Cutline Speaks

Botnets, worms, cyberwar—just another week in the security space

posted by Michael on April 24, 2009

Lots of news on the security front this week, with the latest rev of RSA’s spring event taking place in San Francisco, the discovery of a massive botnet being run out of the Ukraine, more developments in the Conficker saga, and the impending delivery of President Obama's super-secure BlackBerry 8830.

Most interesting of all, though, was the Wall Street Journal’s revelation that hackers have apparently breached critical U.S. government networks, accessing the U.S. Air Force's air traffic control system and procuring an indeterminate amount of information on the Department of Defense's Joint Strike Fighter program.

This has spurred some great (and in some cases frightening) discussion of the security of these critical data networks, whether there will ever be a catastrophic attack on them, and just whose responsibility it is to keep them safe. It's also generated some renewed attention on the concept of cyberwar, and what it might mean to engage in and be prepared for that kind of conflict.

What do you think? Are we doing everything we can to secure our critical data networks? Weigh in below in the comments section.

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