Cyber attack could bring US military response The United States' top commanding officer for the space and cyber domains told reporters last week that a cyber attack could merit a more conventional military response. During a press briefing on Thursday, US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, who heads the US Strategic Command, said that top Pentagon advisors would not rule …
"I don’t think you take anything off the table when you provide options to the president to decide"
General Warmonger: "Mr President, we're under cyber attack, we've traced it to this cable here from China! We could a) Unplug the cable, or b) nuke China!"
Obama: "c) Get Chang Hu, the sysadmin, to configure the firewall"
General Warmonger: "You heard the President, open fire war on Chang Hu the leader of Shanghai"
... perhaps they could try waterboarding the router..... that might work....
"I don’t think you take anything off the table when you provide options to the president to decide," said Chilton, according to Stars and Stripes. "You don’t take any response options off the table from an attack on the United States of America. Why would we constrain ourselves on how we would respond?"
Really? I mean... really!? You're a 4-Star General and you have no concept of the Rules of War: Law of Armed Conflict, Geneva Conventions, Law of Proportionality, etc. Hell, if that's the case, why haven't the US Military bombed the crap out of McKinnon yet? Surely, since constraint isn't an issue, that'd have been an appropriate response instead of seeking extradition and a trial by law?
And, yes, before anyone cares to be snide, there are SOME in the US military that believe in the Rules of War.
Posted anon because... well, piece it together.
Responding to a "cyber attack" with a physical attack is so ridiculously out of proportion, it's absurd. If the military can't figure out a way to protect their computers from "attackers", then perhaps they never should have allowed the public onto their network in the first place, you think?
The biggest problem with responding physically to a "cyber attack" is that you don't know who the real source is. In physical combat, you can physically determine who is assaulting you, so you know, beyond any doubt, who to retaliate against. On the Internet, you have literally no idea who the source of an attack is. Sure, you can make an educated guess based on their IP address. But the prevalence of botnets is proof that the direct source may not be the real source. Physically attacking the location registered to an IP address may do nothing more than eliminate an unaware middleman.
Also, it's not hard to imagine how the rest of the world would react to a seemingly unprovoked against by the US, though I suspect the US would be more subtle than sending in a bomber (though I certainly wouldn't rule that out, either).
Just imagine... People growing up during the Cold War thought THAT was scary (and I have no doubt that it was). But if you ask me, the current (and no doubt, future) state is much more scary. At least during the Cold War, you had a good idea of who the "enemy" was.
many foreign Governments, particularly the Chinese, as using their electronic equipment manufacture to insert root kits, bugs ,chips and so forth into a lot of good that are exported to Europe and Nth America. This was borne out by the finding recently of a large number of chip & pin machines in the UK that had an extra chip inserted in them at the point of manufacture in China. This meant that whenever a card was used in the machine it dialed a number in Pakistan and gave all the information. If that can happen im sure a lot, lot more does happen and is not discovered.
"This was borne out by the finding recently of a large number of chip & pin machines in the UK..."
Got some valid references for that?
"This meant that whenever a card was used in the machine it dialed a number in Pakistan and gave all the information."
Dial? Like with a modem. A number (phone) will have an owner so there is no anonymising this. I think not. And "gave all the information". All of it? What information? So the Pakistanis then give the information to the Chinese?
"In physical combat, you can physically determine who is assaulting you, so you know, beyond any doubt, who to retaliate against"
Yeah, like when an international organization of Muslim extremists run by a Saudi attacks your financial capital - you know beyond any doubt you need to retaliate against a large opium producer and a large oil producer.
Presumably what the Americans are really saying is that if they get cyber-attacked by anyone they'll use it as an excuse to continue carving the world up according to their agenda.
Locating the actual aggressor is just not part of American military policy any more. It dilutes their options to restrict themselves to only fighting just battles.
"I suspect the US would be more subtle than sending in a bomber"
We know exactly what the US would do. (a) kick up a fuss in the media (b) blame an unrelated country (c) change the rules of engagement to suit them (d) ignore the UN and (e) invade said country, with the UK's help.
keeping the option to bomb cheaky countries back to the dark ages is sensible.
@ AC "... Rules of War: Law of Armed Conflict, Geneva Conventions, Law of Proportionality ....."
There is a geneva Convention, but the rest ? 1st world military response often is proportional, but this is for political reasons, there are no rules you idiot.
They won't be banned for a month frm the war server....
So that would be the article about a criminal gang in Birmingham manually swapping Chip & Pin readers with their own altered ones and that does not mention how they get hold of the data swiped (although I would guess they swap the units back and it's stored on the dodgy unit itself)
It would also be the article which does not mention Pakistan or China?
Hint - Birmingham != Pakistan
... in 5 minutes. - Obama channeling Reagan.
"In America, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the Muslims, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muslim;
And then they came for the hackers, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a hacker;
And then... they came for me... And by that time there was no one left to speak up." - me, channeling Martin Niemöller
... is that people with narrow, national radicalistic minds, obviously with no clue of cybercriminality whatsoever, can hold functions that put them into position to make such preposterous public announcements. All we can do is hope that it is NOT up to such people to make the correcponding decisions, or even influence them.
But really, nobody can take such blurp serious, it was nothing but a unfiltered brainfart.
Apart from that:
Fully agree with Chris C
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