Geeks & Guns
Posted on Dec 15, 2011
Who would have thought that the tech geeks of high school would become the billionaire businessmen of today? Perhaps, we are living in a real life sequel of the Revenge of the Nerds. If so, then hang onto your seats for sequel III--G.I. Joe Nerd.
The House and Senate are about to pass the military's 2012 funding bill, which includes a provision that gives the U.S. military the power to "conduct offensive operations in cyberspace."
The nature of the operations is not defined. However, they are likely to include the unleashing of viruses to attack and disable, the disbursement of worms and Trojans to gather intelligence, and hacking to gain access for a search and destroy operation.
The U.S. has already demonstrated its willingness to engage in cyber warfare with the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran's nuclear centrifuges. The U.S. has not officially acknowledged its involvement. The extremely advanced worm was designed to jump from computer to computer so as to attack the target several stories underground and not connected to the world wide web. It sped up the rotation of the centrifuges so as to damage the bearings and equipment but then slowed down the speed so as to avoid detection. Once discovered and reported on a web security network, all alert sites came under attack and were shutdown.
Chinese hackers, likely affiliated with the government and revered at home, have targeted large U.S. corporations, defense contractors, and human rights groups with data-stealing Trojans. Bloomberg News recently declared that China has launched an "undeclared global cyber war."
Perhaps the military recruiters, assuming they are still allowed on campus, will now be setting up their display outside of the computer programming class.
