How great is this: in 2003, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had a plan on the books to launch a cyberattack on Iraq that would have zapped the country’s money supply. In other words, Saddam Hussein wouldn’t have had any money to pay his troops or whatever. Three cheers for destruction!

Now, the military never actually went through with the attack since President Bush and his advisers were afraid of the external financial ramifications. (Nobody knew for sure what type of collateral damage would play out.) Says one cyberwar specialist, “If you don’t know the consequences of a counterstrike against innocent third parties, it makes it very difficult to authorize one.”

What could go wrong in a cyberattack? “The chances are very high that you will inevitably hit civilian targets—the worst-case scenario is taking out a hospital which is sharing a network with some other agency,” says a Silicon Valley computer security specialist.

It goes without saying that cyberwar peaked in 1983.

Flickr

Do you have North Korean Cyberwar Blues? The latest news is that, though the “attack” seems to be waning, the Evil Doers have one more trick up their sleeve: they’re going to delete all your data? Or are they?

SecureWorks, which is in the business of warning people about Internet-related security threats, says some of the PCs used in this great North Korean Botnet of Doom are infected with a version of the mydoom virus. And, sometime today, these PCs are scheduled to begin erasing the data of the hard drive on which they reside.

And, just as I write this, it does look like some of these PCs are beginning to self-destruct.

What to make of all this? I don’t know. I use a Mac. (Hopefully Chrome OS takes off in numbers; the Internet is suffering under the weight of all these Windows viruses and whatnot.)

You can follow the news, as it breaks, on Twitter.

Matt Drudge is running two big stories right now: The Google Chrome OS, and the apparent cyberattack that took down a few U.S. government Web sites. Several outlets, including the AP, are already going with the scary-sounding “It was the North Koreans!” angle, but let’s slow down for a minute.

The fact is that no U.S. government official has confirmed any sort of attack. So to say, “Oh My God We’re Under Attack!” right now is a tad premature. The reports that are currently swirling around the Internet quote officials at a South Korean intelligence organization, with a smattering of security experts chiming in for good measure.

Second, even if there was some sort of coordinated cyber attack, how is that different from your everyday cyberattack. Quoth the Department of Homeland Security spokesman, “The US sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.” No need to jump in your fallout shelter just yet.

And lastly, just because someone attacks a South Korean Web site, when does that automatically make them the same person who attacks American Web sites? Just because they both happen at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean they’re coming from the same Bad Guys.

Just a friendly heads-up, is all. Don’t want any of y’all freaking out over what, so far, is largely nothing.

We here at Crunch may use the Internet for fun little things, like Twitter or Spotify (I’ve tried the U.S. version—it’s pretty great), but it’s only a matter of time till the Internet becomes just another place where governments can fight each other. Cyberwar, etc.!

Right, so apparently the Pentagon will present President Obama with plans to create a new “military command for cyberspace.” Details, well, don’t exist; the president hasn’t even seen the plans yet.

What can be extrapolated from that, though, is that the government seems to be taking cyberwarfare a lot more seriously. There’s still some confusion (read: bureaucratic infighting) as to who would be in charge of preparing the country’s cyberwar defense, either the Pentagon or the National Security Agency, but that’s a debate for some clueless CNN afternoon program.

In any event, I look forward to entering enemy chat rooms and running a middle finger macro. That’ll teach ‘em.