“War. War never changes.” These are the iconic opening lines of Bethesda’s hit game franchise Fallout, but are they accurate? War has expanded into a new electronic frontier, where the soldiers are hackers and the targets are anything with wires. To understand this new kind of war, we must analyze what it is, who has this power, and how they can use it. Cyberwarfare has the potential to do to global politics what nuclear warfare did half a century ago. To begin with, it is essential to understand what cyberwar is. “Cyber” essentially refers to anything electronic or internet-based. A cyber attack is when one entity hacks into the resources of another entity. This resource could be almost anything- an email inbox, a bank account, a stoplight, a factory, a power grid, or even a nuclear device. Cyberwarfare is to cyber attacks as nuclear war is to nuclear missiles; an exchange between two nations in an attempt for one to damage another. Cyber attacks come in two main forms: espionage and sabotage. In an espionage operation, the objective is to gain intelligence on strategic resources. For example, imagine a country hacking into a communication network to survey enemy troop movements or electronically stealing the blueprints for a missile. The other kind, sabotage, is much more direct. In this case, the objective is to either take control over or destroy an asset. This can range from something as basic as shutting down a website to something as massive and destructive as
With cyber war, nations are able to skip the battlefield. Gone are the days where troops line up across from each other hoping to do damage to the other. Clarke explains that people, industries, governments, companies and organizations can be possible targets and are vulnerable to these attacks. Keeping that in mind should help these targets become defensive minded and shield off attacks before they happen. As we all know, the prevention is better than the
Pfleeger, S. Pfleeger, and Margulies (2015) outline possible examples of cyber warfare between Canada and China (p. 844). According to Pfleeger, S. Pfleeger, and Margulies (2015), “the Canadian government revealed that several of its national departments had been victims of a cyber attack…” (p. 844). Eventually, the attack was unofficially traced to a computer in China (p. 844). Cyber warfare can be used negatively and positively. It is evident that China was seeking to gain protected information form Canada. Although a purpose of cyber warfare, it is not a conventional way of obtaining information. Additionally, cyber warfare can be used to collect intelligence on an enemy. Anyone seeking to gather intelligence on another individual or group can launch a cyber attack that gains access to protected files. This could be used to help future militant operations or expose critical information. Lastly, cyber warfare can be used to test systems internally. Acting with no malicious intent, “insiders” can utilizing cyber warfare tactics to attack their own cyber security barriers in order to test the strength of their systems. Seeking to expose the vulnerabilities in a system that contains important assets without actually harming the assets provides the system a diagnosis of what needs to be strengths and fixed. Identifying the problem or threats before an actual attack can ultimately save the protected
In “Cyber war is Already Upon Us” by John Arquilla. Arquilla argues that “cyber war has arrived” and there needs to be focus on what can be done to control it (Arquilla 4). Arquilla provides examples of cyber attacks that he considers to be instances of cyber war to argue his point. To be considered an act of war, an attack must be potentially violent, purposeful, and political (Lecture 20. Slide 5). Many of the attacks that Arquilla refers to were purposeful and political, making them comparable to specific battles within a war. However, they should not be classified as entire wars by themselves because traditionally war is defined as a period of ongoing conflict and not one specific attack. While cyber war is a possibility, nothing in
Clarke and Knake use a mixed method research approach in Cyber War to support their hypothesis that offensive prowess is meaningless without solid defense in cyberspace, and that the United States need immediately fix our defensive cyber shortfalls, or face apocalyptic doom. Specifically, the authors define ‘cyber war’ as “actions by a nation state to penetrate another nation’s computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.” This infers that they are really talking about ‘warfare’ and
Cyberattacks can range from instantaneous to time-delayed and staged in several waves. Attackers can often go as anonymous and can even frame other people. There are also no clear ways to figure out an attacker’s motive or if they are acting alone or as a group. Due to the open-nature of the Internet, it is easier to organize an attack rather than defend against one. Developed countries are also more prone to cyberattacks because of their heavy reliance on technology. Furthermore, many countries categorize cyberthreats as a law enforcement issue rather than a national security threat. This means they are more focused on a set trial and conviction based on criminal intent and a criminal act. Meanwhile, a national security threat can be dealt with based on the severity of the situation. Overall, there is no global consensus on how to effectively deal with
In order to properly answer the question posed we must first define what cyber-war and cyber-terrorism are. The Oxford Dictionaries defines cyber-war as “The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of communication systems by another state or organization:” Although there is no dictionary definition of cyber-terrorism, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has defined it as “the use of computer network tools to shut down critical national infrastructures (e.g., energy, transportation, government operations) or to coerce or intimidate a government or civilian population.” The author defines cyber terror as “the intimidation of civilian enterprise through the use of high technology to bring about political, religious, or ideological aims, actions that result in disabling or deleting critical infrastructure data or information.”
