IP: When Point and Shoot Becomes Point and Click

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

When Point and Shoot Becomes Point and Click
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/12/weekinreview/12SCHW.html

November 12, 2000
WEB WAR
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

THE online world has entered a new phase. At first it was a
combination playground, library and meeting house for scientists
and soldiers, an inviolate virtual world. Companies later tried to
turn it into a mall. Now, it's becoming a borderless battlefield.

  In recent weeks, the Middle East conflict spilled over into the
Internet as Web sites throughout the region have been altered with
messages advocating online attacks against other sites, both
Israeli and pro- Palestinian   in some cases providing the software
that make such attacks possible.

<snip>

  "If all wars could be so converted," he theorized, "it would be
wonderful." Ultimately, Professor Etzioni said, today's attacks are
"cybergrafitti." "It may be annoying," he said, "but it's
harmless."

  So far.

  David J. Farber, an Internet pioneer who serves on the board of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties
group, says that as dependency on the Internet increases,
cyberwarriors will do real damage. Businesses will collapse if
customers can't reach them online, power grids might be brought
down with a mouse click.
  At some point somebody's going to get the brilliant idea, `Why
bomb them? Why not cyberbomb them?' " Mr. Farber said.

  He sees a day when disinformation experts will plant false rumors
online   the wartime equivalent of the PairGain scam, in which a
stock speculator created a sham financial news item on a Web page
that looked like part of a news service's site. "There are going to
be a lot of interesting experiments done in this kind of
psychological warfare," he said.

  If war is hell, cyberwar could turn out to be cyberhell. And we're
only beginning to discover what that means.

<snip>