What a real cyber war would look like

Both US 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 US 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. In a hot cyber war, the first line of attack would not be like on Star Trek, with spectacular bursts of sparks flying out of computers. Instead it would be a stealth attack on the enemy’s military command and control infrastructure, to keep it from being able to strike, said Matt Devost, managing director of Accenture Security and a special government advisor to the US Department of Defense. A higher level of escalation involves damaging critical infrastructure.