The Cyber War Has Begun
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. - Carl Sagan
By now everybody has heard of the cyber attack on Sony Pictures, allegedly from North Korea in retaliation for the Seth Rogen and James Franco farce “The Interview”. The entire corporation was caught up in this including detailed and damaging information on celebrities, intellectual property, privileged corporate information, current employees and former employees. There were 10 terabytes (about 10 trillion bytes) of information that was stolen. The damage is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Information can be restored from backups and insurance is covering at least some of the losses. Sony can still do business, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Despite the news media trying to assess the damage in digital information and dollar losses, there is something much bigger going on here. I am not going to compare it to the Hindenburg, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center because no physical lives were lost. However, I think the malicious nature of this attack has shaped the composition of cyber war.
Security experts agree that there was nothing Sony could have done to mitigate this hack. The lives of those caught in the attack will forever be changed. We fell into an emotional and psychological paralysis as a result of this. There are innumerable questions that may never be answered, such as how is this information going to be ultimately used. Who is going to be getting this information? One of the most frightening is what is going to keep this from happening again?
I don’t think there is any better illustration of the psychological and emotional paralysis that has happened to us than the total abdication of leadership that occurred during this attack. Theater chains left the release decision to the theater owners, Sony left the release decision to the theater chains, and ultimately the POTUS claimed that the decision to pull the film from release by Sony Pictures was “a mistake”. This is unusual for me to say, but I think the decision by Sony Pictures was the most responsible under the circumstances and the administration from the Pentagon through the President was unprepared to respond to this attack.
Retaliation for this attack is going to be difficult, at best. North Korea has no civil internet structure so a counterattack would be useless. They are so isolated that sanctions would be ineffective. Bolstering South Korea’s military capabilities would be a somewhat mild response. About the only thing I can think of is to either beam “Team America: World Police” to every TV set in North Korea or electronically disable all of North Korea’s military defenses.
All I can imagine is that this is only the first volley in a series.