[Infowarrior] - Threat of next world war may be in cyberspace: UN

[Richard Forno]

Threat of next world war may be in cyberspace: UN
Oct 6 12:47 PM US/Eastern

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.d8b45ac8e22de08986da7ef67ae96151.431&show_article=1


"Cyber war!" flashes on the screen at an Internet security conference.  
The ...

The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN  
telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for  
action to stamp out cyber attacks.
"The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a  
catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that  
in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower," Hamadoun Toure  
said.

"Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is  
immune to cyberattack," added the secretary-general of the  
International Telecommunications Union during the ITU's Telecom World  
2009 fair in Geneva.

Toure said countries have become "critically dependent" on technology  
for commerce, finance, health care, emergency services and food  
distribution.

"The best way to win a war is to avoid it in the first place," he  
stressed.

As the Internet becomes more linked with daily lives, cyberattacks and  
crimes have also increased in frequency, experts said.

Such attacks include the use of "phishing" tools to get hold of  
passwords to commit fraud, or attempts by hackers to bring down secure  
networks.

Individual countries have started to respond by bolstering their  
defences.

US Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Thursday that  
she has received the green light to hire up to 1,000 cybersecurity  
experts to ramp up the United States' defenses against cyber threats.

South Korea has also announced plans to train 3,000 "cyber sheriffs"  
by next year to protect businesses after a spate of attacks on state  
and private websites.

Warning of the magnitude of cybercrimes and attacks, Carlos Solari,  
Alcatel-Lucent's vice-president on central quality, security and  
reliability, told a forum here that breaches in e-commerce are now  
already running to "hundreds of billions."

But one of the most prominent victims in recent years has been the  
small Baltic state of Estonia, which has staked some of its post Cold  
War development on new technology.

In 2007 a spate of cyber attacks forced the closure of government  
websites and disrupted leading businesses.

Estonian Minister for Economic Affairs and Communications Juhan Parts  
said in Geneva that "adequate international cooperation" was essential.

"Because if something happens on cyberspace... it's a border crossing  
issue. We have to have horizontal cooperation globally," he added.

To this end, several countries have joined forces in the International  
Multilateral Partnership against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), set up this  
year to "proactively track and defend against cyberthreats."

Some 37 ITU member states have signed up, while another 15 nations are  
holding advanced discussions, said the ITU.

Experts say that a major problem is that the current software and web  
infrastructure has the same weaknesses as those produced two decades  
ago.

"The real problem is that we're putting on the market software that is  
as vulnerable as it was 20 years ago," said Cristine Hoepers, general  
manager at Brazilian National Computer Emergency Response Team.

"If you see the vulnerabilities that are being exploited today, they  
are still the same," she underlined.

She suggested that professionals needed to be trained to "design  
something more resilient."

"Universities are not teaching students to think about that. We need  
to change the workforce, we need to go to the universities..., we need  
to start educating our professionals," she said.

Pointing out the infrastructure weakness, Carlos Moreira, who founded  
and runs the Swiss information security firm Wisekey, said legislation  
is needed to bring cybersecurity up to international standards.




Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published,  
broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication