Are we at war?

I received a call today from Lisa that frantically asked if our company was under attack. Someone told her to turn off her computer because cyber attacks targeted Washington DC (her company also operates in DC). There was nothing on the front pages of the news websites but I was able to locate an Associated Press article about federal websites briefly brought down by cyber attacks. The article also indicated South Korean government and bank websites were targeted. It does not take more than a passing awareness of world history to draw the conclusion that North Korea is to blame somehow.

Let's back up and examine what a cyber attack is and who it threatens. The basic attack mode is to focus as much traffic on a server as possible to freeze it and disable it from operating. It's a programming tactic that requires a focus on a certain target by definition in order to be successful. In other words, it's only a threat to the target and not the world at large. The resilient infrastructure of the Internet, the redundancies built in, the back-up servers, the archives, combine to make this threat less powerful that it sounds.

Regardless of the effectiveness of targeting individual websites or networks, there is a serious effort underway. Right now someone is targeting the US government and has been successful enough to stand out from the throng of hacking attempts on federal websites that go on every day. It's a fascinating threat. The allure traces down to the same pleasure received from computer applications: these electric devices are literally black boxes taking inputs and making outputs without users having any awareness of how it happens. However, the unknown always begs fears and doubts. Remember Y2K. It's not surprising that users who lack any knowledge of the way a thing works would speculate about how it could fail. There is a conundrum at play too; the increasing ease of use for the product increasingly distances users from the language and mechanisms that describe the technical aspects. Bridging the gap are many private companies, but the divide makes it difficult, or perhaps impossible, for an authority figure to either explain any threats or address fears the public might have. Likewise, the lack of knowledge and language makes it difficult for media to report without further confusing, misleading, or losing the public's attention.

I do not believe we are at cyber war, but if we were I would neither know about it nor read credible reporting nor hear leadership from our government. Nothing and everything to fear at once. I chose the former.