In his own words: Confessions of a cyber warrior

[Renew Deal]

Much of the world is just learning that every major industrialized nation has a state-sponsored cyber army -- though many of the groups, including team USA, have been around for decades.

I've met a few cyber warriors. As you might imagine, they can't talk much about their duties. But if you work shoulder to shoulder with them long enough, certain patterns emerge. For starters, there are a lot of them. They are well armed with cyber weaponry, and they're allowed to experiment and hack in ways that, as we all now know, might be considered illegal in some circles.

I've been a longtime friend to one cyber warrior. On condition of anonymity, he agreed to be interviewed about what he does for a living and allowed me to record our conversation on a device he controlled, from which I transcribed our conversation. I was able to ask clarifying questions the next day.

We met in person in my boat off the coast of Florida, which might sound very clandestine, except that our primary goal was to catch some fish. It's interesting to note that he did not want me to contact him by email or phone during the months leading up to this interview or for a few months after, even though what he revealed does not disclose any national security secrets. The following is an edited version of our conversation.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/security/in-his-own-words-confessions-of-cyber-warrior-222266

Interesting stuff, especially in the current climate.

[bemildred]

1. They are going to destroy the internet with this crap.

The internet only works cooperatively, it will not scale well if they start trying to assert controls, to "compete", it is the radical distribution of control that allows it to scale up. Size does matter.