[lotuseclat79]

Is the Hacking Threat to National Security Overblown?.

Is hacking a real threat to the United States or is it just the latest overblown threat to national security, whose magnitude is being exaggerated to expand government budgets and power?

That’s the question asked ... at a panel in Computers, Freedom and Privacy in Washington, D.C., Wednesday. And it’s important because the government is spending billions of dollars on computer security, and President Obama is elevating cybersecurity to a national priority, using language that makes even security experts wince.
...
“Passive defenses alone are not sufficient,” Lin said. “You have to impose costs on an attacker and maybe the only way to do that is a cyberattack yourself. The good guys have always had some sort of offense too.”

-- Tom

[dothanover]

To answer either way is to give an advantage.

"Assess yourselves and your opponents." Sun Tzu

[lotuseclat79]

Originally Posted by dothanover

To answer either way is to give an advantage.
"Assess yourselves and your opponents." Sun Tzu

Hi dothanover,

The idea is not to answer directly, but implicitly with a layered security approach with obstacles that need to hurdled with serious costs for an attacker to pursue that make the pursuit too costly to continue. The smart cracker will realize s(he) is overmatched and give up early in the game. There are a lot of dumb crackers out there known as "script kiddies" whom are lower on the totem pole of nefarious actors - and they usually know squat about security barriers enough to think their way through the problem. They count a lot on luck, and if they are successful, it is mostly due to dumber users that know little about securing their computer let alone recognizing a threat to their identity.

-- Tom