The Economist Magazine has a 2744-word cover article on “Cyberwar”. Like most articles in this publication it is balanced and presents the issues well. They have both Richard Clarke with his alarms and Bruce Schneier calling scaremongering.
There is nothing that regular blog readers will find new, but it may be a good article to show to your friends and family when they wonder what you do for a living. I found the discussion on the political issues around USCYBERCOM and offensive cyber-weapons interesting.
SCADA is mentioned throughout but one passage was odd – – “Experts disagree about the vulnerability of systems that run industrial plants, known as … SCADA.” This is followed by a mention of the smart grid increasing the exposure of SCADA networks. I’m not sure what “expert” disagrees about the vulnerability of the systems. Lots of disagreement on the threat and risk, but vulnerability?
The public evidence from technically sophisticated attacks seems to agree with the author’s conclusion that “Spying probably presents the most immediate danger to the West: the loss of high-tech know-how that could erode its economic lead or, if it ever came to a shooting war, blunt its military edge.”
There is also a 9 minute video of retired General Wesley Clark talking about cyber security. He is now advising InZero, a hardware cyber security company. I found the article to be more worthwhile.