The recent attack on Chinese dissidents’ Gmail accounts that was purportedly carried out by the Chinese government isn’t the first time the security of the Internet has been called into question. But it did get people talking again about a possible “digital Pearl Harbor.” This phrase is meant to describe a crippling and amorphous offensive on a country’s digital infrastructure. The maxim has become a meme at best, and a scare tactic at worst.
By most accounts, such an attack is thankfully improbable. The very question of such a strike appears to annoy noted security expert Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography—among other books on the subject—and a source for Congressional hearings on security several times over. He claims that it’s not in our enemies’ best interest to cut off the Internet. For one, eavesdropping would be harder for them. And how would an adversary know it had won? “If we attacked Russia and disabled their communications system, there’s no way they could surrender,” he said
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