Preview of the day after

It was acoup, because DISA is the mother of all communications organisations — its network is designed to survive nuclear holocaust. And a remarkable coup, because the theft went undetected for six months from last October, when MOD attacked DISA.

This was not a kiddie run. It was done by white-collar console cowboys from at least three countries. In an interview over the Internet, an MOD member told John Vranesevich, the most respected reporter on the computer underground, that all his colleagues work on network security for corporates.

Solid, responsible chaps, it appears, who don’t intend to do anything nasty with the programs. "At this point in time, we’d just like this to be a reminder to the US Department of Defence that we can take down their entire network from a remote location, anywhere on the earth’s surface," the MOD member told Vranesevich. The US, the originator of the Internet, is entirely aware that it can be weaponised. It runs a course at the National Defence University in Washington that turnsmilitary officers into hackers, then sets them to catch other hackers. And the Rand Corporation, which seems to have a war game for every taste, has offered the Pentagon one called "The Day After in Cyberspace". The point that Rand makes is that an aggressor –which it characterises as a Third World despot — does not need supercomputers or megahacks to cause massive destruction to another nation. He just has to concentrate on civilian targets.

In World War II, the Germans did it with the doodlebug raids on London. The Allies retaliated with the firebombing of Dresden and the airstrikes on German dams. The cyberwar version of this policy will be bloodless, but just as destructive. Here’s how it might begin, triggered by logic bombs –small, destructive programs — that can be launched from anywhere in the world and travel undetected on the Internet to their targets.

First, there are massive power outages as the computers controlling the grid crash. When you lift the phone, it’s dead, the network’s digitalswitches fried. So are television and radio services, blanking out all news. A few hours later, your world begins to work again — sort of. The TV tells you that the stock market has crashed. Concerned, you call your bank, to find that their computer records have been wiped clean. Your savings have vanished.

Rattled by the MOD raid, Janet Reno will ask Congress for $64 million to found a National Infrastructure Protection Agency. Not the sort of money that we, in the Third World, can afford to spend to protect ourselves, is it? But then, we’re safe — our transactions are still paper-based. And anyway, the Third World is expected to originate such attacks, to bristle with logic bombs. In fact, will whoever picked up my logic bomb please put it back on the table? It could go off and hit a submarine, you know.