CYBERWAR: CONCEPT

CYBERWAR: CONCEPT

“After land, sea, air and space, warfare has entered the fifth domain: cyberspace”

On the first rung of this ladder are cyber­hacktivism, or cyber vandalism. This involves virtual modification or destruction of con­tent, e.g., hacking websites or disabling a server by data overload. Cyber vandalism is the most widespread form of cyber conflict and garners a great deal of public atten­tion. However, the effects of such incidents are limited in time and relatively harmless.

On the second and third rungs are internet crime and cyberespionage. Both are rou­tine occurrences that take place independ­ently of conflicts. The main victim in these cases is the corporate sector: Even though it is very difficult to secure reliable data, the global costs of these phenomena are estimated to lie in the range of US$1 tril­lion annually. Government networks with classified data are also affected, but are targeted comparatively rarely.

On the fourth rung, the term “cyber terrorism” is used to describe illegal attacks by non-state actors against computers, net­works, and the information stored therein, carried out with the aim of intimidating a government (or population) or to compel certain behavior. A cyber attack is there­fore only categorized as cyber terrorism if it results in physical violence against per­sons or property, or at least causes suffi­cient damage to create considerable fear. The potential scope of damage is regarded as very high, although there have been no real-life cases of cyber terrorism to date.

The top rung of the cyber ladder is cyber war. The term refers to warlike con­flict in the virtual space that primarily involves information technology means. The term “cyber war” refers to a sub-section of information warfare. As part of this broader concept, which aims at influencing the will and decision mak­ing capabilities of the enemy’s politi­cal leadership and armed forces and/or the attitudes of the civilian popu­lation in the theatre of operations at the level of information and informa­tion systems cyber war includes activities in cyber­space. Conceptually, therefore, cyber war reflects the increasingly technologies nature of war in the information age based on computerization, electronisa­tion, and the net­working of nearly all areas and aspects of the military.

Within the concept of cyber war, a dis­tinction must be made between three forms of Computer Network Operations (CNO): The deliber­ate paralysation or destruction of enemy network capabilities is called a Computer Network Attack (CNA). Such attacks may be complemented by Computer Network Exploitation (CNE), which aims at retriev­ing intelligence-grade information from enemy computers by means of IT. Finally, Computer Network Defense (CND) in­cludes measures to protect own comput­ers and computer systems against hostile CNA and CNE.

What will cyber war look like?

In a new book Richard Clarke, a former White House staffer in charge of counter-terrorism and cyber-security, envisages a catastrophic breakdown within 15 minutes. Computer bugs bring down military e-mail systems; oil refineries and pipelines explode; air-traffic-control systems collapse; freight and metro trains derail; financial data are scrambled; the electrical grid goes down in the eastern United States; orbiting satellites spin out of control. Society soon breaks down as food becomes scarce and money runs out. Worst of all, the identity of the attacker may remain a mystery.

Weapons of cyber war:-

Malware is exploding . It is typically used to steal passwords and other data, or to open a “back door” to a computer so that it can be taken over by outsiders. Such “zombie” machines can be linked up to thousands, if not millions, of others around the world to create a “botnet”. Estimates for the number of infected machines range up to 100m. Botnets are used to send spam, spread malware or launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which seek to bring down a targeted computer by overloading it with countless bogus requests.

U.S. detected a large blast in Siberia. A missile being fired? A nuclear test? It was, it seems an explosion on a Soviet gas pipeline. The cause was a malfunction in the computer-control system that Soviet spies had stolen from a firm in Canada. They did not know that the CIA had tampered with the software. This was one of the earliest demonstrations of the power of a “logic bomb”. Three decades later, with more and more vital computer systems linked up to the internet, could enemies use logic bombs to, say, turn off the electricity from the other side of the world? Could terrorists or hackers cause financial chaos by tampering with Wall Street’s computerized trading systems? And given that computer chips and software are produced globally, could a foreign power infect high-tech military equipment with computer bugs?

For the top brass, computer technology is both a blessing and a curse. Bombs are guided by GPS satellites; drones are piloted remotely from across the world; fighter planes and warships are now huge data-processing centers; even the ordinary foot-soldier is being wired up. Yet growing connectivity over an insecure internet multiplies the avenues for e-attack; and growing dependence on computers increases the harm they can cause.

Conclusion:-

          So summing up I can say that cyber war is technological form of war where the borders does not matters. There is no physical difference of areas only there is only gap of firewall. Cyber war is more dangerous then actual war as we don’t know who our friend is and who is our enemy? So we must try not to put sensitive information on online. By breaking up data and sending it over multiple routes, the internet can survive the loss of large parts of the network. Yet some of the global digital infrastructure is more fragile. More than nine-tenths of internet traffic travels through undersea fiber-optic cables, and these are dangerously bunched up in a few choke-points.