Kent's Imperative writes about The Wizards War and a possible type of 5GW.
First the Cause:
Wretchard in particular applies an apt name: the Wizard War. This captures, in succinct form, the alienation the typical man on the street might feel in the event of such a war. To be sure, Everyman knows all about the interwebs, and the tubes, and the magic motion picture music box thing that exists to feed their iPods and cameraphones. But the technical understanding of higher level cyber environment dependencies exists at about the same level of comforting abstraction (the legions of Slashdot and the rest of the technical blogsphere aside.) So when more than one banks computers go down, and the panic begins to set in, Everyman will be facing a shattering of illusions for which he is mentally unprepared. The loss of confidence will have a far greater effect than any mere temporary disruption, however mass.
Then the possible 5GW opening:
It is in the layers of these abstractions that 5th generation warfare (5GW) lurks and hides. Trying to unpack the complexity of the issues involved in facing a concerted series of attacks against what is our collective hallucination of cyberspace (in Gibson’s terms) begins to take on the character of a Jesuit debating society.
I called something similar to this "hiding among the crazies". It is Analysis Paralysis as 5GW opening. It is learned helplessness as 5GW opening. It is forced alienation (well hello again Uncle Karl) as 5GW vector into the mind.
Speaking of Estonia...and recently, of OpenID, Planet OpenID's Simon Willison has been reporting on the OpenID use by Estonia:
Apparently, Simon Willison was jumping the gun. But can we see where this is leading? Much of the focus on creating Virtual ID's is driven by necessity in our globalizing, Internet-charged world; but the risks are as profound as the necessity may be becoming. What happens when the perceived necessity leap-frogs over the perceived risk? Funny, I remember the paranoia when 1) credit cards and then 2) supermarket product scanners hit the scene. Yet the possibility for unsafe leap-frogging persists.
I imagine that such a leap-frog shift would produce two results, broadly speaking. 4GW-style attacks would occur as clever individuals and organizations sought to reap benefits from the shift, little caring how obvious their efforts became (as long as they could keep innovating to stay one step ahead of the policing.) But a 5GW org would want people to feel safe and secure in depending upon virtual identities while the 5GWers capitalized on the shift and vulnerabilities.
There is a big problem in the information security world on authentication (make it cheap, make it fool proof, have the property of non-repudiation).
There is a lot of room for exploitation.