Yeah... now isn't that an interesting turn of events... Usually its the government that has to motivate its people to go to war...
But in this case, its the "people", specifically hackers, who are on the front lines and taking the battle to the "enemy", and who will ultimately need to be restrained before they commit the national government to a war, if only in cyberspace....
But then again, these are probably people who participate on the same global hacking networks, and read 2600mhz magazine in both English and Chinese....
While slightly tongue in cheek, this is a SERIOUS situation for both sides. For Bejing, this initial limited cyberwar is a means of expressing their nationalism. But what happens when Bejing becomes the target of their own hackers??
As for the US, we can't come right out and encourage illegal activity, now can we, even if it is a "counter-attack" against us?? No matter who's doing the hacking, we consider it criminal behavior and invasion of private/government IT systems. So we're at a natural disadvantage, aren't we?
But we have the ULTIMATE advantage of being the nation that operates the internet and hosting the major DNS farms. We can initiate an international firewall against all Chinese originated IP addresses (using route tracing software). Now a few would get by that firewall by spoofing the network into believing they originated from some other country, but they do that right now.. And only the hardcore, experienced hackers generally are smart enough to accomplish that.
Hawk |
