To the Editor:
You report that NATO leaders plan to update their collective defense policy to include a contingency for cyberattacks. The caveat of an agreement like this is that it assumes that NATO members are capable of identifying the actual source of an attack.
Leaked documents reveal classified government programs like Hacienda and corporate services like Ntrepid’s Internet Operations Network, which are leveraged to reroute network traffic and undermine digital trails. Furthermore, logistical signatures can be faked and forensic artifacts can be forged. In other words, when facing off against an organized, well-funded adversary, attribution is largely a lost cause.
Both national governments and private sector companies have made investments to ensure that this is the case. False flag attacks are as old as espionage and relatively simple to execute on the Internet.
BILL BLUNDEN
San Francisco, Sept. 1, 2014
The writer is the author of “Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation and the Malware-Industrial Complex” and “The Rootkit Arsenal.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/opinion/tracing-cyberattacks.html?_r=0
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Trouble understanding what's going on.
If proper state-funded cyber-attacks aren't traceable, then why go through this farce?
Would that mean the NATO big banding together isn't really about defence against cyber-attacks?
Does that then mean this is just about collective, large-scale surveillance of the population/s?
Don't understand 'false flag' attacks. What, they're going to make out they were attacked to justify a cyber-attack or hostility on some other government?
What I don't understand is why national governments & private sector agencies would want to reroute traffic to undermine digital trail. Unless they reroute to spy and thus undermine trail as the cost of being able to spy?
Very interesting.
*Digital Trail - lost.
*Logistical Signature - can fake.
*Forensic Artefacts - can forge.
