http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/15692/151/
'Wiki' versus 'Wonkie' <http://www.hstoday.us/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15692&pop= 1&page=0&Itemid=151> Print by David Silverberg Thursday, 09 December 2010 A cyber insurgency breaks out over Wikileaks The cyber fight over the Wikileaks site shows the true face of the new cyber warfare. While US government authorities and the military have been preparing for a state-to-state cyber assault that merely uses digits and electrons to conduct an otherwise conventional conflict, in fact the new cyber warfare is assymetrical and an entirely new kind of conflict that has to be conceived and perceived in new and different ways. What we have in the battle over Wikileaks is not so much an assault as an insurrection. Our existing institutions are attempting to shut down the site, while its defenders and "hacktivists" wage both a defensive and retaliatory effort on its behalf. As in any insurrection the enemy is elusive, agile and pursuing his aims without a clearly defined or identifiable command that can be destroyed. It's frustrating and painful to the conventional power and so it is intended to be. Back in October at the annual conference of the National Homeland Defense Foundation conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., Winn Schwartau, a longtime digital theorist, suggested that the militia model might be the right one for cyber defense. He was quickly dismissed by another panelist who worried about the messiness of such an unstructured and potentially dangerous rabble taking cyber defense into its own hands. On the contrary, most of the conference consisted of a tedious effort by conventional military institutions and thinkers to come to grips with what was already a clearly unconventional phenomenon. Well, now the war is underway. It's really a war of the "wiki" versus the "wonkie;" the "wiki" being the insurrectionist mob that's storming the wonkie Bastille."Wiki" by definition is something open and undefined and accessible to all. In its most benevolent form, we have Wikipedia. In its sinister form we have Wikileaks. The current wiki revolt takes the form of Wikileaks mirror sites sprouting like mushrooms and attacks on institutions like MasterCard and Visa that won't do the insurrectionists' bidding. Wouldn't it be better to have a digital militia of our own to block or pursue the insurrectionists than to have legitimate institutions helplessly flailing as they try to fend off an assault that they don't understand? Couldn't we mobilize the legions of programmers and cyber experts into a civil corps that could use the wiki model to go after a common enemy--once that enemy had been clearly defined and identified? No insurrection is clean and clear and neat. As Mao Zedong put it, "revolution is not a garden party." It's messy and confusing and painful. One hopes that the current cyber revolt will resolve itself peacefully, though that doesn't seem likely. But in this battle we are seeing the true nature of cyber warfare. We can either learn and adapt--or die. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
