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more on The first cyberterrorism?
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 18:41:39 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker () brandenburg com> Organization: Brandenburg InternetWorking Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 15:41:18 -0600 To: John Adams <jadams01 () sprynet com> Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [IP] The first cyberterrorism? John, Some other folks were not clear about the meaning of my note. I decided to wait to respond, to let the initial heat of reaction die down. Let me begin by noting that the word 'terrorism' is understandably loaded with emotion. It also is used in different ways by different people. So the idea that one might claim that the U.S. effort could qualify as cyberterrorism definitely runs the risk of being misunderstood. The intent was merely to consider the question of taking hostile, debilitating action against a formal adversary, by using the Internet. That, at least, was what I took from the earlier claim that there had been no known examples of cyberterrorism. The campaign by the U.S. effectively constituted a denial of service attack on Iraq. That's pretty formal and it was clearly debilitating. Massive email spam are often referenced as denial of service attacks, so application of that label in this case is not even slightly innovative. In fact, there are cases of individual traffic flows going for months and consuming large percentages of a recipient network's bandwidth. Yes, one might say that the choice to turn off Iraq's email servers and other Internet access were it's choice and not really caused by the U.S. However, that does not alter the facts that a) the attack was mounted by the U.S. government and b) the result was termination Iraq's Internet service. d/
-----Original Message----- From: John Adams <jadams01 () sprynet com> To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] The first cyberterrorism? Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 15:27:56 -0500
I suppose that, formally, such an act of aggression by a state is classed as warfare, rather than terrorism. However it is directed at the civilian population, and it is crippling their infrastructure, so the technical aspects of cyberterrorism are probably the same.
I started to write an indignant reply and then realized I had no idea whether the writer meant to say this was cyberterrorism on the part of the Iraqi government or the U.S. government.
Which is it? Any opinions?
d/ -- Dave <mailto:dcrocker () brandenburg com> Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com> t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850 ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To unsubscribe or update your address, click http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on The first cyberterrorism? Dave Farber (Jan 25)