A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

Some will say that the thousands of websites that are being attacked and sometimes defaced are not really cyberwar because there is not really a direct impact. No electricity grids, stock market, army operations or other things like that were disturbed. yes the big news was that a news site and a banking sites were redirected by a dns redirect with a domainregistrar where they used a probably intercepted password.

But probably those networks are receiving a lot of attack traffic and according to the Israeli Cert it are sometimes hundreds at the same time. But also here for the moment it doesn't seem to have that much effect.

At the other side, all those webservices that are being hacked at the same time, do have to invest time and money to get things back in order and have lost customers and confidence. And yes they should have a safer website and more monitoring, but that doesn't give you the right to hack the sites.

So this is cyberwar, it is directed against some countries and their infrastructure, but the attackers are too disorganised and haven't really learned for the moment from the Russian cyberattacks about how to do it effectively. It also shows that the Arabic muslim attackers don't have any zombie armies at their disposal, nor the viruses to make one fast enough to use. It is cyberwar, but from the sight of the attacker it is not being won. Winning a cyberwar means being able to take down traffic lights, army infrastructure, banks and public service websites. As this is not really happening they are not winning yet.

But it ain't over and it is only over when the last attacker has gone to sleep or is localised and blocked and the last exploit has been launched or the last tactic has been used. So for the moment Israel is winning the cyberwar by not losing it, by holding on, even if the number of defaced Israeli sites shows that their hosters and ISP's are no real partners in that fight and haven't understood that they are living at times of cyberwar and that they are on the receiving end.

But maybe just as in Matrix some hackers are penetrating slowly but steadily some systems one step at a time and are just taking all the hours they need not to be seen going deeper and deeper in the middle of the network. This we will only know in a few days or weeks time. And than we will know if Israel has won the cyberwar or is the third country to lose one.

So it is not because it hasn't happened that it ain't happening and it is the job of the securitypeople in network to act as if it is maybe happening somewhere on your network. This keeps you awake and alert and keeps you searching for every kind of thing that you maybe have not checked yet. It is not the moment to think that you have prepared for everything and that you have absolutely everything under control. You are under permanent attack and the siuation is red as your CERT is saying. You should act likewise. And the Europeans also.

The beginning of this year stinks