Analysis Of Cyber War Is Already Upon Us By John Arquilla

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

Since the onset of the first packet switching event that many believe to be beginning of the internet, no other technology besides the printing press has ever transformed the ability to deliver information. Although the internet is used by a large percentage of the civilized world, few Americans realize how vital cyberspace is to our national infrastructure. Today, we are faced with even more threats although it has been a recognized problem since 2009, when President Barrack Obama said “The cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. It’s also clear that we’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country (Obama, 2009).” Every industry that operates in the United States is dependent on the internet for some aspect of their business. Commerce, transportation, financial institutions, military, as well as industrial control systems are all interconnected. This interconnectedness has created vulnerabilities within their infrastructure that have increasingly become targets of terrorists, script kiddies, foreign governments and hackers of all types.

You did an excellent job answering this week’s discussion board question. I agree with you conclusion that cyber-attacks which are performed by nation states can be considered armed attack; however, I believe this for a different reason. When answering this question we must understand when an attack can be categorized as an armed attack. This leads to the United Nation charters which dictate when nations are allowed to go to war and retaliate in response to armed attacks. According to the United Nations Charter 51, 39, and article 2(4) it appears that any attack can be defined as an armed attack if the attack can result in or is capable of resulting in the destruction of property or loss of life. It is also stated in the aforementioned United Nations documents that if an attack which meets this definition threshold does occur, nothing restricts the right of the nation being attacked from resorting to self-defense measures including launching a similar attack against the offending nation. Using the definition of an armed attack as defined by the United Nations it is easy to see how cyber-attacks performed by nation states can be considered to be an armed attack. However, it is important to note that not all cyber-attacks by nation states can be considered an armed

The United States is under attack. To be exact, the nation’s power grid is under attack in the form of cyber warfare. On May 21st, 2013 Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Henry A Waxman published a report that provided the findings from information that they had requested from over 150 utility companies (of which 60% responded). More than a dozen utilities reported “daily, constant, or frequent attempted cyber-attacks” (Markey & Waxman) with one utility reporting that they have about 10,000 attempted attacks per month!

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

Nuclear silos launching warheads. Power plants exploding. Water systems contaminated. Currency devalued and locked away. Vehicles simultaneously going haywire all at once. That could be just the first 10 minutes of reports simultaneously reaching the President of the United States. How could all of these disasters happen? Simply put, all of these scenarios involve components which rely on the use of cyberspace. While citizens of the United States have been increasing our dependence on the use of computer systems in all walks of life, we citizens have been becoming systematically and increasingly more exposed to the possibilities of cyberattacks and by extension all out cyberwarfare. Is

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

Based on a article on Encyclopedia Britannica, the Department of Homeland Security is an agency that takes care of national security. The some of the agencies under their belt is the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), Coast Guard, and US Customs and Border Protection. This department was created after 9/11 for the sole purpose of fighting terrorism. In 2003, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security swallowed the former Office of Homeland Security. Nowadays, the DHS is a key role in advising the President of counter-terrorism strategies.

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.”

Do not give out your credit card information!” The first word my brother told me when I

Cyber-space and cyber-warfare are two terms that have varied definitions from between agencies and institutions. Since there are varying definitions of cyber-space it is important to accurately define the new digital domain where cyber-warfare will take place. A comprehensive definition of cyberspace explicated by Thomas Wingfield states,

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

The drawback of Estonia's information technology framework was that its defensive protocol was not much secure and could be easily hacked. Moreover, the country was much depended on internet.

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.

There are several different forms of cyber weapons, all of which can be used for either an attack or espionage. There are principally five common practices. The first of three attacks that will be examined is spoofing.