A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank, has looked at the implications of the so-called “Korean” attacks on US and South Korean networks in relation to future ‘cyber conflict’. The conclusion is that while current cyber attacks may not constitute an act of war, they are expected to develop and cyber-terrorism is expected to become more prevalent within the next decade.
Some aspects of the SERSCIS project assess threats to the timely, secure and continued operations of Critical Infrastructure (CI) in light of both internal operational issues (such as resourcing or operation delays) and external issues and effects (such as attacks on confidentiality, integrity or availability of vital information). Real-world terrorism has already targeted CI, including transport infrastructure and financial districts, and the CSIS report foresees increased attacks on ‘virtual’ CI as terrorist organisations increase their technical capabilities. With the increasing use of information systems within CI, especially those directly or indirectly connected to the Internet, there can be an increased risk of attack from external and potentially anonymised terrorist sources.
Although the CSIS report focuses on attacks that may constitute acts of war, stating that the July 2009 attack on the US and South Korean networks was “not a serious attack…more like a noisy demonstration”, it also says that “in less than a decade, perhaps much less, a terrorist group could … acquire the capabilities needed for a serious cyber attack” allowing them to damage and effect “essential government, economic or military services”. This list of effects could cover a range of critical infrastructure systems.
In the future networked environment more and more systems will become
reliant on information technology, communications infrastructure and interdependency of systems. Although these changes may improve system operations they also increase the attack surface of the systems and the potential impact of an attack on any one system or infrastructure asset.
The CSIS believe that current American defences are “inadequate to repel the attacks of a sophisticated opponent”, but this does not mean that all cyber attacks can defeat all defences. Through proper modelling of risk, security and decision support (as provided by the System Modelling and Decision Support components of the project) we believe that the SERSCIS project can start to help the owners of CI systems mitigate some of the risks posed by cyber-terrorism and other technological attacks.
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