The next world war?

This article by Jim Melnick in the Boston Globe covers some of the salient points associated with cyberwarfare...

It is only a matter of time before the United States and other world powers begin to see the onslaught of calibrated and calculated attacks, in much the same manner as was demonstrated in Estonia.

To quote Mr. Melnick: "Though many US websites are well-protected, a massive denial of service attack could leave many commercial and other sites reeling along the lines of what occurred in Estonia, but on a larger scale. Given that more of our daily lives today depends on the Internet, financial losses could be huge and would be accompanied by a corresponding loss of consumer confidence."

The article also covers some of the issues associated with attacks on infrastructure and military and governmental institutions...

"For 10 years, the federal government's information systems and critical infrastructures have remained a "high-risk" category as assessed by the Government Accountability Office."

The worst part of the equation...as it is in so many things related to security - we have to be successful in defending ourselves 100% of the time and they (the bad guys) only have to be successful once.

Chalmer