense and scientific departments of different countries. Experts believe that the criminal group that organized all this is physically located in Eastern Europe ...
Larry Clinton, president of ISA, an Internet security company, comments on the exercises and their results:
- The problem is really huge, and these teachings are not PR. Talk about the fact that we can seriously suffer from the generalized internetization of society, has been going on since the days of President Clinton. The problem is, and the further it goes, the deeper it is and you should not wait for its quick solution. Taking a couple of legislative initiatives or allocating millions of dollars is not able to solve it overnight. When it comes to cyber security, all economic incentives work on attackers: attacking servers is much cheaper than protecting them. Therefore, the attacks will continue. Another thing is fair to note: the rest of the countries also look unprotected, and even more so than the United States. So the most correct strategy in the event that something like this happens is to kick back ...
The American nonprofit organization Bipartisan Policy Center conducted an experiment and tried to find out: what would happen if hackers around the world unleashed a large-scale cyberwar against the US? Exercises were held under the name “Shocking Cyberwave”, which clearly showed that the country is absolutely unprotected.
In the case of massive attacks by hackers from abroad, the infrastructure of wired telephone and wireless mobile communications, as well as the power supply system can simply fail, which paralyzes the normal functioning of the entire economy of the country overnight.
A training simulation of the cyberwar was conducted from the 230 computers of the experiment participants. All of these people are employees of defense departments, security agencies, private security companies, and public associations. Already from the first training, problems emerged: the state servers responsible for the country's power supply “lay down” after the most usual hacker attack.
During the exercise, two scenarios were worked out: first, mobile software began to distribute virus programs between phones, which began to actively infect each other. As a result, entire clusters of mobile networks collapsed under load. But why did the country's power grids stop working, analysts have yet to figure out.
A simulation of a real war on the Internet has shown: in the event of a competent attack, 40 million Americans in the east of the United States can be without electricity after only half an hour. In another hour, 60 million mobile subscribers will discover that their phones have turned into ordinary plastic key chains that are not capable of anything. In a couple of hours, the financial center of the world, Wall Street, will be paralyzed.
The participants in the experiment checked at the same time how prepared for crisis situations presidential advisers on security, who should respond promptly to attacks. Alas, the officials let us down. During the experiment, they simply fell into a stupor, especially after the "attacks" on the computers of the Pentagon and the US government services began.
Separate experiments have shown that and news US agencies are not able to quickly and accurately describe the events that will occur after cyberattacks, which indicates that there are practically no journalists in the country who can understand everything that happens in cyberspace and give adequate advice to the population.
The experiment's organizers warned that most such attacks are not carried out directly from abroad, but indirectly: first, computers of ordinary users, law-abiding citizens of the country, are infected, and from here the server, for example, the Pentagon, is attacked. At the same time, the owners of the computers themselves do not realize that.
But the biggest problem that was revealed in the Bipartisan Policy Center is the lack of legislation that would punish the distributors of malware. To put it simply, authors and distributors of mobile phone viruses in the US cannot be punished in a court of law.
Earlier it seemed that it was rather difficult to hack power grids, infrastructure of telecom operators, computer networks of economic, political and military departments of the USA - the systems are well protected from attacks, especially from computers of ordinary people. But the massive proliferation of mobile Internet and smartphones such as the Apple iPhone radically changes things, experts say.
At the end of the experiment, US National Security Secretary Michael Chertoff admitted that his state was absolutely not protected from the cyber threats of the modern world and promised that the state would soon take all measures to ensure its own security. At the same time, he stressed that in recent years the number of attacks on the United States from abroad is constantly growing - first of all, at the expense of China and the Muslim world, offended by the foreign policy of the United States.
“For this, Americans should say“ thank you ”to ex-President George W. Bush, says Michael Chertoff. - We recognize that not seriously prepared for possible threats from the virtual space. We are very vulnerable. Therefore, in the near future, we will take a number of legislative and military initiatives to restore order in this area and increase our defense capability in the event of computer attacks ...
The conclusion that was made in the Bipartisan Policy Center fit into the 43-second video, located on their website. It states:
“Over the past 10 years, cyber attacks have disabled the country's government and commercial sites. It did enormous damage to the US economy. It is about billions of dollars. When Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008, the Georgian government sites were hit first. January 2010 was marked by the fact that Chinese hackers stole information from Google and 30 from other major American and international companies. Who will get hit next time? .. ”
... The value of hackers in the modern world, meanwhile, continues to grow. The Washington Post newspaper writes that in January 2010, the largest massive hacker attack was revealed in stories Internet: 75 affected thousands of computer systems in 196 countries of the world. In the US, 2500 companies have been its victims.
In the course of smart attacks, hackers stole confidential information about credit card transactions, and were also interested in the service logins and passwords of defense and scientific departments of different countries. Experts believe that the criminal group that organized all this is physically located in Eastern Europe ...
Larry Clinton, president of ISA, an Internet security company, comments on the exercises and their results:
- The problem is really huge, and these teachings are not PR. Talk about the fact that we can seriously suffer from the generalized internetization of society, has been going on since the days of President Clinton. The problem is, and the further it goes, the deeper it is and you should not wait for its quick solution. Taking a couple of legislative initiatives or allocating millions of dollars is not able to solve it overnight. When it comes to cyber security, all economic incentives work on attackers: attacking servers is much cheaper than protecting them. Therefore, the attacks will continue. Another thing is fair to note: the rest of the countries also look unprotected, and even more so than the United States. So the most correct strategy in the event that something like this happens is to kick back ...
Information