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Supremacy of Cyber Reality
by staff report via mini - VOA Friday, Oct 12 2012, 11:42am
international / prose / post

I recall high ranking veterans of WWII, unanimously saying that the war was won and lost in the air. History seems to support this view, but today is a different world.

Future veterans could well be remembering how 21st century wars were won and lost in CYBERSPACE.

Indeed, everything of any importance is digitally dependent these days, so it stands to reason that conquering cyberspace would be equivalent to conquering the world.

Satellites are remotely vulnerable, as are many other essential services such as water, electricity/energy and emergency services.

Recently the Iranians took control of one of the most sophisticated Drones the US has produced. When skill overcomes the brute force of a superpower it becomes evident that Cyber war is truly the new deciding factor in today's conflicts.

This reality introduces a new combatant into the fray, the Stateless hacker! Any individual or group is now capable of bringing down a superpower or creating a nuclear conflict between superpowers, which was once a popular plot in older Hollywood movies. Today that dangerous fantasy has become an horrific reality.

The world has already witnessed sophisticated code, set loose in the wild, successfully infect and subvert targeted industrial machinery, including centrifuges used in nuclear facilities. Hackers are easily able to compromise most remote systems these days, though the last challenge, satellite controls, remains elusive to most hackers! Satellite systems must be constantly updated and 'hardened' to prevent compromise but it really is to no avail, everyone that controls these orbiting craft knows it's only a matter of time before they are compromised.

Our only concern is that a 'black hat' evil genius -- a few already exist -- will gain control and launch nuclear warheads from military satellites before 'white hat' hackers compromise those systems. The only consolation is that elite hackers universally despise the mass murdering, criminal USA and would likely target it before making other demands or ultimatums -- the mind boggles, but it's all too real today!

Report from VOA follows:

Panetta Appeals for Stepped Up Cyber Security

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says recent computer virus attacks on Persian Gulf oil and gas companies were "probably the most destructive cyber assault the private sector has seen."

Panetta says the so-called "Shamoon" virus rendered more than 30,000 computers useless when it hit the Saudi Arabian state oil company, ARAMCO. In some cases, the virus replaced computer files with an image of a burning U.S. flag.

The defense secretary says just days after the incident occurred two months ago, there was a similar attack on RasGas, Qatar's second biggest producer of liquefied natural gas.

Panetta commented on the attacks during a speech to business executives late Thursday as he appealed to them to support cyber security legislation that has stalled in Congress.

He told the group the U.S. was working to aggressively fight such attacks, which have the potential to cause widespread U.S. damage.

"The most destructive scenarios involve cyber actors launching several attacks on our critical infrastructure at one time in combination with a physical attack on our country. Attackers could also seek to disable or degrade critical military systems and communications networks. The collective results of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber Pearl Harbor," said Panetta.

Panetta did not say what nation he suspected was behind the sophisticated Shamoon virus. However, he did say that Iran had "undertaken a concerted effort to use cyberspace to its advantage."

He also said Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities.

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