That's the question in Washington as top White House officials ponder the possibility of cyberwarfare in the next big international conflict. Threat of cyberwarfare and its consequences are the focus of this ad for the recent computer game WarGames , based on the 1983 film of the same name. As society becomes ever more networked, information warfare Cassandras raise the specter of hackers breaking into banks, trashing power grids, shutting down gas pipelines and generally wreaking havoc on the infrastructure.
Problem is, no one really knows if anything beyond an isolated incident here and there is possible.
Proponents of the idea the nation is in peril often have deep national-security backgrounds. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre is one. Pentagon brass point to a 1998 incident in which three teenagers broke into an unclassified military database and tracked supply orders for soldiers and sailors. With just a few keystrokes, they say, the kids could have sabotaged critical supply links. Likewise, Newsweek reports, hackers working for the Russian Academy of Sciences penetrated Defense Department computers earlier this summer, making off with an unspecified haul of information.