{"id":10583,"date":"2013-11-07T13:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T02:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=10583"},"modified":"2013-11-08T11:27:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T00:27:10","slug":"a-cyber-pearl-harbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-cyber-pearl-harbor\/","title":{"rendered":"A cyber Pearl Harbor?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Discussion of a cyberattack of such gravity to be considered a new Pearl Harbor<\/a> or even a 9\/11 moment<\/a> is now almost clich\u00e9d.<\/p>\n For example, in early 2011, then CIA chief Leon Panetta warned the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence<\/a> that the\u00a0next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyberattack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems.<\/p>\n A response to this threat has been the development of offensive as well as defensive cyber capabilities. The US has a \u00a0large Government cyber security construct across civil and military agencies, including US Cyber Command\u2019s Cyber National Mission Forces who, under the leaked US Cyber Operations Policy<\/a>, \u00a0have the authority to \u2018defend the nation\u2019 using both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. In September, UK Secretary of state for Defence Phillip Hammond announced that the UK will pursue the development of its own offensive cyber capabilities<\/a> to deter would-be attackers, and supplement conventional strike, capabilities as part of a \u00a3500 million expansion of military cyber personnel (at a time of deep cuts to UK defence expenditure). While not wanting to add more hyperbole to an already overheated discussion, a possible outcome of developments like this is something of a cyber ‘arms race’, as offensive capabilities solely developed as a deterrent to such an attack would also function as strike capabilities in their own right.<\/p>\n However, for most\u2014if not all\u2014countries, the concept of a \u2018cyber Pearl Harbor’ isn’t a credible threat, being likely only as the opening moves of a major war\u2014a situation few states are likely to face in the near term. And this kind of attack would be a tall order. To cripple critical infrastructure such as a power grid using cyber means, an attacker must covertly enter the network, map it to identify vulnerabilities, and develop malicious tools to subvert its control system\/s. To conduct an attack on the scale of Panetta\u2019s cyber Pearl Harbor, the attacker must do this on numerous networks, and then maintain access for long periods, possibly many years, across numerous diverse targets and likely in many countries. According to US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, even the US considers the risk of such an event out to 2015 to be low<\/a>.<\/p>\n