By: East Asia Forum Date: 24 January 2015\
China and the US are entering a new and troubling phase of cybersecurity. The recent crash of North Korea’s internet network reveals just how inexperienced world leaders are in dealing with cyber conflict. It shows how one reckless act in the cyber realm can quickly devolve into a bigger international crisis. The confusion and ambiguity surrounding this sequence of events has left the US and China entangled in a high profile cybersecurity standoff.
Cyber-Hacked
An American comedy film, The Interview, allegedly provoked North Korea into hacking the Sony Entertainment Network, drawing attention from the FBI, the UN Security Council, the White House, and top officials in South Korea and Japan. Soon after, an FBI report formally implicated North Korea in the attack. While President Obama promised to ‘respond proportionally’, North Korea’s entire internet network suddenly went offline.
The FBI has stood by its accusation that Pyongyang was responsible but few outside experts are convinced. There is growing speculation that North Korea’s internet blackout was a sophisticated cyber-attack engineered by the US.
As leading experts on cybersecurity have pointed out, one of the biggest challenges with cyber-attacks is attribution. Both state and non-state actors can launch attacks with intricately disguised origins, which can introduce uncertainty into the response process. It is hard and sometimes even impossible to respond appropriately when a major cyber-attack takes place. The inherent uncertainty in US–China relations already makes for volatility. But with some of the world’s most sophisticated cyber war capabilities, conflict could escalate quickly over faulty intelligence.
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