The Chinese cyber assault on America

The decision by the US military to ban the use of all flash drives, CDs or other mobile devices to fight a virus that has already infected thousands of government computers is yet another illustration of the cyber challenge confronting America.

The Agent virus, a variant of the SillyFDC worm, infects networks and then automatically goes out to the Web to download various tools that can search for data or destroy hard drives.  The ban, which took effect last week and will last indefinitely, will present serious problems for the US military which relies on mobile storage devices to manage their data.

However, there are much deeper issues at stake than managing the comparatively simple challenge of a single virus.  Since the information revolution began the US government has always been playing catch up to other countries and organized crime gangs that see America as the fattest and richest target in cyberspace.