Cyb0r Warfare

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 18 Comments

This weeks’ proof that some people read Snow Crash too literally comes via the WaPo.

“Unfortunately, what started out as a benign environment where people would congregate to share information or explore fantasy worlds is now offering the opportunity for religious/political extremists to recruit, rehearse, transfer money, and ultimately engage in information warfare or worse with impunity.”

The government’s growing concern seems likely to make virtual worlds the next battlefield in the struggle over the proper limits on the government’s quest to improve security through data collection and analysis and the surveillance of commercial computer systems.

Virtual worlds could also become an actual battlefield. The intelligence community has begun contemplating how to use Second Life and other such communities as platforms for cyber weapons that could be used against terrorists or enemies, intelligence officials said. One analyst suggested beginning tests with so-called teams of cyber warfare experts.

“Intelligence community” — now more an oxymoron than ever.

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  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    According to yesterdays /. the government needs just a little help spying on us.

    http://tinyurl.com/2zfcza

  • Nicademus

    Intelligence community more likely means a bunch of contractors who actually finagled a classified bid for a pointless program. I’m sure the words in the bid were really impressive though.

    Your intelligence budget spending at work.

    For more goodness google halfnium bomb.

  • DJ Larkin

    I do hear that Cosa Nostra makes good pizza, though.

  • Soulflame

    Can I say we live in a police state now? Or do we need more evidence?

  • Mortarion

    Forget the war on terror. It’s time to attack in Second Life in the name of the war on furry-vampire-demon-catgirls!

    Hell, I’d enlist for that.

  • Alan Au

    What are they going to do? Grief their enemies? OMGHAX!

  • TPRJones

    “Can I say we live in a police state now?”

    Only if your definition of “police” includes the Keystone Cops.

  • Merkwurdigliebe

    “Virtual worlds could also become an actual battlefield.”

    If that were the ONLY place people were fighting we wouldn’t really have any problems now would we?

  • Boanerges

    I think they’re there to ensure no more people are assaulted by flying phalluses. At least that’s their cover story.

  • Aufero

    I’m never quite sure whether to be encouraged or frightened by the complete incompetence of the intelligence community.

  • DLacey

    You’d have to be really stupid to discuss terrorist actions in someone else’s server. I’m sure anyone whose crimes actually make it into action can also send someone to sysadmin school to learn to run their own servers to plan their crimes on. The inanity of this plan, I hope, is in the reporting rather than the ‘intelligence community’ (both fields have some very smart people, actually; but the former is using their intelligence to write popular stories sometimes rather than to report actual facts; unfortunately, the latter does this too on occasion!)

  • DaveT
  • Amp

    “If that were the ONLY place people were fighting we wouldn’t really have any problems now would we?”

    Maybe we’ll end up like that old star trek episode where the 2 worlds fight via computer…then step into a machine to die when the computer says they have died in the game.
    Lum can ship his game with it’s own disintegration booth. You lost a duel..into the happy fun booth.

  • Viz

    I was always under the impression that properly done intelligence work never makes it to light, or at least not until the files are declassified 50 years down the road.

  • http://socialistgamerreview.com Ravenhawk

    In other news, I love that book.

  • Axecleaver

    It’s more likely the result of a bored first-year CIA analyst who wanted to justify taking his online hobby to work.

    Seemed to me the angle they were trying to exploit from the article was the money laundering one. So if you wanted to get a million dollars in the hands of an operative, you’d buy a bazillion Linden Bucks somehow (RTM traders maybe?), hand it to him in game, and then he’d cash it out to turn it back into money.

    Not sure how viable a laundering technique that is, though, compared to other much simpler laundering techniques that the Internet makes available.

  • AndyB

    It’s not just Snowcrash – try the superb Halting State by Charles Stross for a slightly different take on gaming and international espionage. ;)