I'd be pretty happy if governments all decided "cyberwarfare" was an acceptable substitute for the real thing. Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed.
Cyberwarfare can do a lot more than DDoS a router. Haven't you ever read the articles that pop up from time to time about Internet scans that find machines which should in no way ever be connected to the Internet, or even in the same room with a machine connected to the Internet? And then they try to log into those machines using the manufacturer's default passwords....
In short, critical infrastructure all over the world is being needlessly put at risk. The operators are placing their own knives across their own throats, and all a network-based attacker would need to do is jog a few elbows.
A few people might die. It's not like anybody is putting kill-bots out there, connected to the Internet, with an easily-toggled BERSERK_RAMPAGE flag (yet), but I think water treatment plants and electrical power grids are probably vulnerable to attack, and could cause some folks at the margins to die.
> Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed
If there's one thing the Sony breach and other major hacks over the last few years have illustrated, it's that there is no clear limit to the damage that can be done from something like this.
EDIT: To me, what's so frightening about this is the lack of historical precedent for conflicts between nations in the form of cyberwarfare. We don't know what could happen. We don't know if the damage will be limited to financial cost and embarrassment, and we don't know that a scuffle between nations on the Internet will remain contained as such.
"Nobody dies" is likely false. Think about first responders. Think about medical systems in hospitals. Think about all the second-order and third-order side effects if the Internet goes down in an industrialized country in 2014 for longer than, say, a few hours.
And the right to privacy of innocent noncombatants is compromised in the process. There will in fact be casualties in a cyber war, even if people are not killed or physically injured.
If the power grid goes down in Canada and the US in January, then people will die. If it stays down because turbines have been damaged, then lots of people will die.
The smae way they decide in a normal war. They keep going until a treaty is signed. Typically the side who is worse off "throws in the towel" so to speak by signing a treaty that holds the favor of the stronger side.
In short, critical infrastructure all over the world is being needlessly put at risk. The operators are placing their own knives across their own throats, and all a network-based attacker would need to do is jog a few elbows.
A few people might die. It's not like anybody is putting kill-bots out there, connected to the Internet, with an easily-toggled BERSERK_RAMPAGE flag (yet), but I think water treatment plants and electrical power grids are probably vulnerable to attack, and could cause some folks at the margins to die.