America Considers A Containment Offensive in Cyber War

The Washington Post reported on the 22nd that the George W. Bush US Administration is seriously considering active containment offensive in cyber war as well, leaving existing defensive concept.

The paper reported that since the Bush Administration found evident that 5, 6 countries were managing brigade or battalion sized cyber hacking corps and attacking the digital infra in America, there were active discussion inside the Bush Administration “to prepare the cyber battle rules.”

The US Intelligence officials believed that there were some foreign governments involved behind the hacking of the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Institute, the Rivermore National Research Institute, and the Pentagon in 1999 and 2000, and the ‘Code Red’ virus that downed the 314 thousand servers.

The US federal government allocated 4.5 billion dollars for the information technology budget, which is 64% more than that of last year, against those threats. The war against cyber terror is being generalized by the White House Cyber Security Advisor, Richard Clark.

The thing that draws our attention out of the cyber battle rules, which will be revealed next month, is the containment offensive. America used to use the cyber technology mostly for defensive or information gathering purposes. Except the case that America complicated the computer network of Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999, it have never attacked other countries’ system.

The Advisor Clark said, “Today’s situation is similar to the situation of few decades ago when although they had nuclear weapons, they did not know when and how to use them.”

However, America worries about the fact that if it attacks the computer networks or financial system of a particular country that supports terrorists, it might give damages to the allies as well as America itself.

lailai@donga.com