Comments on: Collateral Damage

By: Senuke Discount

Senuke Discount — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:39:40 +0000

Senuke Bonus…

[...] amazing site regarding senuke, however they dont give a discount… [...]…

By: Collateral Damage – Forget for the moment about data incursions within the DC beltway, what happens when Pakistan takes down the Internet in India? ……Cringely on technology « euraktiva

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:47:50 +0000

[...] via I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Collateral Damage – Cringely on technology. [...]

By: The Ripple Effect of Cyber Warfare | The Dev Shack

The Ripple Effect of Cyber Warfare | The Dev Shack — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:44:41 +0000

[...] countries than their own really will not change their lives that much. If you are of this belief, read the post titled Collateral Damage written by Robert X. Cringely on is blog. He lays out the ripple effect of a cyber warfare in other countries, for example a [...]

By: Jared Fordham

Jared Fordham — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:47:11 +0000

Bob is ahead of the media curve again here. Several NPR stories about Iran shutting down the Internet to muffle the opposition.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105532292
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105545361

By: Gerardo

Gerardo — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:40:42 +0000

Robert,

The Argentinians have egos that know no boundaries.

How does an Argentinian commit suicide? He just jumps off his ego.

Cheers,

Gerardo.

By: Stiennon

Stiennon — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:14:59 +0000

Remember February 24th 2008? An engineer at a Pakistani ISP re-routed all YouTube traffic to a black hole in Pakistan. Youtube disappeared for a couple of hours. But, more dramatically, Pakistan’s ‘Net connectivity collapsed under the load and eventually PCCI in Hong Kong shut all of Pakistan off.

I imagine the cyber war researchers around the world took careful note of the day Pakistan’s network succumbed to a spurious BGP route announcement.

More at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=548

By: Stiennon

Stiennon — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:06:11 +0000

The concept of destabilization you raise is a disturbing one. I f you follow the course of evolution of wars and technology they pretty much were on a hockey stick of escalation right up to the introduction of the atomic bomb. Ever since, the world has been “stable” in that the big powers have not duked it out in anything but skirmishes for regional influence.

One has to consider the effect of a cyber capability that could disable a country’s ability to launch missiles or deploy bombers. That would change the balance of power dramatically and make nuclear war possible. Not good.

One former executive of one of the big anti-virus vendors told me that his company was approached by delegations from India and Pakistan; each asking them to develop “weapons grade” viruses for them. You can imagine the types of R&D going on in those countries all with the goal of changing the balance of power in a region that you identify as holding critical assets for the rest of the world.

By: Stiennon

Stiennon — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 16:55:25 +0000

That was my first reaction. But really Cringely is taking a world view that is contrary to the current stance that Congress and the Whitehouse are taking. They seem to think that a “Cyber Czar” (or Cyber Policy Coordinator) can in some way “protect the Internets”. Of course that is ludicrous since, as Cringely points out the US does not own the Internet.

By: Gus Tarin

Gus Tarin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:13:57 +0000

Ok, that second “disastrous” should be “calamitous”

The world’s money system suddenly shuts down.

By: Gus Tarin

Gus Tarin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:12:33 +0000

Thinking about the DoD and it’s cyber vulnerabilities is one thing. What about the economic world which until recently hasn’t even been concerned about protecting itself? An attack on our military could be disastrous, but an attack on the world banking system would be disastrous.