Cyber Weapons and e-Bombs
Recently NATO's Chief of Cyber Defense stated that cyber terrorism/cyber attack poses as great a threat to national security as a missile attack. Strong words for sure.
Most people do not equate cyber war with explosives, but that is short sighted. Ever heard of TEDs or EPFCs? If you haven’t, you are not alone. In a recent briefing of 85 individuals responsible for business continuity in a major U.S. city, no one had ever heard of the two terms either.
TEDs and EPFCs are two weapons that create an EMP - electromagnetic pulse (similar to that nuclear explosion but less powerful) that destroy electronic circuitry. Both of these devices use conventional explosives to push an armature through and electromagnetic field.
The resulting pulse generated by a van size device could destroy electronics in an area up to a couple city blocks.
TEDs – Transient electromagnetic devices
EPFCs – Explosively pumped flux compressor
Development Assessment Cost = Low between $500 and $1,000
Design = Multiple websites had fairly detailed design plans
Skill Set = Moderate – basic wiring and mechanical skills. (High School Shop Class)
Detection = Low due to the minimal amount of special needs required to build a device. The only special material required are conventional explosives.
Defense = Building data centers underground and metal shielding as well as utilities isolation would be required to defend against such an attack. EMP weapons attack our computers and communications infrastructure. The development of TEDs and EPFCs now makes the threat of an EMP attack much more likely. These EMP weapons pose a unique threat to the electronic society and our national security and economy.
Can you imagine the stock market reaction in one such device was detonated on Wall Street?
-- Kevin Coleman
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"I forgot to mention the final point about back-up data centers. The real issue is the electronics that switch and reroute data from one data center to another are destroyed. So rerouting takes several hours to accomplish."
And how likely is it that a terrorist organization is going to be able to take out enough switching centers to have much of an effect? Once the data gets out of the facility there's quite a few switches to re-route through if one or more go down. One of these EMP bombs effect at most a few city blocks, so you'd need tens of devices spread throughout the country. You're talking about an operation that would make 9/11 look like organizing a little league game in terms of coordination, for far less spectacular results.
"Three clients are building new data centers and the equipment costs exceed $83 million so your statement about costs of protection exceeding the costs of the equipment does no hold up."
However backup data centers are also useful in case of fire, natural disaster, and more pedestrian "blow stuff up" terrorism. Building a Faraday Cage around your data center really only protects against one thing.
"It appears you think there will be a huge explosion by a van sized TEDs attack which properly constructed is not the case. The amount of conventional explosives used in these devices is small. Just enough to propel the armature through the excited field at very high speed!"
Actually I thought that was a knock against it. Which is scarier to you? Someone setting off some kind of device which momentarily interrupts the flow of the economy? Or someone setting off a huge explosion which kills scores of people and momentarily interrupts the flow of the economy. remember the operative word in terrorism is terror. Some company losing their primary data center just doesn't strike fear into the hearts of the populous like body bags getting carted out of rubble, and the later is a lot easier to accomplish than the former.
Posted by: Nied at March 17, 2008 09:16 PM