When someone is throwing nukes at you, you can probably tell where they're coming from. There's only a few nuclear nations and, over the decades of the Cold War, they have developed complex strategic intelligence and early warning networks.
But what about a cyber war? Particularly the kind of intense multi-vector cyber attack targeting critical infrastructure that's been dubbed as cyber blitzkrieg?
Cyber attribution is hard. It's not impossible, but it takes time. Time that doesn't exist when your infrastructure is collapsing and you're thinking about resorting to what is euphemistically called a "kinetic response".
Retaliation against the wrong target could well result in disaster.
One possible solution, at least in part, could be installing direct "cyber hotlines" between national leaders.
The Moscow–Washington hotline of Cold War fame is the archetype.
During the high-stakes nuclear Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, official diplomatic messages took up to six hours to deliver. Presidents John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev had to resort to unofficial channels, including relaying messages via TV news correspondents.
The Moscow–Washington hotline was installed the following year.
This hotline was never the iconic red telephone of TV and movies. At first it was a teletype, then a fax machine, and now email. Initially, its terrestrial phone lines were backed up by a radio link via Tangier in northwestern Morocco. Today, a set of satellite links are backed up by optical fibre.
At least eight other pairs of natio ..
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