A US Air Force officer has told the BBC that his country should create an offensive botnet to target any forces that launch a cyber-attack against it.
Speaking on Radio 4's The Report, Col Charlie Williamson said the US was currently in "defensive mode" on cyber-warfare and that needed to change.
"[Armies] have always had some form of offensive capability. And that's really all I'm calling for," he said
Col Williamson stressed he was speaking in a personal capacity.
Botnets are networks of computers which have been subverted by malicious code so they fall under someone else's control, usually that of a cyber-criminal. However, there have been reports of politically motivated botnet attacks on Georgian computers during the South Ossetia conflict and on the Dalai Lama's network.
Typically owners of machines forming a botnet do not know their computer has been hijacked. Home users account for 95% of all attacks mounted by botnet, according to figures from security firm Symantec...
"I recommend that we make our botnet - the botnet I propose - public. The whole world knows about it. That we exercise it on ranges that other countries can see electronically, that they know what we're doing and then they are going to be more likely to back off before doing an attack because they have to take this into account," he said
He believes that the botnet would be legal under international law, whether it is used against an enemy country or a terrorist group. Botnet controllers would need a "no-strike list" of protected computers, such as those used in hospitals.
And he argues that if a computer owner has failed to use anti-virus software and install the latest security patches, that machine may be a legitimate military target...
Now that's an interesting concept. Any computer without the D.o'D.'s
It says so, right there on their label.
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