Is a 'digital Pearl Harbor' in our future?
Connecting state and local government leaders
We are more vulnerable than ever, but such an attack would not be easy.
Dec. 7 is the anniversary of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor that crippled the U.S. Pacific fleet and brought this country into World War II. What have we learned in the 68 years since that world-changing day?
The threat in our age is less to ships and aircraft than to the technology that controls so many aspects of our lives. Many observers have warned that our defenses are not adequate to protect our nation’s critical infrastructure, and the phrase Electronic or Digital Pearl Harbor has been commonly used to describe a surprise cyber attack that could cripple our military and commercial capabilities. Dire as these warnings are, we should take them with a grain of salt.
Although cyber threats are real, the chances of a Digital Pearl Harbor remain small. This is due not so much to the success of our cyber defenses, which in many places remain inadequate, but to the realities of warfare and networking. Blowing a fleet out of the water is not easy, but taking down a network—-I mean really taking it down, to the point where it is gone for good—-is even harder.
There are those who disagree. Ira Winkler, former employee of the National Security Agency and now a consultant and writer, for years scoffed at the idea and called comparisons digital attacks to Pearl Harbor “insulting.” But in a recent blog posting tellingly titled “I Was Wrong: There Probably Will Be an Electronic Pearl Harbor,” he changes his opinion somewhat.
What changed, he writes, is the smart grid. By creating a vulnerable, ubiquitous infrastructure that is tied in with our national power grid, we have greatly increased the potential for a strategic attack doing long-term damage, he said. “While I will not cry wolf and say it is imminent, I sadly realize that an Electronic Pearl Harbor is now very possible.”
But doing systematic, long-term damage to a network is much harder than compromising a vulnerability. And even if such damage were possible, what would be the point?
The Japanese were able to severely damage the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor because so many resources were vulnerable at one time and place, and could be put out of action with one blow. But even then, our aircraft carriers escaped and, as it turned out, came to be the dominant military factor in the Pacific war.
Networks are even more complex than a fleet. Being able to exploit a vulnerability does not mean being able to exploit all vulnerabilities, or every instance of the same vulnerability. And even if networks are interconnected, they are not a homogenous whole. If network administrators have difficulty managing their own large networks because they are too large, flexible and changeable to accurately inventory and map, imagine the difficulty for a malicious outsider in bringing one down.
Of course, elements of it can be interfered with, damaged or even destroyed. But networks are typically too fragmented and redundant to stand or fall as one. Our networks have never been reliable enough to depend upon completely, so they are full of backups, workarounds and overrides that ensure that much of the work gets done even when the parts fail.
And it is important to remember that Pearl Harbor was not an end in itself. Japan gained little or nothing from destroying the fleet in Hawaii. The value of the attack was in the Imperial Navy’s ability to follow it up with attacks in Guam, the Philippines and other locations that enabled them to take and hold strategic military positions.
What good would it do for an attacker to take down vital U.S. networks? While the damage to this country could be great, the benefit to an attacker would be nil if it could not be followed up. The real threat of cyber warfare is not in stand-alone attacks, but in attacks coordinated with military action. At this point, there are very few parties out there with both the ability and inclination to take on the United States militarily, whether our networks are up or down. Terrorists could score points with a devastating cyber attack, of course, but without the ability to follow it up militarily, it would not rise to the level of a Pearl Harbor.
This is not to say that cyber attacks are not a serious concern, that our systems are not vulnerable, or that we do not need to pay attention to the growing threats posed by cyber intrusion. But we should address the issues realistically and understand the scope of the problem.