Can peace prevail in cyberspace?

• Position: Homeland Security News

The prospect of an assault on the United States through its networks has been a doomsday scenario for a number of years.

It has often been couched in real-world military strategic terminology. "Attribution" is one of these words. To launch a counter-attack, the United States would need to know who is trying to take down its networks.

In this regard, the best defense is a good offense, according to former Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Stewart Baker.

"We're not going to win this fight by building better defenses, we're going to win this fight by making it expensive to attack us," he said during a discussion at the release of a report, "CyberSecurity: The Vexed Question of Global Rules."

Baker's advice was for U.S. Cyber Command to improve those capabilities.

"That means we have to do a much better job of attributing attacks, a much better job of mapping adversaries' networks from where they are launching the attacks. And then we have to show there are consequences to doing that"

So will there ever be cybersecurity treaties or bi-laterai agreements as is the case for nuclear weapons?

The report, produced by Security and Defense Agenda, a Brusselsbased think tank, said the leader of the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations body, called in 2010 for a "cyber peace treaty." But his suggestion has received very little traction.

Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, told a gathering of Washington, D.C.- based defense reporters that she knew of no such agreements in the works at the State Department.

There are questions of how to verify that treaties are being followed, she said.

Meanwhile, some are wondering what good deterrence is if potential adversaries don't know what the nation is capable of doing? The year 2012 may be when the Defense Department stops being coy about what it can do in the cyber-offense realm, network security firm McAfee said in its annual Threat Predictions report

"Will this be the Year of Cyberwar, or merely a showcase of offensive cyberweapons and their potential?" McAfee researchers...