A good indicator of how effective we will be against open source guerrillas in warfare, is seen in the current battle against Internet crime. Over the past decade, the threat has progressed from casual hackers breaking systems for the joy of it into a thriving open source criminal industry replete with micro-markets (bazaars) for project development. A good overview of how rapidly we are losing the war was recently provided by Neil Schwartzman, in his article, "Trench Warfare in the Age of The Laser-Guided Missile." The title is a little confusing, but the meat the article is right on target.
Here's some background. The similarity in the dynamics of these online criminal networks to what we are experiencing in the real world in Baghdad, is pretty clear. Contrast the structure of a Phishing network provided with Christopher Abad with the marketplace for IEDs in Iraq. In each case, a dynamic marketplace is used to produce virtual teams for entrepreneur financiers to accomplish specific attacks. Also, in each case, the rate of innovation from open source tinkering with basic technologies and skills is rapid and ongoing.
Self-Replication Changes Everything
Despite the similarity in how the threat has developed, the open source security networks used to fight these criminals (governments have been largely absent from this fight) have been successful until relatively recently (their rapid development of counters to new threats serves as a interesting point of comparison to the institutional response to Iraq and other places). Unfortunately, as Schwartzman points out, the integration of spamming, viruses, worms, phishing, and botnets have produced a substantial improvement in method for online crime.
Firstly, these new combinatorial networks now form a complete cycle that connects innovation with substantial financial rewards. Secondly, this new network configuration now makes it possible to gain huge leverage through self-replication. Self propagating bot networks now number in the millions of computers (and growing) and the sophistication of the attacks these networks can power is quickly overwhelming any effective response. NOTE: open source guerrillas have a less effective, but still very powerful, means of self replication through the use of systems disruption (see State Failure 101 for details).Response?
It will be interesting to see the response that is generated by this new online threat. If history serves as a guide, balkanization/fragmentation may be the result rather than the integrated government/private partnerships that Schwartzman advocates:The fight against computer-aware criminals is now at a critical juncture demanding we de-silo the false barriers between types of threats and the people who deal with them, because the nature, power and scope of the blended attack (spyware, spam, viruses, phish and bots) that currently exists is actively threatening the very foundational infrastructure and continued viability of the entire Internet.As we look forward, we can expect to see the threats we see developing online bleed into the real world relatively soon. The technology and the methodologies are now powerful enough to do real damage to existing systems through brute force systems disruption.