The editors at Scientific American were compelled to announce that the world is at war. Some might quibble with the characterization of malicious hacking as warfare, preferring phrases such as cyberespionage or cyberconflict. But when governments, industry and individuals are under constant attack by antagonists from all corners of the globe, marauders who use the Internet to steal vital information, sabotage critical operations and recruit terrorists, this means war. It is high time for an internationally coordinated response. The first skirmish arguably took place in 2007, when online attacks against the Baltic state of Estonia took down critical government, banking and media Web sites. Suspicion soon fell on state-sponsored Russian hackers retaliating against the Estonian removal of a Soviet-era war memorial from the center of the country capital, Tallinn.
The use of proxy servers and spoofed Internet addresses to route the attacks, however, made it very difficult to trace their source, and the Russian government has denied any involvement. Subsequent international incidents have followed a similar attack-and-deny pattern. The Kremlin has never admitted to launching or sanctioning cyberattacks against Georgian media, communications and transportation companies in advance of the Russian 2008 ground war against that country. Nor has the U.S. officially taken responsibility for the Stuxnet or Duqu malware attacks on Iran from 2007 to 2011, which damaged centrifuges crucial to the nuclear program, despite reports that U.S. and Israeli programmers developed those cyberweapons. Cyberattacks have only escalated since then. The obscure, hard-to-trace origins of these assaults not only protect the guilty party (or parties) from law-enforcement agencies or retaliation, they also create paranoia that puts a strain on international diplomatic relations. Some cyberconflict is inevitable, but the establishment of international rules of online conduct would help to end it.
Original working URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/here-s-how-to-end-the-fog-of-cyber-war/
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