BWJones's Journal: Internet security through active measures

So, an emerging Internet security company, Symbiot is taking an entirely new, albeit controversial approach to Internet defense and cyberwarfare that should appeal to cyberpunks everywhere. Rather than the traditional passive response that has been used by sysadmins and CTO's worldwide, Symbiot is taking a more "active" defense approach by implementing a common subscription based access to a "threat database" that will allow participating networks to determine the degree of threat and respond democratically (by using the shared resources of other participating networks) and proportionally to the attack by allowing for a graduated response to cyber attacks. The potential of an asymmetrical response to a threat is also not out of the question.... Links for additional information are here and here.

So, aside from being one of the coolest approaches to Internet security I have seen in a long time, it seems to me that this could be a new way to wage not only cyberwarefare, but geopolitical warfare in general. Of course we would have to cede a certain degree of control over to an impartial (perhaps AI or a common authoritative body) agent that could determine an appropriate response which brings up some troubling aspects that may establish precedence here. However, if we could establish some alternative best measure to violence that is used in response to an aggression, perhaps we could "automate" for lack of a better term, world peace? That measure may be financial in that each country could have a defined resource that would be networked into a world wide aggression pool. When one country is "attacked", a multilateral retaliation could ensue whereby the aggressor would pay a financial price to all other participants in the network. Of course contributions would be weighted so the incentive for large countries would be they have large amounts of ready "resources" that populate the pools and could thereby continue their current "position" whereas the smaller less stable countries could become more secure (and thereby more stable) because they would stand to gain so proportionally much from any attack on them. It seems to me that if certain countries really wanted to implement democracy, an approach using a common denominator (currency) like this might stand to be more successful than older more established (but admittedly less successful) approaches such as military intervention or political destabilization. Additionally, this has the potential of having a nearly instantaneous response outcome which despite the worlds most powerful militaries attempts, are currently measured in hours to days and get around the other major issues involved with freezing and accessing internationally hidden assets from aggressor countries.

interesting

[venicebeach]

Isn't that how NATO works though? If you attack one country, they all come to its defense. I'm sure that eventually the world will reach some dynamic equilibrium that more or less implements what you are describing.

It actually seems easier to achieve something like this in the geopolitical arena than in cyberspace, since you don't necessarily know who to go after in the case of a DDoS. As the article you linked to points out, you will in many cases just attacking back at "compromised" computers own

TFT a pretty good strategy

[zptdooda]

Reminds me of the titfortat strategy that works well for core wars and in the wild [abc.net.au]