Just as the Internet has enabled eCommerce, it has also enabled cyber crime, cyber terrorism, and cyber warfare. Unfortunately, the international community’s response to these dangers has been seriously insufficient. Botnets have the potential to do untold damage, and they should be classified as ewmds (electronic Weapons of Mass Destruction), a term we have coined. We believe it is appropriate to have a category distinction. wmds can kill in large numbers and cause great disruption. Computers are not generally configured so that they can cause physical damage to themselves or their surroundings, though there is concern about scada systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) — the computer systems that control utilities and process plants in general. The cia recently disclosed that electric utilities have been successfully attacked. But even if all software and data are securely backed up, there is still potential for great loss due to an ewmd attack.
It was recently determined that a single personal computer could disrupt cellular communications in a city, and that a medium-sized botnet could disrupt cellular communications in the entire United States. A network attack that denies the use of the networked infrastructure could have catastrophic consequences in a modern economy that has become dependent on that infrastructure (as in the case of the Estonian banking system). Attacks on U.S. governmental computers such as those at the Pentagon illustrate the intent to undermine the country’s military defense structure. ewmds have the potential to be the cyber equivalent of a military blockade. While one hopes ewmds will never be able to cause the loss of life that other weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological) can cause, they should still be recognized as having the potential to destroy livelihoods or even entire economies, as could have happened to Estonia with a larger and more long-term attack.
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