[liberationtech] Is the Cyberwar beginning?

[Shava Nerad]

Really there are layers going on here, aren't there?  And in ways the
governments have no interests in differentiating the levels of activity
because each level ups civilian/legislative alert levels, and therefore
budgets to meet the actual threat levels.

Let me start a taxonomy, and y'all can argue it up and down.

Harmless exploratory hacking
- what machines can I get into and lok around, not leaving traces?

Personal acts that may be perceived as stealing or disrupting business
operations:
- Non-violent selfless civil disobedient hacktivism (Posting an academic
paper)
- Pecuniary hacktivism ("taking" from BMG)
- Vindictive hactivism (LOIC)

Organizational sponsored hacking
- non-violent selfless civil disobedient hacktivism (Tor Project)
- pecuniary (malware -> botnet rentals, hacking for identity/credit ca rd
sale/rent,...)
- vindictive (writing LOIC payloads, STUX, "Chinese hacker" type brigades)

There are a couple categories here that are legitimate threats to someone,
and several that are conflated into cyberwar threats by different
governments or agencies within those governments according to context.

Also, press will freely conflate others,  and business press or
spokespeople yet others, according to either their understanding or their
propaganda (oh, excuse me, PR) interest.

In any war, truth is the first casualty.  As that is certainly the case
here, yes, my friends, that is the archduke's corpse I just described
outlined in chalk in the text above.

The drums are thumping and the money is in the pipelines.  The recruitment
and training of special forces is accellerating all over the globe.  You
are looking at incidents, and that is the wrong place to look.

Look at the build-up.

There is a strategic back pressure of at least three really solid years and
really five in inertia behind this, building funding and recuitment in the
US.  It's been a big focus of several beltway companies "reinventing"
themselves for the future, oh joy.  Gotta love the US military industrial
complex. When heavy industry goes overseas, we figure out other ways to
compete with the Chinese, amiright?

Are there no other people here with military/strategic ties?  (Andrew,
Jake, haven't you seen this?)
----

Shava Nerad
shava23 at gmail.com
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