Book Review of “Cyber War”

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA MEd CMP™

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A Book Review 

[By Darrell K. Pruitt; DDS]

I’m reading “Cyber War” by Richard A. Clark. He served the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council under Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. It’s sobering to learn that North Korea has already successfully pulled cyber-war tricks against a vulnerable US. But; to learn that North Korea doesn’t have any Internet vulnerabilities is frightening.

China

And what about China – want to see sophistication? Clark says that within the last year, Canadians discovered a highly sophisticated program they named “GhostNet.” It had infected over an estimated 1300 computers at several countries’ embassies around the world. Get this: The program had the capability to remotely turn on a computer’s camera and microphone without alerting the user and to send the information back to China. So how could such capabilities affect you and me?

GhostNet 

GhostNet had been working for almost 2 years before it was discovered. About the same time, US Intelligence leaked news that Chinese hackers had penetrated the US Power grid and left behind programs that can shut the grid down. Clark suggests that the Chinese intended us to find their program as a deterrent to our national will to intervene if China should find it necessary to annex Taiwan or even the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea – where the reefs shelter some of the largest remaining stocks of fish in the world, in addition to undeveloped oil and gas reserves that rival Kuwait’s.

Gates Speaks

Clark says that according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, cyber attacks “could threaten the United States’ primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific.”  Clark adds, “The problem is, however, that deterrence only works if the other side is listening. U.S. leaders may not have heard, or fully understood, what Beijing was trying to say. The U.S. has done little or nothing to fix the vulnerabilities in its power grid or in other civilian networks.”

Assessment

If they shut down our power grids, it will be chaos. Are we as a nation flying far too fast into the cloud?

What does this say about eMRs and eHRs, regional health information exchanges, cloud computing, and related health 2.0 initiatives and/or information technology? Sobering thoughts for the weekend.

Conclusion

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