Saturday, October 27, 2012

What Does An Act Of War Look Like In Cyberspace?

When Is A Cyberattack An Act Of War? -- Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post

On the night of Oct. 11, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stood inside the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, housed in a former aircraft carrier moored at a New York City pier, and let an audience of business executives in on one of the most important conversations inside the U.S. government.

He warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” evoking one of the most tragic moments in American history, when Japanese bombers unleashed a devastating surprise attack on a U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, killing 2,402 Americans and wounding 1,282 more. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy” as he asked Congress for a declaration of war.

Read more ....

My Comment:
When is a cyberattack an act of war? .... my answer is far more simpler. It is an act of war when a state actor disrupts our communications grid, crashes our financial institutions, and wrecks the infrastructure that is dependent on the web/grid.

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