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Tomorrow’s WMD - neutralising intent
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| 02 February 2006 |
By Andrew Koch Contributing Strategic Editor
Washington, DC
Biogenetically engineered super viruses, deadly chemical agents specially designed to hang in the air for hours and armies of autonomously operated malicious software programmes called 'Cyber Bots', represent only a handful of potential threats that will be technologically possible within a decade, say US intelligence and defence officials.
While attacks by every type of tomorrow's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) may not kill hundreds of thousands of people, each has the ability to cause catastrophic damage and disruption, whether through the destruction of economies, infrastructure or human life.
Hacking
Cyber attacks are far from what has traditionally been considered a WMD, yet with both civilian and military infrastructures increasingly reliant on computer networks to perform even basic functions, defence experts warn that terrorist and enemy states alike will have the ability to cause massive disruption if they can hack these networks.
"I worry we are creating an Achilles heel in our military structure. As we move toward the Global Information Grid and network-centric combat, what vulnerabilities are we creating that we are not protected against?" one defence official asked.
By some accounts, the development of cyber warrior tools is already well under way, with government-sponsored hackers in countries like China and North Korea preparing for a 'digital Pearl Harbor' if push ever came to shove in a conflict with the US military.
Hackers, who many US officials believe work for the Chinese government, have launched numerous cyber attacks against US military, defence contractor and other sensitive facilities in the past few years, with the aim of pilfering information.
These attacks, called 'Titan Rain' by US investigators, are likely the product of cyber spying by the Chinese military, Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an information security research and education organisation in the US, said in December. He noted that "we have a problem that our computer networks have been terribly and deeply penetrated throughout the US ... and we've been keeping it secret".
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