Video killed the radio star

Back when that song (by the Buggles) was the first video aired on MTV (August 1, 1981), I had scant knowledge of the computer, and a PC was right off my radar, never mind the Internet.

Today, of course, I practically live and breathe on line.

So, reading this report on CNN.com, I wondered if this is a real threat, or just more alarmist news?

U.S. at risk of cyberattacks, experts say

(CNN) -- The next large-scale military or terrorist attack on the United States, if and when it happens, may not involve airplanes or bombs or even intruders breaching American borders.

Instead, such an assault may be carried out in cyberspace by shadowy hackers half a world a way. And Internet security experts believe that it could be just as devastating to the U.S.'s economy and infrastructure as a deadly bombing.

Experts say last week's attack on the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in which a Russian military offensive was preceded by an Internet assault that overwhelmed Georgian government Web sites, signals a new kind of cyberwar, one for which the United States is not fully prepared.

"Nobody's come up with a way to prevent this from happening, even here in the U.S.," said Tom Burling, acting chief executive of Tulip Systems, an Atlanta, Georgia, Web-hosting firm that volunteered its Internet servers to protect the nation of Georgia's Web sites from malicious traffic.

It happened last week in Georgia (the country), and it happened last year in Estonia. What's the (brief) scoop on all this? Read on to be alarmed, scared, but then pacified.

No, don't be pacified.

Are computer geeks our new saviors (as well as the 'new' menace)?

Here's a story I wrote earlier this year for the Current, about the Newburyport company DNSstuff.com, which tries to stop this kind of thing from happening here. "This kind of thing" being cyber attacks.

“We’re just trying to stay ahead of these guys,” says Rich Person, CEO of Newburyport-based DNSstuff.com. “This is unfortunately only going to get worse.”

Person gave me an issue of Wired that talks about "the foot soldiers of the digital age." (Read the August 2007 story in Wired here.) These foot soldiers are not nice, and they sort of rely on taking over computers that belong to other people. Yours and mine, for example.

Writer Joshua Davis describes the first day of the attack, as Estonia's minister of defense, Jaak Aaviksoo, discovers the web is no longer working in the country:

An aide rushed in with a report. It wasn't just the newspapers. The leading bank was under siege. Government communications were going down. An enemy had invaded and was assaulting dozens of targets.

Outside, everything was quiet. The border guards had reported no incursions, and Estonian airspace had not been violated. The aide explained what was going on: They were under attack by a rogue computer network.

It is known as a botnet, and it had slipped into the country through its least protected border — the Internet. Ministers of defense develop strategies to combat the threat of missile attacks, naval bombardment, air raids, and tank advances. But a digital invasion? Estonia is a member of both NATO and the European Union. Should Aaviksoo invoke NATO Article 5, which states that an assault on one allied country obligates the alliance to attack the aggressor?

Davis describes it as Web War One.

"If the computers don't work, the bombs don't strike their targets," writes Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer, within the same piece.

Peters points out that the digital assault on Estonia was largely dismissed in this country. But he begs to differ, seeing the attack as a trial run. Seems he was correct.

Is the United States ready for a similar attack?

"If you follow defense-budget dollars, funding still goes overwhelmingly to cold war-era legacy systems meant to defeat Soviet tank armies, not Russian e-brigades," he writes.

But yes! Finally, he says, "A digital assault today would outrage and inconvenience Americans, but we'd pull through" ....

But oh no! "Tomorrow could be different."