Tag: Cybersecurity

Review – Cybersecurity and Cyberwar

National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photo: National Security Agency/Wikimedia Commons.

Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
By: P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014

The year 2013 saw a number of headline news stories featuring a variety of different actors and sectors, but all with their roots in the same place: the cyber world. Edward Snowden disclosed a series of classified NSA documents detailing the United States’ global surveillance apparatus, including Internet surveillance programs like PRISM. The US federal government launched the website healthcare.gov to facilitate enrollment in health care exchanges, and an acting assistant secretary of Homeland Security testified before congress in November that the site experienced a series of attempted hacks. Conspirators who hacked into the systems of Nasdaq, Visa, and J.C. Penney and other major companies were subsequently charged in relation to a $45 million bank heist that involved stolen account information. A group supporting Syria’s Assad regime hacked the Associated Press’ Twitter account, tweeting (falsely) that President Obama had been injured in White House explosions. And a report released by the US government reported that China’s People’s Liberation Army had carried out cyber attacks on US corporations.

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EU Cybersecurity Policy: A Model for Global Governance

Image by br1dotcom/Flickr.

While only 6 percent of all cyber incidents reported in 2011 were perpetrated with malicious intentions, there is still an important vacuum of data regarding cybercrimes. In this context, the European Union (EU) established the European Cybercrime Centre in January as part of the Europol. This important event raises the question of the effectiveness of the instruments established by the European Union to address cybersecurity. The mode of governance developed by the European Union is coherent and comprehensive but now the international community must support and adopt this model for it to be effective.

The European Union has structured its mode of governance around three pillars that parallel the economic and social opportunities of the Internet and both categories of cyber threats: cybercrimes, such as online bank robbery, and attacks on critical infrastructures through the development of online viruses, such as Flame and Stuxnet that were used to break down Iranian nuclear facilities.

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A Maligned Law to Protect the Philippines from Cybercrime

Photo: trick77/flickr

The majority of Filipino internet users and media groups opposed the passage of the Philippine Cybercrime Law because of provisions that potentially curtail media freedom and other civil liberties. But prior to the insertion of online libel and other last minute amendments, the bill was actually quietly supported by many people.

In fact, it remains popular among business groups, computer security experts, and advocates of safe cyberspace, even after the Supreme Court issued an order to suspend its implementation for the next 120 days.

The Department of Justice – the main agency in charge of implementing the law – insists that the measure is necessary to stop global cybercrimes:

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Kyrgyz Secret Police to Monitor Web

Bits, bytes, and cyberspace
How secure is the Kyrgyz cyberspace? Photo: University of Maryland Press Releases/flickr.

Observers have questioned the need for Kyrgyzstan’s security service to monitor websites to identify hate speech.

The State Committee for National Security, or GKNB, is setting up a system to monitor the internet, with a particular focus on news sites with the .kg domain name, and plans to launch it in early autumn.

Using a web search engine that looks for certain words or phrases, the agency will seek to identify content liable to incite hatred on grounds of ethnicity, religion and even regional origin, in the wake of the ethnic violence that rocked southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010.

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Cyber War and Peace

Survival in the digital age
Cyber security is becoming increasingly important for governments (Photo: TTC Press Images/flickr)

CAMBRIDGE – Two years ago, a piece of faulty computer code infected Iran’s nuclear program and destroyed many of the centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Some observers declared this apparent sabotage to be the harbinger of a new form of warfare, and United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned Americans of the danger of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” attack on the US. But what do we really know about cyber conflict?

The cyber domain of computers and related electronic activities is a complex man-made environment, and human adversaries are purposeful and intelligent. Mountains and oceans are hard to move, but portions of cyberspace can be turned on and off by throwing a switch. It is far cheaper and quicker to move electrons across the globe than to move large ships long distances.

The costs of developing those vessels – multiple carrier task forces and submarine fleets – create enormous barriers to entry, enabling US naval dominance. But the barriers to entry in the cyber domain are so low that non-state actors and small states can play a significant role at low cost.

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