Colin1
Senior Master Sergeant
The Daily Telegraph 8 May 2010
By Alex Spillius
in Washington
The United States must prepare for a full-scale cyber attack that could cause death and destruction across the country within 15 minutes, a former anti-terrorism official has warned.
Richard Clarke, an adviser to Bill Clinton and George W Bush, claimed that America's lack of preparation for the annexing of its computer system by terrorists could lead to an 'electronic Pearl Harbour'.
Mr Clarke's new book, Cyber War: The Next National Security Threat, written with Robert Knake, warns that tens of thousands of Americans could die in an attack comparable to a nuclear bomb. Yet it would take no more than 15 minutes and involve not a single terrorist or soldier setting foot in the US.
The book outlines a doomsday scenario in which the problems would start with the collapse of one of the Pentagon's computer networks. Following the attack, internet service providers would be in meltdown while chemical plants malfunctioned, releasing lethal clouds of chlorine.
Planes would collide in mid-air and underground trains crash in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. More than 150 cities would be hit by power cuts. As the chief anti-terrorism adviser to Mr Clinton and then Mr Bush, Mr Clarke issued warnings of the need for better defences against al-Qaeda and wrote about his futile campagin on the 2004 book Against All Enemies. Now he argues that a similar lack of preparation could exact a tragic price.
In part, the US has been hampered by the success of the internet and expansion of computerised networks, which have led to a hazardous degree of over-dependence. The belief in the internet as the free-wheeling epitome of American free speech has made government intrusion politically difficult, leaving the private sector particularly vulnerable to well-trained hackers.
Mr Clarke and Mr Knake believe that successive administrations, including President Obama's, have failed to get to grips with the scale of the problem.
The armed forces have yet to open the new US Cyber Command Centre amid disagreements about what role different agencies would play. At least 30 nations have created offensive cyber war capabilities which enable them to plant a variety of viruses and bugs into the key utility, military and financial systems of other states.
The authors are convinced that there will at some point be a cyber war between two nations and are concerned that such a conflict would 'lower the threshold' for a conventional war.
The US is currently far more vulnerable to cyber war than Russia, China or even North Korea, because those countries are less reliant on the internet. Britain, as a state more tolerant of government interference, is also thought to be far better prepared than its ally across the Atlantic.
"We must have the ability to turn off our connection to the internet and still be able to continue to operate" Mr Knake, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations told the The Daily Telegraph. "Relying on a system as precarious as the internet is a big mistake. It is a fundamentally insecure ecosystem that is ripe for conflict and gives countries with disadvantages in conventional weapons an asymmetrical advantage".
The US has already experienced two major cyber warning shots. Hackers from Russia or China successfully planted software in the US electricity grid that could be used to sabotage the system at a later date. In 2009, North Koreans succeeded in bringing down the servers of the Department of Homeland Security, the US Treasury and several other government departments.
Most dramatically, the attack saturated the internet connections of a Pentagon server on which military commanders would rely for logistical communications in an armed conflict.
"We need to rethink the premise that just because this took place with bits and bytes it wasn't a dangerous and destabilising action" said Mr Knake.
By Alex Spillius
in Washington
The United States must prepare for a full-scale cyber attack that could cause death and destruction across the country within 15 minutes, a former anti-terrorism official has warned.
Richard Clarke, an adviser to Bill Clinton and George W Bush, claimed that America's lack of preparation for the annexing of its computer system by terrorists could lead to an 'electronic Pearl Harbour'.
Mr Clarke's new book, Cyber War: The Next National Security Threat, written with Robert Knake, warns that tens of thousands of Americans could die in an attack comparable to a nuclear bomb. Yet it would take no more than 15 minutes and involve not a single terrorist or soldier setting foot in the US.
The book outlines a doomsday scenario in which the problems would start with the collapse of one of the Pentagon's computer networks. Following the attack, internet service providers would be in meltdown while chemical plants malfunctioned, releasing lethal clouds of chlorine.
Planes would collide in mid-air and underground trains crash in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. More than 150 cities would be hit by power cuts. As the chief anti-terrorism adviser to Mr Clinton and then Mr Bush, Mr Clarke issued warnings of the need for better defences against al-Qaeda and wrote about his futile campagin on the 2004 book Against All Enemies. Now he argues that a similar lack of preparation could exact a tragic price.
In part, the US has been hampered by the success of the internet and expansion of computerised networks, which have led to a hazardous degree of over-dependence. The belief in the internet as the free-wheeling epitome of American free speech has made government intrusion politically difficult, leaving the private sector particularly vulnerable to well-trained hackers.
Mr Clarke and Mr Knake believe that successive administrations, including President Obama's, have failed to get to grips with the scale of the problem.
The armed forces have yet to open the new US Cyber Command Centre amid disagreements about what role different agencies would play. At least 30 nations have created offensive cyber war capabilities which enable them to plant a variety of viruses and bugs into the key utility, military and financial systems of other states.
The authors are convinced that there will at some point be a cyber war between two nations and are concerned that such a conflict would 'lower the threshold' for a conventional war.
The US is currently far more vulnerable to cyber war than Russia, China or even North Korea, because those countries are less reliant on the internet. Britain, as a state more tolerant of government interference, is also thought to be far better prepared than its ally across the Atlantic.
"We must have the ability to turn off our connection to the internet and still be able to continue to operate" Mr Knake, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations told the The Daily Telegraph. "Relying on a system as precarious as the internet is a big mistake. It is a fundamentally insecure ecosystem that is ripe for conflict and gives countries with disadvantages in conventional weapons an asymmetrical advantage".
The US has already experienced two major cyber warning shots. Hackers from Russia or China successfully planted software in the US electricity grid that could be used to sabotage the system at a later date. In 2009, North Koreans succeeded in bringing down the servers of the Department of Homeland Security, the US Treasury and several other government departments.
Most dramatically, the attack saturated the internet connections of a Pentagon server on which military commanders would rely for logistical communications in an armed conflict.
"We need to rethink the premise that just because this took place with bits and bytes it wasn't a dangerous and destabilising action" said Mr Knake.
