What examples of 'war in cyberspace' have there been?

What examples of ‘war in cyberspace’ have there been?

There are various types of wars being fought in cyberspace from information warfare to activating missiles through cyberspace. Methods used in cyberwar is not a new form of warfare being witnessed in the 21st century but a strategic method of warfare fought in cyberspace with the advancement and development of telecommunication technology and satellite navigation. The idea of organising in networks and gathering information to attack may have been taken from ancient military dynasties. According to Arquilla and Ronfeldt1, the ancient military force the Mongols in 1241 fought accordingly to the principles of cyberwar. The idea was to have absolute command of battlefield information, ‘they fought like organised networks rather then a hierarchy’. Arquilla and Ronfeldt1 also argue that the warfare adopted by the combined forces of North Vietnam and Viet Cong which defeated the modern superpower United States of America was due to them operating like networks than an institution.

The Second World War and the use of the enigma machine to intercept and crack codes are examples of war in cyberspace, the cold war fought by the allies against the communists regime was a war without a physical battle field but a war of controlling information and manipulating it for the purpose of propaganda. The term ‘war’ doesn’t necessarily imply that the war is a physical war in cyberspace because cyberspace is a virtual space, it is not tangible hence the method of warfare is unconventional to battles fought with soldiers and tanks. To simplify it even more one can say it is a ‘war of controlling information’ or attacking and altering websites for the purpose of propaganda.

On the other hand, war in cyberspace has an element of physical destruction in the tangible world. The war in Afghanistan and Gulf war I and II are famous examples of how cyberspace can be used to launch missile attacks on the tangible world. Infrastructure attacks by state military and ‘cyber terrorist’ on electricity generators, waters supplies and transport systems will have a disastrous effect on the tangible world.

This essay will investigate and explore various types of war fought in cyberspace. Firstly, I will be distinguishing the difference between ‘Netwar and Cyberwar’. Secondly, I will be using examples to demonstrate how nation states use these types of warfare in cyberspace to fight its enemies. Thirdly, I will be investigating into how sub state groups use this type of warfare to launch attacks on states and corporations e.g. the rise of hacktivists and ‘cyber terrorist’. And finally conclude with a summary of my findings and the impact of war in cyberspace and the consequences in the tangible world.

According to Arquilla and Ronfeldt1, war in cyberspace is of two kinds Netwar and Cyberwar. Netwar means ‘information-related conflict at a grand level between nations or societies, the purpose of Netwar is to disrupt and damage what a target population knows or thinks it knows about itself and the world around it’. Suggested by Arquilla and Ronfeldt1, a Netwar will involve some level of diplomacy and propaganda also psychological campaigns such as manipulation of information for political and ideological change. They also argue that through cultural subversion, deception of or interference with local media, infiltration of computer networks and databases will effort promote dissident or opposition movement across networks.

Arquilla and Ronfeldt1, argue that ‘Netwar represents a new entry on the spectrum of conflict that spans economic, political, and social, as well as military forms of "war." Netwars would be different because the purpose of Netwar is to target information and communications. Netwar can take different forms e.g. governments of nation states against another nation state, government against sub state groups who are involved in terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or drug smuggling (Arquilla and Ronfeldt1). Netwar may also be waged against the policies of a government by group’s e.g. environmental, human rights and religious groups; ...

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The second type of warfare suggested by Arquilla and Ronfeldt1 that exists in cyberspace is Cyberwar. Cyberwar means to conduct military operations or military style executions according to information-related principles. It means disrupting or destroying information and communications systems. The purpose of Cyberwar is to know much about your enemy while protecting one’s self from being known, information acts as power and disruption and damage to the enemies communication and database systems enables one to take advantage and attack knowing one’s enemy is in a state of darkness. Cyberwar also helps a military or a combatant group to use less labour force on the battlefield because of the chaos that follows afterwards. ‘This form of warfare may involve diverse technologies, notably for command and control, for intelligence collection, processing and distribution, for tactical communications, positioning, identifying friend-or-foe, and for "smart" weapons systems’ (Arquilla and Ronfeldt1). It also involves electronically blinding, jamming, deceiving, overloading and intruding into an enemy’s information and communications system through hacking.

There are two different types of ‘war in cyberspace’ as I have explained above the first involves an information warfare and the latter is information led cyber warfare which has a physical and tangible destruction element. Cyber warfare can be fought in two frontiers the first electronically e.g. attacking the network system through denial of services, sending viruses, Trojan horses, dictionary attacks and flooding the system of the enemies primary server. Email attachments with viruses have been a classic example of how one computer in the network can be infected and through that one computer the virus spreads and infects the entire network causing it to crash. The other frontier of Cyberwar is using cyberspace to launch military attacks on a nation state or a sub groups. ‘Smart’ weapon system can be launched via cyberspace which sends a signal to sensors using satellite technology, cruise missile or a nuclear warhead can be activated, which then can destroy the tangible physical space i.e. infrastructure of a country.

Examples of ‘war in cyberspace’ have evolved and developed rapidly with the advent of advanced communication technology and computerisation of infrastructure such as command and control based software used in electricity generators and other vital utility systems. The first Gulf war was labelled the first information war, at the time few had heard of the term information warfare (IW) with remarkable speed thereafter the term became a central concept in the American strategic thought (Rathmell 2002:p221). In the first Gulf war the American forces attacked the communication infrastructure of Iraq destroying most of its transmitters and telecommunication infrastructure, without a telecommunication apparatus the Iraqi military and it’s hierarchical based military force thrown into chaos which meant the American forces could attack Iraq knowing minimal attacks would be co-ordinated against them. Leading up to the first gulf war hackers were employed by the American military to hack into the Iraqi information systems (McGuire 2005: lecture 7). This example explains how Net warfare and cyber warfare carried out on cyberspace had a direct impact in the physical world.

