CERIAS Weblogs » Cyberwar

Prof. Eugene Spafford

Eugene H. Spafford is one of the most senior and recognized leaders in the field of computing. He has an on-going record of accomplishment as an advisor and consultant on issues of security, cybercrime and policy to a number of major companies, law enforcement organizations, and government agencies, including Microsoft, Intel, Unisys, the US Air Force, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Energy, and two Presidents of the United States. At Purdue, Spaf (as he is generally known) is a professor of Computer Sciences, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (courtesy), a professor of Philosophy (courtesy), a professor of Communication (courtesy), and Executive Director of the Purdue University Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).

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August 24th, 2007 by Spaf in General, Kudos, Opinions and Rants, Reviews

I am frequently asked about the likelihood of cyber war or cyber terrorism. I’m skeptical of either being a stand-alone threat, as neither is likely to serve the goals of those who would actually wage warfare or commit terrorism.

The incidents in Estonia earlier this year were quite newsworthy and brought more people out claiming it was cyber terrorism or cyber warfare. Nonsense! It wasn’t terrorism, because it didn’t terrorize anyone — although it did annoy the heck out of many. And as far as warfare goes, nothing was accomplished politically, and the “other side” was never even formally identified.

Basically, in Estonia there was a massive outbreak of cyber vandalism and cyber crime.

Carolyn Duffy Marsan did a nice piece in Network World on this topic. She interviewed a number of people, and wrote it up clearly. I especially like it because she quoted me correctly! You can check out the article here: How close is World War 3.0? - Network World. I think it represents the situation quite appropriately.

[As a humorous aside, I happened to do a search on the Network World site to see if another interview had appeared without me hearing about it. I found this item that had appeared in December of 2006 and I didn't know about it until now! Darn, and to think I could have started recruiting minions in January. :-)]

Tags for this post: cyber crime, cyber terrorism, cyber warfare, Estonia

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One Response to “Cyberwar”

Sicurezza, ICT ed altro » Blog Archive » Cyberwar e riflessioni sull’Estonia Says:
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:36 am
[...] le analisi “post mortem” degli attacchi in Estonia (vedi ad esempio qui, qui, qui e qui). A bocce ferme naturalmente è abbastanza evidente che quanto è successo non si [...]