Hi,

Since no one else bites, I will ;)

Basically my perception of what you're presenting is that it's a discussion 
starter and a reminder that the subjects are not so black or white as they have 
been appearing. Some properties of cyber appear a certain way in the current 
context, but that doesn't mean they always will under all circumstances. Some 
of it comes down to choosing priorities. There's a lot of economic forces at 
play that skews the playing field one way, but that COULD change if e.g. 
intrusions would be more frequently discovered, software makers were held 
accountable to a higher degree or some other legislation would kick in.

I'm sure you already read a lot of material on this subject before, so just to 
make a few points to get the discussion going...


*         "Carrier class expenses" - A bit of an exaggeration, yeah? But your 
point is that there are some "hidden" costs that are certainly in another 
league than e.g. the cost of buying a single 0-day.

*         'Everybody knows who did it''. Yes, you're right that it's not hard 
to figure out a prime *suspect*, but I hope you don't argue that you want the 
courts to rule on such weak evidence? Would you want to start a war on weak 
evidence then? Still, the evidence could be enough to take *some* action.

*         The kinetic vs. non-kinetic is of course also a grey scale. Yes, 
taking out computer systems can have a strong impact in the physical world. 
Media, politicians and even some infosec-people focus too much on SCADA because 
the effects are easy to understand. Effects are likely to manifest in the 
physical world even when the attack is on a countries ATMs, a warehouse or 
something like that. But when it comes down to it, a bomb is often a better 
option if you want immediate, hard-to-restore physical effects and care less 
about getting caught. When e.g. Project Cyber Dawn starts talking about Gadaffi 
planting a back door in the oil refineries to later remote control them, it 
just seem ridiculous to me.

In general, I think your presentation is a gold mine for discussion, not just 
on cyber war, but on the attack vs. defense side too. Just having the time 
difference between Phrack and MS Trustworthy Computing pointed out triggers a 
lot of thought.

/CJ

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dave Aitel
Sent: den 25 augusti 2011 21:58
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Dailydave] Cyberwar talk video

So while I did get pneumonia[1] at BlackHat, and hence was not able to prepare 
this talk as much as I'd like, I recovered enough to actually GIVE it and find 
a blackhats.com comic to include in it. I tried to channel Lewis 
C.K.<http://www.louisck.net/videos/> when giving the talk, but one can only ask 
so much: http://www.usenix.org/events/sec11/stream/aitel/index.html

Mostly I just wanted to post this here to start a thread (potentially) since I 
know at least D. Guido has basically a book to respond with, and potentially 
other people want to  chip in with heckling. :>

-dave

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