A Colossal CyberAttack On The World’s Internet System

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 14, 4:07PM EDT · Published Jan 17, 6:10AM EST

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The OECD has released a report entitled “Reducing Systemic Cybersecurity Risk” which argues that hackers could bring global financial and infrastructure systems brought to their knees. The shock could be so great that it would exceed the economic impact of the credit crisis.

“This report is part of a broader OECD study into ―Future Global Shocks‖, examples of which could include a further failure of the global financial system, large-scale pandemics, escape of toxic substances resulting in wide-spread long-term pollution, and long-term weather or volcanic conditions inhibiting transport links across key intercontinental routes,” the document says.

The only reasonable defenses that can be created to mitigate the risk of an overwhelming attack are 1) a rise in the role that military organizations around the world take to defend the Internet and 2) a great increase in the cooperation among nations to build a firewall against malicious and insidious hackers.

The military is responsible for the online security of government systems in some countries, and that role may well increase. Cooperation among nations is a much less likely solution. Governments have enough trouble deciding on trade and currency issues. Coordinated cyber security would force nations, may of which are not allies, to disclose to one another the code they use to block hackers. Such attacks begin in one country and are made against another. This appears to have happened last year when programmers in China and North Korea compromised US systems. The Israeli government may have done something similar to damage the nuclear development program in Iran by releasing the Stuxnet worm .

Coordinated cyber security goes against what many nations consider to be advantages they have over others. The OECD report does not take that into account. Programming is a weapon now, just as sure as tanks and fighter planes are. And, enemies do not share their deepest military secrets with one another. The cyber war is a real war for that reason.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.