Cybercrime-as-a-Service opens up a realm of worrying new possibilities for opportunistic individuals and ideologically motivated groups, as well as a new front for law enforcement and security services to secure. As early as 2013, cybersecurity experts noted that Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) was a burgeoning business. It is an industry as straightforward as it sounds – professional cybercriminals […]
As sectors of the domestic and world economy become more dependent on the internet and the cloud, their vulnerability to new forms of attack and disruption increases. Cybersecurity is not just a national defense issue, but must also become a cost of doing business. It is clear that the shipping industry is susceptible to cyber-attacks. […]
U.S. lawmakers are concerned about the lack of preparation for a possible long term power outage caused by a cyber-attack against the energy sector.
Since 2013, cyber has been ranked ahead of terrorism and named the #1 security threat to the U.S. The understanding of, and bridging of this gap is one of the major issues facing this nation and the rest of the world today.
The indictment of five Chinese military hackers by a grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania illustrates the increasing importance of cyberspace in the great power relationship between the United States and China. It also shows that four years of talking about cyber-espionage, including at the presidential level, have lead to nowhere. All […]
Ronald J. Deibert, is Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Canada Center for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs,at the University of Toronto. Dr. Deibert is also a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on cyber […]
The unclassified version of the 2013 Annual Report to Congress on the Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China provides a glimpse of the military build-up and capabilities of China in the second decade of the 21st century: “The U.S. Department of Defense seeks to build a military-to-military relationship with China that is sustained and substantive, while encouraging China to cooperate […]
“It’s all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.” In the summer of 1975, the budding auteur, Steven Spielberg, created a virtual panic at America’s beaches with ingeniously crafted screen images of a certain Great White Fish. The top […]
U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers chairs the House of Representatives’ panel on intelligence, which this week overwhelmingly approved a new cyber security bill designed to enhance data sharing between the government and private industry to protect computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks. Yet the day before it passed, Rogers had a more novel idea […]
I appeared on the talk show “The Fresh Outlook” this weekend to discuss cybersecurity issues and China. Here is a link to the video. I argued for a more nuanced, less panicky approach when dealing with China on this sensitive subject. Here are some more thoughts: The most recent revelations of the activities of the Chinese […]
My colleague Dr. Greg Austin and I wrote a short discussion paper titled “Cybersecurity: Crime Prevention or Warfare?” for the 49th Munich Security Conference which took place this February in Munich, Germany. We identified some of the top challenges pertaining to cybersecurity and outlined six policy action ideas. Given the recent revelations about the Chinese […]
Ronald Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto. He is a cofounder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor. He is author of the Great Decisions 2012 article Cybersecurity: the new frontier. He […]
At risk of tooting the horn for my former employer, IEEE Spectrum magazine, I want to commend my former colleagues and fellow bloggers for sharply raising the question of whether the U.S. government considered the global consequences when it decided to unleash Stuxnet and, most likely, Flame as well. In a Monday post, Robert […]
Upon hearing of Flame, the recently discovered computer malware sometimes described as the most insidious and sophisticated ever, one’s first thought is bound to be of Stuxnet. Upon discovery of that virus a year and a half ago, analyses by top cyber-security firms soon yielded smoking-gun proof that Stuxnet was custom-made to knock out uranium […]
With revolutionary fever fermenting across the Arab world, other long-serving dictators are getting a bit jittery these days. The demonstration effect is a powerful phenomenon- when long-suffering citizens see people in similar situations casting off the shackles of repressive regimes, they’re inclined to as “well, why not us, too?” It isn’t a coincidence that all […]