cyber-"terrorism"?

[John R T Brazier]

-----Original Message-----
From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
[mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of iriXx
Sent: 18 September 2002 09:44
To: ukcrypto
Subject: Re: cyber-"terrorism"?

On Wed, 2002-09-18 at 08:21, Peter Sommer wrote:

>>     * a concerted attack on the world financial infrastructure would have
a
>> high probability of failure, among other reasons,  because it would take
a
>> long time to collect the intelligence required to by-pass the diverse
>> security mechanisms and  hit all the disaster and stand-by facilities
that
>> are in place, much of the infrastructure is proprietary and not connected
>> to the Internet - and in any event there are very few ideological groups
>> that would wish to cope with a world where the financial infrastructure
has
>> wholly collapsed


Completely agreed. A further disabling factor is the very immaturity of the
IT
and comms systems. Whilst most of us would (I think) agree that general
non-military
IT security is 'fairly' lax, the sheer range of differing hadwares, OSs and
communications systems, most of which are still rapidly evolving, makes a
large
attack extremely difficult: 'security by confusion'.

TTFN

John B