CYBER WARFARE

Evolution of mankind cannot be understood without explaining conflicts. Last century witnessed numerous wars. Post Second World War, colonialism perished swiftly. Great Britain’s supremacy ended. A new world order saw the emergence of US and Soviet Union as super powers. The avalanche of changes materialized with the fall of communism in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe stunned humanity. Market capitalism fortified socialist China to emerge as a threat to US hegemony. Presently, China’s control over South East Asia and Indian Ocean is total.

20th century witnessed a great deal of bloodshed across continents. Two world wars, rise and fall of Cold war, rising tension in the Middle East, Israel- Palestine conflict, Soviet aggression of Afghanistan, Indo- Pak war, Indo- China war, war over Suez Canal and numerous revolutions fought across from Russia to Indonesia are glowing illustrations of man’s unquenchable hunt for power. Conventional wars, violent and non-violent revolutions were the modus operandi to accomplish this.

Human race is yet to comprehend the mystery of 21st century unconventional warfare. Security forces often failed to identify their enemy. This leads to victimization of innocent citizens. Polity is stunned over this mayhem. Fear is slowly creeping into the minds of citizens across countries. Rogue organizations still use guerilla warfare and suicide bomb attacks tactically to terrorize the enemies.

Oil wealth; allow petroleum rich countries to often force their agenda over its client states. This helped Russia to re-emerge as a strong regional power to unsettle former Soviet states and Europe. Venezuela is another major oil producer, which uses their wealth to buy out smaller countries in its fight against US.

Now, countries with malevolent intentions raid enemy’s computer systems diligently to choke their competence. This mode of attack is known as cyber attacks. Cyber attacks means, network and security systems of an enemy country is penetrated to either destruct the entire system or to extract sensitive and confidential intelligence information without using human intelligence or signal interception as commonly adopted. The methods allegedly used by various powers are Denial of service attack or Trojan horse.

Ø Denial of service attack means – attacker sends e-mail bomb (hundreds of emails per second) from randomly generated false addresses; Internet service provider’s email is over loaded and shuts down.

Ø Trojan horse means - unauthorized computer instructions in an authorized and properly functioning program.

There are many other methods also. (The known methods are listed below). Destruction of banking systems and telecommunication networks through cyber attacks will have catastrophic effect. Target country’s silence often acts as an impediment in identifying the culprits. The reason for such silence is the loss of goodwill among its citizen. No law can stop this war. Neither victims nor attackers claim publicly of their success or failures. It’s a dumb war.

Russia and China is often accused of cyber attacks. China sole agenda is to overtake US in every sphere and become a global super power. They use conventional and unconventional techniques to silence its critics.

Media reports of recent attacks on France, US, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, India by the Chinese and alleged Estonian attacks by the Russians are live examples of cyber war. During the recent Caucuses discord, there were media reports that Russians raided Georgian systems too often. (The known attacks are listed below)

Countries must develop the know-how to stop the rogue organization from conducting cyber attacks. Already there are evidences to show their involvement in cyber warfare. Recently in India, terrorist organization targeted unsecured wi-fi networks to send warning mails before bomb blasts.

The term “Cyber Warfare” is not properly defined universally. United Nations must step in to draw a clear policy against Cyber Warfare. The immediate commitment from all countries must be to stop attacking each other. Rescuing our globe from rogue attacks should be the first priority. Freeware technology should be used extensively to develop quality firewalls to thwart such attempts.

Over centuries, greed for power destroyed many a countries and communities. Russians and Chinese never accept Western geo-political positions and vice – versa also. In International relations, to protect their respective positions, super powers often play cat and mouse. It leads to strife and tensions. Until unity happens among major countries, poor citizens across the world suffer silently. Therefore at this juncture, global community must ensure that their activities are not self-destructive to our existence.





CYBER ASSAULTS

- SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-warfare
Known attacks:

The United States had come under attack from computers and computer networks situated in China and Russia. These attacks are named as Titan Rain and Moonlight Maze. It is not clear if attackers originated in those countries or used compromised computers there.

On May 17, 2007 Estonia came under cyber attack. The Estonian parliament, ministers, banks and media were targeted.

On first week of September 2007, Chinese hackers attacked computers belonging to The Pentagon, French, German and British government. The Chinese government denies any involvement.

On 14 December 2007 the website of the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission was defaced during its election. The message left on the website read “ This site has been hacked by Dream of Estonian organization”. During the election campaigns and riots preceding the election, there were cases of Denial of service attacks against Kyrgyz.

In the second week of April hackers hacked the Indian MEA computers.

Georgia fell under cyber attacks during the 2008 South Ossetia War.

Types of attacks:

There are several methods of attack in cyber-warfare; this list is ranked in order of mildest to most severe.

Cyber Espionage: Cyber espionage is the act or practice of obtaining secrets (sensitive, proprietary of classified information) from individuals, competitors, rivals, groups, governments and enemies from military, political or economic advantage using illegal exploitation methods on internet, networks, software and or computers.

Web Vandalism: Attacks that deface web pages or denial of service attacks. This is normally swiftly combated and of little harm.

Propaganda: Political messages can be spread through or to anyone with access to the Internet.

Gathering data: Classified information that is not handled securely can be intercepted and even modified, making espionage possible from the other side of the world.

Distributed Denial of service attacks: Large numbers of computers in one country launch a DoS attack against systems in another country

Equipment disruption: Military activities that use computers and satellites for co-ordination are at risk from this type of attack. Orders and communications can be intercepted or replaced, putting soldiers at risk.

Attacking critical infrastructure: Power, water, fuel, communications, commercial and transportation are all vulnerable to a cyber attack.

Compromised Counterfeit hardware: Common hardware used in computers and networks that have malicious software hidden inside the software, firmware or even the microprocessors.