Wired magazine makes the case for cyber war against Pakistan and India

Pakistan has developed the Babur road, sea and submarine mobile nuclear cruise missile. Mr. Arquilla's hypothesis assumes all these assets are centrally controlled and would go offline in the event of a cyber attack. Faulty assumption.

John Arquilla, writing for Wired magazine in its November 2009 issue, argues for a US cyber attack on Pakistan and India in the event that the US determines the two countries are heading towards a confrontation. The method of attack outlined by Mr. Arquilla involves US cyber warfare units ‘taking out’ command and control networks on both sides.

In its arrogance and almost stereotypical inability to comprehend the competence and capabilities of other nations, this preposterous notion advocated by Mr. Arquilla made me laugh out loud. And awkwardly so, since I was on a plane when I first read this story. In addition to contributing poppycock in print, Mr. Arquilla also becomes guilty of the pain I felt in my sides once I was done ROTFL‘ing! But truthfully, one would expect nothing less of an advisor to Mr. Rumsfeld, a man who will be remembered in due course as the worst SecDef the United States has ever had.

PKNIC .PK root server (and office) finally moves to Lahore

This is a 20 year old picture of Ashar Nisar. About the only one on the Internet you can actually find. Talk about being reclusive...

PKNIC controls domain registrations for all .pk domains. You would expect it to be owned by the Government, or at least by a Pakistani company based in Pakistan. Not so. It’s actually managed and owned by a US-based company run by Ashar Nisar, a Pakistani- American. Up until very recently, there were no .PK root servers inside Pakistan, much to the angst of the PTA, local ISPs and the Ministries of S&T, and IT. The potential problems that could result from this dependence on a non-local root server were not just limited to the inconvenience and slow registration, which anyone who has registered a .pk domain can attest to. More seriously, in the event of an authority or ISP outside Pakistan deciding that they wanted to cause mayhem, all .pk sites could potentially cease to resolve bringing .pk hosts – and a big part of the internet in Pakistan - to a grinding halt.

DAWN now reports that the Government, working through the PTA, has somehow managed to convince the reclusive owner of PKNIC to open an office in Lahore and deploy a mirrored root server (m-2.pknic.net.pk) in what once used to be his hometown. DAWN’s source confirms:

World Bank slaps Satyam with 8 year ban. Is the Indian Government complicit in cyber espionage?

Raju: In a heck of a lot of trouble. Or is he?

If the title confuses you, let me quickly catch you up on this story. Satyam is one of the largest IT companies in India and has been the darling of the Indian outsourcing industry for some time now. The company is/was run by Ramalinga Raju, who has been hailed as one of the leading lights of Indian enterprise. Well, it so happens, that the World Bank was one of Satyam’s customers, and their experience brought out into the open what we’ve been hearing various murmurs about; that outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly dangerous, and the service delivered by Indian IT companies is continuing to decline. Not only is this reflected in the quality of output, but also in the free-falling standards of plain old-fashioned business ethics.

While working with Satyam, the World Bank discovered that Satyam had been stealing proprietary World Bank information. Yahoo News! had this to say:

“The World Bank move came after bank investigators discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank’s Washington headquarters”

Cross border cell phone signals – AirTel removes some towers

This story caught our eye because we’ve experienced something very similar in Lahore. If you are in the Bedian, Mughalpura, Harbanspura or other areas close to the border with India, you will find that your GSM cell phone will pick up at least a couple of Indian cell phone networks! In particular, AirTel seems to be the one with the best chances of connecting. We experimented with a phone configured for global roam, and sure enough, AirTel actually works for both voice and GPRS data. Now, at least across the LoC, AirTel has decided to remove 10 cell phone towers to avoid this loophole.

Pretty interesting when seen within the conventional context of “Secure communications”. It is technically possible for someone to be in Pakistan when they are actually in India and vice versa. Moreover, any attempts to “introspect” voice or data communications done in this “over the border” manner will also not work.

Pak-India Cyber War?

The last thing India and Pakistan need is another way to wage war against each other. But apparently, that’s exactly what they’ve now got. Not satisfied with their confrontation on the Siachen Glacier, nor with the low intensity conflict in Kashmir, or the mutually sponsored acts of random violence in each other’s countries, the two neighbours have found it necessary to engage in Cyber War. Yes, that’s right. Cyber War.

C/Net reports: