Cyber Warfare

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The April edition of Smithsonian magazine features an interview with Richard Clarke. He is a government security expert who wrote a book with the title, “Cyber War”. Clarke has been at the center of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) most “secret, security-encrypted bits of information gathered by our trillion-dollar human, electronic and satellite intelligence network. Clarke has warned that other nations will use cyber warfare against us to penetrate our computers and networks and cause damage.” He is concerned that “we have virtually no defense against the cyber attacks. He says our enemies are targeting us now. The U.S. may be hit by a cyber attack that we or the Israelis launched against Iran. Clarke is referring to the cyber worm, Stuxnet. It was used to bring down the nuclear fuel enrichment plant in Iran. Stuxnet seized control of the uranium centrifuges and caused them to crash. The Stuxnet program was supposed to self-destruct using a “Time To Live” (TTL) cyber worm. The TTL worm was supposed to complete its mission by committing suicide, and then disappearing. However, TTL became confused by dates on Iranian computers and Stuxnet didn’t die. Apparently the Iranians were using software with different dates from Stuxnet. So Stuxnet didn’t die but has instead spread to other computers and networks.According to the government Stuxnet doesn’t pose any harm since it is supposed to only turn on when a sequence of computer questions are all answered “yes.” The government claims that only computer system that would generate those yes answers is at a nuclear facility in Iran.However if a U.S. enemy could find the Stuxnet worm and change it, they could use it against us. Bottom line: Cyber War is a 21st century reality and we and our enemies are in the game.