Has a World Cyber War Already Begun?

There are a variety of large-scale attacks occuring around the world, including incidents such as Stuxnet, Flame, and Red October. Some attacks have been against government systems, but increasingly these attacks are against private sector companies, U.S. banks and utilities have already been hit.

"The cyber war has been under way in the private sector for the past year," says Israel Martinez, who is a board member of the U.S. National Cyber Security Council.

"We're finding espionage, advanced persistent threats (APTs), and other malware sitting in networks, often for more than a year before it's ever detected," ... "U.S. entities are being targeted on multiple fronts by China and Iran for espionage and intellectual property theft, by interests in Russia and Eastern Europe".  The actors include syndicated criminal organizations, political and religious zealots, like the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyberfighters and Hacktavist groups  such as Anonymous, as well as a whole army of individual criminal hackers.

These attacks have been going on for years, but what's changed is the involvement of state-sponsors, with United States and Israel, who created Stuxnet, for example, to cripple Iranian nuclear facilities, according to the New York Times.  On the other side is Iran, China and others.

 "The paradigm in the U.S. must shift from defense to offense -- within internationally appropriate rules of engagement, of course. But offense will be necessary because a pure defensive strategy is not sustainable," says the Cyber Security Council's Martinez.

 So what are the roles of US Government and Corporate entities in protecting the American Critical Infrastructure, the Economy and Jobs, intellectual and property assets? What should the Rules of Engagement be and where do we draw the line between defensive and offensive response actions?  These and many other related questions will need to be answered by both the current administration in Washington as well as a much more collaborative corporate/public sector executive constituency.