Adam Segal’s “The Hacked World Order” reveals many prevalent issues in today’s technologically centered society. Starting at Year Zero, June 2012 to June 2013, the battle over cyberspace witnessed world-changing cyberattacks. This was accomplished due to the fact that nearly 75% of the world’s population has easy access to a mobile phone, and the Internet connects nearly 40% of the total human population, which is nearly 2.7 billion people. With that being said, cyberattacks are becoming a more realistic form of terror.
The Fallout franchise is nearly 20 years old, but the history of the series goes back far more than 20 years. While Fallout can easily be considered the studios most successful franchise, their legacy goes beyond the post apocalyptic, being publishers of such games as Descent 3, Baldur’s Gate, and the developers of Wasteland. Baldur’s Gate and Descent 3 certainly helped shape Interplay into the developers they would eventually become, but it was Wasteland, first released in 1988 on the Apple 2 computer, that really laid the foundation for Fallout. Not only did Wasteland pave the way for Fallout, it nearly single handedly brought a genre to mainstream audiences.
Defining cyber-warfare is also important but suffers from the same lack of continuity between United States military branches and government agencies. Schaap lists varying terminology used ranging from the Department of Defense’s definition which states, “the employment of cyber capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve military objectives or effects through cyber-space” to the Air Force’s definition, “the integrated planning and employment
Most nations today fear terror attacks that include bombing use of reinforcements like machines guns and other firearms. This is because terror attacks most of the times leave many people dead and others disabled while others are left without families. However, there is another attack today in many nations that can be destructive like a terror attack and this is the cyber-attack and threats. Cyber-attacks can be responsible for large mass destructions by making all systems connected to cyber networks fail to work (Rhodes 20). An example is the Morris worm that affected the world cyber infrastructures and caused them to slow down to a position of being impractical. Therefore, as a result of these cyber-attacks resources are being established and designed to help counter the attacks.
Cyber warfare requires intellect not military might and a country does not have to be a military superpower to wage a cyber attack. Cyber attack tracks are much easier to cover and are easily attributable to another entity. While cyber attacks are only recently been declared by our military and political leadership as acts of war, compared to an actual physical military attack on another country life can go on as usual for most of the citizens on both sides of the conflict without the slightest idea that their country is at war. It does not cost billions of dollars to run or manage and is hardly a long-term commitment of hundreds of thousands of troops and the logistics to support them and their equipment at the front lines. In case of Iran, a cyber attack was the most viable option available to global powers because the Iranian regime did not hesitate to make threats against the United States and Israel should it have been attacked militarily to make it stop trying to produce nuclear
Cyberterrorism is generally understood to refer to highly damaging computer-based attacks or threats of attack by non-state actors against
Cyber warfare attacks can disable official websites and networks, disrupt or disable essential services, steal or alter classified data, and cripple financial systems -- among many other possibilities (definition of cyberwarfare) “.The Tech Target definition includes no reference of nation states. That is because cyber warfare has such a low barrier to entry, a teenager can effectively shut down or damage thousands or millions of dollars of digital infrastructure, something that a real world counterpart would take years to plan, would take weeks, and the only tools needed are a mouse, keyboard, and some type of motivation. Cyber warfare is constantly evolving, constantly becoming more of a threat and is, in fact, being employed right now as this sentence is being read.
Cyber crime is defined as any crime that involves a computer and network. Individuals, businesses and government agencies around the world constantly face threats to their medical information, consumer data, as well as company trade information and military decisions. Cyber security specialists are professionals that are specifically trained to protect individuals and organizations from cyber crime, hackers and scammers.
The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines cyber security measures taken to protect a computer or computer system (as on the Internet) against unauthorized access or attack Most people think that hackers are just people that want to mess up your computer, but real hackers break into systems because they want to see what they can do, then they might leave a message on the victims computer, but that’s it. So, the computer security people protect from those other hackers that want to mess up peoples computers. The means we take can as individual to protect ourselves in the cyber world is be anyomous on websites, don’t post your personal information ,have virus protection install on your computer, get spy