North Korean Standoff May Spark America’s First Cyberwar

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So while the media concentrate their coverage of North Korean aggression on the excessively theatrical testing of long-range ICBMs, sowing fear and uncertainty about a nuclear attack on a U.S. city, the more present threat is being conducted in cyberspace almost entirely under the radar.

If it is the Trump administration’s intent to strike Pyongyang with a cyberinvasion, we had better be prepared for a counterattack of impressive proportion. We might be capable of taking out the electronic infrastructure of the Kim regime, but an all-out response against our energy grid is well within the realm of possibility.

We have witnessed in the past week a relatively benign global cyberattack on infrastructure targets that did all of the contained damage it intended with no response and almost no effective defense. It is one thing to plan a cyberattack on the enemy with your cyberdefenses in place and tested against countermeasures. It is entirely another when your cyberdefenses have proven themselves to be completely incapable of holding off adversaries intent on inflicting significant damage on U.S. private and government networks.

I am sure that President Trump knows we have a lot of work to do before we line up these ducks for cyberwarfare. Getting beaten in our first cyber skirmish would not be good. But media coverage of Trump getting creamed by a puny, delusional lunatic dictator from a tiny starving nation might even be worse.

Steve King is the COO and CTO of Netswitch Technology Management.[lz_pagination]