On August 23rd, 2011, Peter Feaver wrote for Foreign Policy on how the theft of massive quantities of information through cyberattacks is a national security concern. A common theme in recent cybernews is China's systematic efforts to steal military secrets, intellectual property, and other information of special value to the regime. This loss of information is even more concerning because the true magnitude of the problem has likely been concealed from the general public. Weaver goes on to parse the threat by listing seven types of cybertheft in order of their national security impact. As one descends the list, you'll find that Weaver views intellectual property theft, physical theft that deprives an owner of information ownership, and theft committed to degrade a political adversary (i.e. theft of an adversary's military technology) as the most worrisome types of cybertheft. Weaver concludes that as cybertheft increasingly falls into these later categories, they increasingly represent a national security threat.
In related news, BBC reported on October 31st, 2011, on how the UK has been subjected to a disturbing amount of cyberattacks. These cyberattacks have targeted sensitive data on government computers, defense information, technology information, and engineering firms' designs. This information is targeted to gain commercial advantage and to profit from secret knowledge of contractual arrangements.
Finally, Happy Halloween! In the spirit, ZDNet is sponsoring 'Kill a Zombie' for Halloween. The campaign seeks to destroy botnets and "kill" zombie computers by encouraging people to perform virus scans, keep their operation systems up to date, and run firewalls.
Now enjoy the best kind of Halloween picture…a public domain one!
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The Weaver Foreign Policy article can be found here.
The BBC article can be found here.
The ZDNet link can be found here.
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