[GEM Development] OT: Completed research paper on cyber warfare

[Shane M. Coughlan]

Hello all.  I have just completed a Master degree paper on cyber warfare,
and I wanted to share some interesting findings with you (these findings
largely did not make it into the actual paper...the remit of the research
was relatively narrow).

I was researching how different people understand cyber warfare, and in the
process I came across a lot of material on the subject.  One interesting
thing is how backward most of our computer network systems are.  Some are
lovely modern things, but largely really old software is running on really
old hardware.  Cyber attacks are actually less of the threat because of
this.

DOS is present on a lot of things (so much for DOS being dead!), and
particuarly in use is the Russian flavour of DOS developed during the cold
war (now called PTR DOS).  It's on a lot of their systems.

The thing with DOS systems is that to a large extent they were customised.
Only the core is the same between systems, and whole rafts of the networking
tools, monitoriing tools and so on were made for each system.  As you can
imagine this makes it nearly impossible for people to do anything to a large
section of a nation's critical infrastructure.  Oh, it would be easier if
they all ran WindowsXP and were connected to the Internet, but that's not
how it works in reality.

Anyway, on the conclusions I came to with my paper is that governments and
military are likely to continue to choose certain systems like DOS because
of the relatively high degree of protection they offer from attack.  Unix
and DOS have high utility and are proven over a very long period.  Newer
Windows technology may run Amazon or whatever, but it's not really at the
grade needed for infrastructure.  It's just beginning to arrive there.  And
it's pretty useless for the vast number of nations running older computer
equipment.  A 386 is not pretty, but it may be part of the reason your TV
works and your toaster switches on.  Indeed, 386 chips were being used in
part of the computer system for the F16 during the period 93/94.  Those
computers are unlikely to have been updated to any substantial degree since
then.

So.  Well.  I guess my point is that people tend to use software that works,
and in infrastructure and non-commercial mission critical that tends to mean
small, light and proven.  FreeDOS has a future for this reason.

If you would like to read my dissertation (which is about defining cyber
warfare and has a couple of typos), you can view it at
http://www.shaneland.co.uk/ewar

Regards

Shane

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