Circuit Writer Version 7.0

by Jim Scheef

This month we have some milestones to acknowledge.

Cyber Warfare

For the first time (AFAIK) U.S. government websites were attacked from outside our borders in attacks that were quite possibly instigated by a foreign government. Last April I mentioned cyber attacks (dacs.org/archive/0904/feature1.htm) that effectively shut down Internet access for the entire country of Kyrgyzstan (no jokes here, this is serious). This time both civilian and official government websites in both the U.S. and South Korea were attacked by what some are calling “hackivists” or hackers with a political motive to avoid blaming the North Korean government. For some background on this I suggest reading “Cyberattacks Jam Government and Commercial Web Sites in U.S. and South Korea” in the New York Times (tinyurl.com/nnvd5q). Many people believe that the government of North Korea is sending a shot across the bow of the U.S. ship of state to express their displeasure over reaction to recent North Korean missile tests and nuclear programs. Sites attacked over the Fourth of July weekend include the New York and NASDAQ Stock Exchanges plus the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department. The attacks were distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from botnets of 50,000 to 65,000 computers, as reported in the article. An MSNBC article “U.S. eyes N. Korea for ‘massive’ cyber attacks” (tinyurl.com/lv2qnq) puts the number at a more modest 12.000.

If this seems trivial, you might look at the writings of Carolyn Duffy Marsan, (networkworld.com/Home/cduffy%20marsan.html) a columnist in Network World Magazine, who has been writing about this topic for some time. I suggest starting with her June 8 article “10 things you didn't know about cyberwarfare” (tinyurl.com/lozdnv) in which she points out that cyberwar can be subtle, favor the little guy, and may not just target military and government targets. An attack that crippled our credit card clearing networks would cause chaos everywhere as public liquidity vanished (i.e.: no one could buy anything). Another much-discussed scenario is an attack against the electric grid. Cyberwar need not be “clean” with just bits flying across wires, but may combine with physical warfare. What if a cyber attack had followed the World Trade Center attack of 9/11? A lot of physical infrastructure was destroyed or shutdown for days by 9/11. In the confusion that followed, a serious cyber attack could have caused further chaos in our financial system extending both the physical and emotional recovery. The recession that followed was bad enough as it was.

Making all this more difficult is the fact that there is no clear definition my.yahoo.comof cyberwar and the anonymity of the Internet makes it difficult to prove who is responsible for a cyber event. In the recent case, it is not clear the North Korean government is behind the attacks as the machines directly involved are part of a botnet. When an attack begins, it can take time to determine where the botnet control point is located. The number 1 point in the “10 things” article is that you must win the first battle: “In conventional warfare, the country that wins the first battle doesn't necessarily win the war. Think Pearl Harbor. But with cyberwarfare, you need to win the first battle because there may not be a second. The enemy may have so wiped out your critical infrastructure through coordinated cyberattacks that you can't mount an effective defense and are forced to surrender.”

In “The fog of (cyber) war” (tinyurl.com/mlhvo6), author Don Tennant reports that China and Russia have the most highly developed cyberwarfare capabilities but also says that Iran and North Korea have “known cyberwarfare aspirations.” This was published before the July 4 attacks.

This issue has the attention of both the Obama administration (see tinyurl.com/cmo97h and tinyurl.com/ctytfl) and those who would like to make a buck. As military spending for weapons programs may slow, the New York Times has devoted a series of articles to the topic of Cyberwar (tinyurl.com/oo72lu). “Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S.” is a good one. The first cyberwar attack may have been the attacks on Estonia in 2007 as reported in the New York Times article “Digital Fears Emerge After Data Siege in Estonia” (tinyurl.com/2kdy2d).

Before we move on, I’d like to note that cyberwar need not involve multiple nations. “Five technologies Iran is using to censor the Web” on Network World gives the somewhat surprising ways that Iran and other repressive or insular countries use to prevent their citizens from reading the “wrong” stuff. All such regimes say they just want to block pornography and such to protect their citizens, but somehow other content fails to get thru. Unfortunately the article does not mention who makes the hardware used by Iran and China to make all this work.

Microsoft News

After all that doom and gloom, we are on to more pleasant topics (yes, really!). The headline “Microsoft stuns Linux world, submits source code for kernel” (tinyurl.com/kqaga7) sure caught my eye! The code, released under the GPLv2 license, is to aid running Linux run on Windows Server 2008 and the Hyper-V hypervisor, so it is not entirely altruistic. Follow the links in this article to read about possible compatibility and performance issues. This is obviously a first for Microsoft. It will be interesting to see where else they might feel an open source release benefits their objectives.

Next we have “Bing,” the so-called new Microsoft search engine formerly known as Live Search. Initial reviews have surprisingly been good. “Bing Starts Strong and Keeps Climbing” (tinyurl.com/mhqspr) in the New York Times says that Bing has been a modest success as measured by market share. David Pogue is moderately optimistic in “Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better” (tinyurl.com/ns6xpf) pointing out a number of areas where Bing is better – better than Google. For those of you who cannot believe this, there is a website bing-vs-google.com where you can compare results. In my own test, I entered “hiking CT” and looked for the Connecticut Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club (ct-amc.org), a website that I maintain. Naturally the best search engine will have this site ranked higher. Google won.

So if Microsoft has this at least moderate success in Bing, why have they renewed their talks with Yahoo? The short New York Times article “Yahoo and Microsoft Said to Be Closer to Search Deal” (tinyurl.com/koogc9) covers what is known about the talks between the companies.

Google News

The news here is Google’s new operating system called Chrome OS. The official word from Google is in a blog at tinyurl.com/mkt6lv. For a mainstream news look, we have “In Chrome, Hints of a Real Rival to Windows” (tinyurl.com/lbtp47) from the New York Times plus “The Incredible Shrinking Operating System” (tinyurl.com/nl7e8o). This is a lot of attention for an OS that has yet to be released to the public. The key point about Chrome OS is what it does not include, which is a lot when compared to Windows. Chrome is based on Linux but includes only one application: the Google Chrome browser. Anything you want to run must run inside that browser. As you might gather, Chrome the operating system is targeted to Netbooks and similar web or cloud-oriented computers. So you can run the Chrome browser on Windows or you can run it without Windows. This is the nightmare that kept Bill Gates and now Steve Ballmer awake at nite – that something might come along that would eliminate the need for Windows. Netscape Navigator is the first time he had the nightmare and the browser wars was the result. Everyone expected Linux to create something similar, but, well, no. This time could be different. When combined with cloud-based applications like Google Apps, Chrome could become a “complete” computing solution for the basic tasks for which most people buy a computer. The Wikipedia article (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS) is still short (there’s not that much detail to write about) but covers many of the basic concepts with some good references. This is so new that a search in a couple weeks could get much better results – even when searching in Google!

As you can see from the version number, this marks the start of my eighth year writing this column. I hope you all enjoy it.

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