:( very sad to hear.

got to be HUGELY careful with Mr. Banks... much of his stuff (including Culture stuff) is very, very mature for a high school audience.

Why bother having armed forces? Can't we defend ourselves perfectly well with local militias? Isn't it every individual persons' responsibility to ensure the safety of their home and family?

What can government (more particularly a cyber-command) do that individuals can't or shouldn't?
- identify and neutralize active attackers - counter-attack is a valid strategy
- coordinate in a non-commercial, non-liability setting incident reports from various sources, to enable development of responses, as well as detection of patterns of threat/attack
- sponsor and coordinate development of defensive and offensive capabilities (cyber-warfare skunkworks)
- develop approaches to assess security of systems - current security is plagued by folks missing known vulnerabilities and attack modes. although your observation about standardization and homogenaity are accurate, not knowing how to assess is a vulnerability all by itself.

I can't advocate the current DoD/gov't approaches to cyber-security - they're deeply flawed. but that doesn't mean there isn't a valid role for gov't. it just means gov't needs to find its niche and perform better.

There have been some very vivid demonstrations of the impacts of cyber-warfare, such as the attacks on Estonia and Georgia, Chinese and Iranian suppresion of free speech and media, air traffic control penetrations, and demonstrated penetrations of SCADA networks (power grid in particular). In Estonia, gov't services were disrupted, and the local equivalent of 911 was broken. Georgia was not as badly dinged as Estonia, largely because they're less reliant on networked services. (c.f. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673385 ). Power grid infrastructures (as well as telecom, oil pipelines, etc.) are highly automated in the US, and have been demonstrated to have been attacked (c.f. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914805204099085.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ). Having accidentally broken chunks of telecom infrastructure, I know how easy it is to create large-scale disruptions through control networks - even without ill intent. The FAA IG has reported that air traffic has already been disrupted by system breaches (c.f. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124165272826193727.html, http://www.oig.dot.gov/StreamFile?file=/data/pdfdocs/ATC_Web_Report.pdf ).

And this is the stuff that's publicly visible. There is definitely an iceberg effect here - there's a lot more under the surface that isn't readily visible to the public. There's good reason the Pentagon doesn't publish the full extent of attacks (successful and not) perpetrated against the DoD infrastructure - it's not a good idea to let attackers know how much you see (and don't). But the concern is based on real threats, and real attempts - this is not hysterical speculation. The rules of engagement haven't been defined (when is a hack attempt serious enough to merit retaliation? what's a 'cyber-exercise' v. an act of war? how definite does attribution of an attack need to be to become a diplomatic issue?). There are countries that are pushing all these envelopes to gain an edge.

So if this stuff is already going on at a low-rumble level, the threat is demonstrated, and the consequences can be foreseen, wouldn't it be irresponsible not to develop techniques and strategies to ensure this bad stuff doesn't happen?

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.

I don't frequently vent, but I have to submit that the responses to this earnest young scholar from Israel have been bigoted, insensitive, and broadly creepy. If you replace all the holocaust comments with 9/11 comments, and replace all the jewish-world-domination-conspiracy comments with stupid polack or shiftless nigger comments, maybe it'll become apparent just how gratuitous, bigoted, ignorant, and insulting this thread really is.

I've always been proud to associate myself with the slashdot community - irreverant, biting, and insightful - the cream of the nerd crop. After reading the responses to this post, I feel like I need to take a shower. Then seriously rethink my image of the slashdot crew, and rethink my desire to associate myself with the community.

ick.