The Pentagon said Tuesday that it would consider all options if the United States were hit by a cyber-attack as it develops the first military guidelines for the age of Internet warfare.<\/p>\n
President Barack Obama’s administration has been formalizing rules on cyberspace amid growing concern about the reach of hackers. Defense contractor Lockheed Martin said it repelled a major cyber-assault a week ago.<\/p>\n
The White House on May 16 unveiled an international strategy statement on cyber-security which said the United States “will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country.”<\/p>\n
“We reserve the right to use all necessary means — diplomatic, informational, military, and economic — as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests,” the strategy statement said.<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said Tuesday that the White House policy did not rule out a military response to a cyber-attack.<\/p>\n
“A response to a cyber incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response,” Lapan told reporters. “All appropriate options would be on the table if we were attacked, be it cyber.”<\/p>\n
Lapan said that the Pentagon was drawing up an accompanying cyber defense strategy which would be ready in two to three weeks.<\/p>\n
The Wall Street Journal, citing three officials who said they had seen the document, reported Tuesday that the strategy would classify major cyber-attacks as acts of war, paving the way for possible military retaliation.<\/p>\n
The newspaper said that the strategy was intended in part as a warning to foes that may try to sabotage the US electricity grid, subways or pipelines.<\/p>\n
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” it quoted a military official as saying.<\/p>\n
The newspaper said the Pentagon would likely decide whether to respond militarily to cyber-attacks based on “equivalence” — whether the attack was comparable in damage to a conventional military strike.<\/p>\n
Such a decision would also depend on whether the precise source of the attack could be determined.<\/p>\n
The US military suffered its worst cyber-attack in 2008. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn said that a malicious flash drive — likely from a foreign spy agency — spread and commandeered computers at US Central Command, which runs the war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
The attack served as a wakeup call, with the Pentagon setting up a Cyber Command and working up the doctrine for a new type of conflict.<\/p>\n
In cyber-warfare, aggressors are often mysterious and hence would not fear immediate retaliation — a key difference from traditional warfare, in which the fear of one’s own destruction is considered a deterrent.<\/p>\n
While stepping up defenses, some believe the United States may also be pursuing cyber war. Iran has accused the United States and Israel of last year launching Stuxnet, a worm that reportedly wreaked havoc on computers in the Islamic republic’s controversial nuclear program.<\/p>\n
The United States and Israel both declined to comment on Stuxnet.<\/p>\n
A study released Tuesday by the Center for a New American Society identified the United States, Britain, France, Israel, Russia and China as the leaders in cyber-offense, with Moscow and Beijing viewing cyber-attacks as an attractive option in the event of a major conflict.<\/p>\n
But while sophisticated attacks take resources, the study noted that the barriers to entering cyberspace are “extraordinarily low.”<\/p>\n
“To launch a cyber-attack today, all a person needs is a computer, which costs less than $400 in the United States, an Internet connection and limited technical knowhow,” it said.<\/p>\n
Joseph Nye, the Harvard University professor and theoretician of power, said in a paper for the report that “it makes little sense to speak of dominance in cyberspace as in sea power or air power.”<\/p>\n
“If anything, dependence on complex cyber systems for support of military and economic activities creates new vulnerabilities in large states that can be exploited by non-state actors,” he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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