Former Head of DHS Calls for Cyber War Rules

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Onus

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A cyber attack should be considered an act of War. Trace the source, issue an ultimatum, and if it happens again, even once more, hurt them. Bad.
 

alyoshka

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Why does the world keep ending up in the Die Hard Part 4????
There is a Cyber war and it's certainly got it's rules, the only difference is that these rules aren't actually written down and signed by a senate to their own whims and fancies, it's a rule of logic and maths.....
That's the basic rule..... we ought to learn from machines we've created.....
lol
They don't kill each other.... they just put them off temporarily :)
 

KingArcher

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It not rules to follow. It's more like trying to define something that has not yet been defined. To bring about policies on how to handle such a situation and to prevent it.
 

zmbcat

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Sorry for that comment, accidently sent out some blabel:D.

Anyway, this reminds me of old star trek episode, where they came upon 2 civilizations, that agreed on fighting "virtual war", calculating the outcome of attacks by computers and then making the people who supposedly would have died, to suicide.
 

wild9

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3 consecutive spam attacks..I dunno about you guys but I can live with text verification codes for comments. These spammer's are just taking the piss now.
 

ryan156

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Most countries follow the Geneva convention to a large extent with regards wars. (Tha Falklands war between Britain and Argentina was relatively civilised it could be said, neither side harming prisoners or civilians etc.)Would not be much for most countries to agree to guidelines such as not attacking networks that'll directly endanger civilian lives (power stations that run hospitals and so on.)

However, this is more likely regarding protocol for response. What is a proportional response to a cyber attack? If a country like Iran took out a US military satellite by a computer virus what is the proportional response? Do you attack militarily or in a cyber manner?
This is the sort of debate that often had to be held during the cold war, for instance:

Fires in west Berlin, east Berlin fire brigade cross boarder to help (without being invited) Do you start a war over that?
Police come with the Fire Brigade to help with riots and looting from this fire? Red button time?
East German troops are mixed in with the Police? Now?
The troops are invited to stay by the West Berlin Government to maintain law and order (they were probably blackmailed into agreeing to approve this yet there is no proof) Button?
The troops in their usual redistributions are slowly replaced with Russian troops?

and so on and so forth
 

nottheking

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Indeed, many people don't quite understand what "rules of war" mean. They seem to think along the lines of "don't kill them TOO hard," and hence think the idea silly.

Rather, it's all about what's justified. Yes, the countries of the world (though not the terrorist organizations) do follow the rules of warfare. Soldiers are punished for murdering or raping civilians, or otherwise attacking/stealing from them. Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons aren't used. Certain groups, like the Red Cross, cannot be targetted.

Why do militaries follow this? Because they fear the retaliation should they do so. They might already be at war, but they don't suddenly want all of the world's counties against them, and all given justification to use even nukes against them; it's an unwinnable situation. It's like robbing a bank to steal money, but then having the whole army come after you.

The open question here is where cyber-warfare comes in. For those not unfamiliar with the situation, Stuxnet is a novel, unprecendented and first-of-its kind "virus" that explicitly targets and disables/destroys certain factories. It's so complex, powerful, and stealthy that it was floating around for months before it was discovered, and mutates fast to avoid detection. Chances are >99% it was developed by a military body, and it appears to specifically target Iran.

So is this virus an act of war? Is it allowable as a form of warfare? What retaliation is justifiable in response to it: merely counter-cyber attacks, limited air strikes, invasion, or nukes? These are questions that we don't have an answer to.
 

nottheking

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[citation][nom]LORD_ORION[/nom]The solution is obvious, we need enough computers to be able to take down the internet 100 times over.Worked for nukes.[/citation]
Actually, even at the height of the nuclear arms race, the USA and USSR combined could only nuke perhaps ~10% of the world's land area. (4% if you include water!) And note that such wouldn't be total destruction of said area, either; just as some buildings and people inside Hiroshima and Nagasaki survived the nukes, so would the same happen again.

[citation][nom]LORD_ORION[/nom]Oh and Jack Sparrow had it right....There is only one rule "What a man can do and can't do"[/citation]
Actually, the same can't quite apply to war once you remember that the world has more than two countries. Where would Japan have been in WW2 had they not found themselves fighting the Americans, and then later the Russians, instead of just Britain and China? Or how much harder a time would Washington have had in 1780 had Britain not been also having to fight against the Spanish, French, and Dutch at the same time as well?

The rules of war are enforced by threat of escalation. If you're invading another country, your chances of winning suddenly go to zero if everyone else declares war on you. Hence, your goal is to AVOID that happening; the rules of warfare allow for that, and thus limit what a person can do.
 

mediv42

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the article didnt say he was calling for "rules of war" in cyberwarfare, it sounded like he was calling for more rules in how we will respond to cyber attacks - how far we will go to catch perps, how they will be punished, etc. its different from rules of war
 

chickenhoagie

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if cyberwars were based around rules, there would be no cyberwar to begin with.

Hacker: well, the website uses 'https' protocol, so i guess I'm not allowed to hack it..damn.

sounds more like an oxymoron to me.
 

mrmotion

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[citation][nom]nottheking[/nom]Actually, even at the height of the nuclear arms race, the USA and USSR combined could only nuke perhaps ~10% of the world's land area. (4% if you include water!) [/citation]

78% of all statics are made up on the spot. Who cares if its only 10%? That 10% will be the most populated and important spots in the world. Not only that but that same 10% will create enough fall out to take out another 50%(yeah i pulled this number out of my ass too) of land mass.

There are rules to every war, even if you think it doesn't have any.
 
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