Chaos Program

My boss and I have an ongoing disagreement that sometimes flares up (loudly), about who was the better detective: Hercule Poirot, or Sherlock Holmes? The boss takes the point of view that Holmes relied on “parlor tricks” while Poirot used pure intelligence to reason out the solutions.

I contend (very reasonably and with only enough shrillness in my voice to convince people to listen) that this shows a lack of understanding of Holmes’s true skills as a detective. The famous parlor tricks – where he figured out people’s life stories by observing tiny clues he noticed in a glance at them – are NOT how he solved cases at all. Unlike the indolent Poirot who seemed to get most of his information by eavesdropping, Holmes investigated cases. He used disguises to infiltrate locations and spy on suspects. He had a network of informants (The Baker Street Irregulars). He studied shipping and train schedules and knew the map of London intimately, in order to understand the movements of people and things related to his cases. He did experiments in order to improve his understanding of potential evidence. He worked at the business of investigating.

To be honest, it’s been decades since I absorbed the complete Sherlock Holmes novels and stories and I never did get into the Poirot stuff because I find Agatha Christie’s writing style to be dull. Really really really dull. Maybe it’s a British thing. Odd, really, since my mother has everything Christie ever wrote. Most of what I know about the brilliant Belgian detective I got from watching the series with David Suchet on TV. I enjoyed them and often found the solutions to be quite clever. But to compare Poirot’s skill at thinking to the monomaniacal investigative prowess of the great Sherlock Holmes is silly.
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According to the Wall Street Journal, up until recently the United States Air Force was too stupid to encrypt the video feed from attack drones such as the predators used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I know that sounds harsh. Maybe it’s even too harsh. Let’s look at the story (original report here) and see how it develops. The short version is that sometime “late last year” (apparently December 2008) the computer of a captured Shiite fighter in Iraq was found to contain video from U.S. aerial drones. In July, more of these intercepted videos were found. The WSJ report claims that the interception was done with (or with something like – the writing is unclear) Skygrabber, software advertised as intercepting satellite transmissions of various file types. The price on the website is $45.95 (apparently was $26.95 a few days ago. Did they raise the price to capitalize on increased demand due to the publicity?).

According to the WSJ report, the Air Force has understood that these feeds were vulnerable to interception since the 1990s but did not do anything to encrypt them because a) It costs a lot of money and b) This kind of interception is too hard for the primitives we fight against anyway. (Okay, I’m paraphrasing, but the gist seems accurate.)

In their defense, Skygrabber probably did not exist in the 1990s. The Internet was less developed in those days too. According to Defense Tech the Global Information Grid used by the U.S. military to transfer data is 25 years old. One consequence of this is that security measures that are considered basic today are completely lacking. Defense Tech estimates that upgrades needed could run to $65 billion over the next three years.

Hackers work faster than that.

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Cyberwar and related issues have been in the news lately. Since the cyber attacks on Estonia during the Russian invasion of 2007 (see here and here) the topic is popular. Maybe even almost sexy.

Since there are lots of news articles lately (mostly without much substance, but there are a few links at the bottom of this post if anyone’s interested) I’ve been giving the subject some thought. The first thing I think about it is that fears are somewhat overblown. To date, I am not aware of even one confirmed case of a cyber attack actually killing anyone. That’s what war is about, remember. Even in Estonia, the cyber attacks were much less of an issue than the Russian tanks.

This doesn’t mean cyberwar can’t cause problems, including problems for the military. Cyber attacks can be used to target communications, to block (or alter) global positioning systems (see this report) and possibly change the behavior of critical infrastructure items like dams and nuclear power plants. In the near future it may be able to cause traffic jams or accidents, make hospital systems go haywire, redirect ships and planes and many other potentially devastating things. At least those are some of the potentials. Fortunately, none of that potential has yet been reached.

Yet.
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