Candidates say they’ll counter cyber threats

Both U.S. presidential candidates have vowed to take on the world when it comes to cyber warfare. But full-scale cyber retaliation might be hard to spot and even harder to count as a win.

“Unlike a traditional war, there is no end where there are clear winners and losers, no physical flag to capture,” said Peter Tran, senior director at RSA Security in the company’s worldwide advanced cyber defense practice.

If the U.S. were to ramp up its counterattacks on countries it thinks are sponsoring hackers that breach American accounts, don’t expect a sci-fi digital armageddon. The target’s electric grid might still work, and so may the ATMs. Think of it more as a creeping worry that simple things we rely on can’t be trusted — the machines that count our votes, the total on our bank balance, our personal digital files.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said the U.S. had the capability to stop the waves of attacks, which vaulted into the public consciousness again last week with Yahoo’s disclosure that information from at least 500 million customer accounts was stolen in 2014. Yahoo said it believed the hacks came from a state-sponsored actor.

“We need to make it very clear — whether it’s Russia, China, Iran or anybody else — the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information,” Clinton said.

In his reply, Republican nominee Donald Trump seemed to indicate the problems posed by cyber attacks were almost insurmountable.

“So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable,” he said.

One advantage of cyber warfare is that it’s reversible, experts say. In a traditional war the only way to destroy an enemy’s electric grid or transportation system is to physically destroy them. With cyber you can take them down, but once the conflict is over they can be brought brought back online.

“It’s potentially more humane,” said Matt Devost, managing director of Accenture Security and a special government adviser to the Department of Defense.

“Unlike a traditional war, there is no end where there are clear winners and losers, no physical flag to capture.” Peter Tran of RSA Security