Information Warfare

I had the pleasure of helping out at the 6th International Conference on Information Warfare and Security (ICIW 2011) and enjoyed re-engaging my brain's security neurons. This year's ICIW was quite diverse, with a large number of countries represented and participation from both academia and government. All in all, I thought it was a great conference on information operations.

Although not my core area of research, information operations (or "warfare") is an area of applied computer security that also includes aspects of societal studies and psychological disciplines. In truth, information warfare is legitimized (state sponsored) hacking.

Something that struck me was that the US appears to be lagging behind some other countries with respect to organizing and training information operators. It is widely believed that China has a hierarchy of hackers organized somehow within its armed forces or governmental regime.  I also learned that Estonia has a volunteer "cyber militia", which I guess would be something like Minutemen hackers.

I know that various US government branches recruit students with technical skills, primarily via scholarship for service programs. I'm also given to understand that armed forces assign personnel to information operations work, but I think this is mainly in using regular IT infrastructure. The technically challenging work is relegated to contracting firms, who may employ white/gray-hat hackers as penetration testers and similar.

I don't believe much work is done in engaging the hobbyists and those with technical hacking abilities but without formal technical education beyond high school. In fact, it is hinted that many talented individuals end up in the black-hat community simply because they lack higher education.

Given the untapped talent pool out there, I wonder if the future holds the possibility for cyber-militia (a la the National Guard) and a new branch of armed forces aimed directly at recruiting and training cyber-infantry?  If the current trends in information warfare continue, it seems likely that such skills will be required. They would also be transferable to the private sector, which I think is an interesting thought to ponder.