OT: [W'post.com] ('via' ACM): Dismantling of Saudi-CIA Web Site Illustrates Need for Clearer Cyberwar Policies

[Mike Schwartz]

*
This W
ashington Post
 article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031805464.html

was summarized in (and linked to, from)
 ACM's TechNews:
http://technews.acm.org/archives.cfm?fo=2010-03-mar/mar-19-2010.html#455307

The
summary says:

Dismantling of Saudi-CIA Web Site Illustrates Need for Clearer Cyberwar
Policies*
*Washington Post (03/19/10) P. A1; Nakashima, Ellen; Priest, Dana; DeYoung,
Karen*

The dissolution of an intelligence-gathering Web site set up by the Saudi
government and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), based on
suspicions that it was being used by extremists planning attacks on U.S.
forces in Iraq, highlights the need for more transparent cyberwar policies.
The use of computers to collect intelligence or to disrupt the enemy raises
a number of issues, including under what circumstances a cyberattack outside
the theater of war is permissible and whether dismantling an extremist Web
site represents a covert operation or a traditional military activity.
Current and former officials say that lawyers at the U.S. Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel are engaged in a struggle to define the
legal rules governing cyberwarfare. A key dilemma of cyberwarfare is that an
attacker can never be sure that only the intended target will be impacted by
an attack. A former official notes than more than 300 servers in Saudi
Arabia, Germany, and Texas were unintentionally disrupted when the Saudi-CIA
site was dismantled.
View Full Article<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/18/AR2010031805464.html>
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and here are some juicy quotes [IMHO] from the original *
W
ash. Post article:
*
> The Saudi-CIA Web site was set up several years ago as a "honey pot,"
[...]
> [...] some experts counter that dismantling Web sites is ineffective -- no
sooner does a site come down than a mirror site pops up somewhere
else. [...]
> "It seems difficult to understand," he [Evan F. Kohlmann] [a terrorism
researcher] added, "why governments would interrupt  [...] a lucrative
intelligence-gathering tool."

("forwarded" by:)
-- 
Mike Schwartz
Glendale  AZ
schwartz at acm.org
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