A behind-the-scenes conflict appears to be under way—but not the sort you might think It is the new frontier for military and intelligence activity: cyberspace. For years military experts and computer scientists have speculated about the possibility of a nation’s infrastructure being attacked using computers, rather than bombs. There have been dark warnings of the danger of a “digital Pearl Harbour”—an unexpected strike in which digital attackers shut down America’s electrical grid or air-traffic control systems, or hack into nuclear-power stations and cause them to overheat. In recent years such concerns have been heightened by the first real examples of large-scale cyber-attacks—on Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008. In each case, government websites were brought down by a deluge of traffic, apparently from Russia. The actual damage done was minimal, but it has all added to the sense of urgency, in America in particular, about the need to protect critical infrastructure from such an attack.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13527677
