Posted on 05/13/2010 10:58:51 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The Pentagon would consider a military response in the case of a cyber attack against the United States, a US defense official said on Wednesday.
Asked about the possibility of using military force after a cyber assault, James Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy, said: "Yes, we need to think about the potential for responses that are not limited to the cyber domain."
But he said it remained unclear what constituted an act of war in cyberspace.
"Those are legal questions that we are attempting to address," Miller said at a conference in Washington, adding that "there are certainly a lot of grey areas in this field."
He said hostile acts in cyberspace covered a wide range, from digital espionage to introducing false data into a network, that did not necessarily represent full-blown war.
But he said the threat to US networks from terrorists, criminals and others was real and growing.
"Over the past decade, we've seen the frequency and the sophistication of intrusions into our networks increase," he said. "Our systems are probed thousands of times a day."
The Defense Department has about 90,000 employees and troops using computer networks, with about seven million computer devices, he said.
The US military recently created a new cyber command that will be led by Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, head of the secretive National Security Agency. Alexander was confirmed in his post by the US Senate last week.
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Ohmigod! Does this mean we are actually going to have teams of cyberwarriors actually hit back when we are attacked?
Fainting couch! Smelling salts!
Not with Zero in charge we won’t.
The bad guys tremble...not. We have become such a joke and in such a short amount of time.
>Not with Zero in charge we won’t.
*
Depends...are the hackers white?
Well of course we would, depending on the severity of the event.
He pretty much will be forced to retaliate, even though it might make him sick to his stomach, any attack on US soil of magnitude will have the whole political spectrum screaming for blood, not just the right wing.
I think he’s more apt to attack Christians, now if they are white Christians then look out.
And if the cyber attack came via servers routing thru Arizona, he could take care of two birds with one Predator, so to speak.
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