Another example of war in cyberspace is the conflict between China and Taiwan2, in the year 2000 Chinese hackers vandalised many government websites of Taiwan. And in retaliation the Taiwanese hackers plastered china’s railway ministry with pictures of the Taiwanese flag and the national anthem. After the incident the Taiwanese government respondent by saying ‘they have learnt the lessons of previous attacks and are now on a constant state of alert for signs of interference’. In august the same year hackers on both sides of the Taiwanese Straits engaged each other in a fierce cyberwar after the then Taiwan President, Lee Teng-hui, suggested Taiwan's relationship with Beijing be conducted on "state-to-state" lines. And in response to this statement a Chinese hacker posted a message on the Taiwanese government website saying ‘Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory and will always be. The Taiwan Government headed by President Lee cannot deny it. Only one China exists and only one China is needed.''

Taiwan is also known to have arsenal of viruses waiting to be launched against china while china on the other hand has 300 missiles targeted at Taiwan ready to be activated via cyberspace. States going to ‘war in cyberspace’ shows that the dimension of cyberspace is as important to defend and capture as the physical land. The above were examples of states waging war in cyberspace, now I will be looking into how sub state groups, hacktivists and ‘cyber terrorist’ may use cyberspace as a means of protest and a battlefield.

Cyberwar in cyberspace is fought in networks with an organisation structure that is decentralised attacks are carried out simultaneously. Rathmell (2002) argues that due to these groups being decentralised they are more effective in attacking a particular system and bring it down. The ‘networks’ exit to gather and get information through hacking some maybe hacktivists with political motives others could be protesters and the final groups could be anarchist.

In September 19993, a group of hackers defaced the Web site belonging to the U.S. embassy in China. They replaced the home page with racist and anti-government slogans and prominently displayed their name, Level Seven Crew, at the top of the page. They made reference to a "war of skill" against the FBI, apparently triggered by FBI raids against members of the hacking group Global Hell, some of whom also belonged to Level Seven. Level Seven and Global Hell is a breed of hackers who exploit or attack computers and networks for more than just the thrill and challenge, and for reasons other than money. They are activists (hacktivists) and they use their computer skills to make political statements and protest actions by government and industry.

Hacktivists3 conduct their espionage and intelligence operations by breaking into computer systems and by intercepting network traffic with "sniffer" programs. Sniffers are used to collect user names and passwords, thereby facilitating subsequent break-ins, but they may also be used to pick up e-mail and other types of network traffic. Once inside a computer system, intruders can search for categories of information and download documents and e-mail. The information acquired from such operations undermines the state if made public or given to other governments. These hacktivists aim to humiliate the government and in consequence public confidence in the government is damaged.

According to Denning3 in June 1998, a group of international hackers calling themselves Milworm hacked the Web site of India's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and put up a fake Web page showing a mushroom cloud and the text "If a nuclear war does start, you will be the first to scream." The hackers were protesting India's nuclear weapons test they also said they downloaded several thousand pages of e-mail and research documents, including messages between India's nuclear scientists and Israeli government officials, and had erased data on two of BARC's servers.

Another example of ‘war in cyberspace’ is between groups and corporations. In February 2004 the users of the open source Linux operating system waged a denial of service attack on the company that claimed it had the right to the operating system. SCO claimed that it had the rights to Linux as an open source operating system hence the users of Linux organised and operated a network of offence attacks on SCO. The virus used to attack SCO was the MY DOOM worm. Attack on SCO was fought by a network of people sending simultaneous messages to SCO server which lead it to crash. According to Evans4 My DOOM attack was the most successful virus in this form of cyber warfare, where a wickedly ingenious program persuades thousands of computers to bombard a single website on a particular date, he also added that ‘the wrath of the geeks’ is one to be afraid of in cyberspace.

Cyber terrorism would involve attacking the infrastructure of a country via cyberspace e.g. attacking the electricity generators, the military servers and other utility services. In theory this would be the approach adopted by cyber terrorist but there isn’t an example of such incident occurring. One could argue that ‘cyber terrorism’ is hyped just like the threat of terrorism ,the fear of terrorism maybe used by the state to legitimise more control and restriction on information to the citizens and Netizens.

In conclusion, this essay explored and explained the types of war that exists in cyberspace from state vs. state to groups vs. state and groups vs. corporations. War in cyberspace has become an important frontier in fighting one’s enemies because of the ever increasing use of networks and serves providing entry point to cyberspace. In the year of 20045 the number of virus grew by 50%, the top ten virus were: (1) Netsky-P

(2) Zafi-B (3) Sesser (4) Netsky-B (5) Netsky-D (6) Netsky-Z (7) My Doom-A (8) Sober I (9) Netsky-C (10) Bagle- AA, source: Sophos cited in .

The rise of viruses indicates that the ‘war in cyberspace’ is being enhanced and sophisticated with ammunitions that can attack and infect enemy networks via cyberspace. ‘War in cyberspace’ splits warfare into two categorise the physical war involving soldiers and tanks and the second frontier is Cyberwar. The increasing use of artificial intelligences and the development of robots transform warfare totally because cyberspace would be used to command the robots and missiles will be launched via cyberspace hence the virtual space will enable physical destruction of the tangible world. Example of such robot aided warfare is been witnessed in gulf war II in faullija, where intelligent gathering is carried out by robots.

According to Arquilla and Ronfeldt1, ‘war in cyberspace’ is an innovation in warfare they suggest that Cyberwar may be to the 21st century, what blitzkrieg was to the 20th century. ‘War in cyberspace’ is an innovation of having superior command, control, communication and intelligence and trying to locate, read, surprise and deceive the enemy.