America's Hacking Epidemic

In this day and age, hacking proves one of the most immediate and legitimate threats to our national security. Reports depict Chinese cyber-attacks towards acquiring American technology/intel and even possible interference in our polls by the Russians. With how reliant our society and therefore our military is on computers and technology, a full scale cyber-attack from even a smaller adversary such as North Korea could possibly cripple our whole nation. America is currently the world's strongest military not due to manpower, but due to the technological advantage our military has over others, making America even more vulnerable to being crippled by a cyber attack compared to rival world powers. Should a fragment of Trump’s $54 Billion increase in our defense budget be used to ensure America has the most electronically secure and technologically advanced cyber-warfare capabilities, Trump’s goal of securing America as the world's strongest, most robust military would be underway. With an upgrade in cyber-warfare capabilities, an upgrade in weapons research and development must be made as well in order to ensure a more robust

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

"All states possess an inherent right to self-defense, and we recognize that certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could compel actions under the commitments we have with our military treaty partners," says the report. "We reserve the right to use all necessary means—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic—as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law."

How can the U.S. respond to the hacking… could they hire more people to help control all of this hacking? The government should upgrade their firewall for it to take longer so they can stop it sooner. If they hired more people to stop these people, then it would be safer to use the computers. If they hire more people, they could potentially stop the cyber war and stop from a massive black out. If they upgrade their firewall they wouldn’t have to hire more people but if they don’t they need more people to stop him.

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.”

For a nation state cyber-attack to be considered an armed attack it must meet the level of force in the most severe measure and must result in or be capable of resulting in the destruction of property or loss of life and in meeting this the nation on the receiving end of this armed attack has the right to self-defense

America hacking epidemic. Hacking in America is becoming a bigger and bigger problem every day. Hackers/cyber criminals have actually hacked into the Pentagon, State Department, and the White House. They have stolen the personal data of an estimated one half of Americans in attacks on banks and tech companies like yahoo and provided WikiLeaks with the personal emails of democratic party officials, as well as generals and former secretaries of state. Hackers are breaking into illegal and personal information that isn't entitled to them. Being able to get into secret and personal information may not seem as bad as it sounds, but it can get you into serious trouble even just with the little things.

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!

THE COMPUTER FRAUD and Abuse Act, the law that’s been at the heart of almost every controversial hacking case of the past decade, is in the news again this month.

CNN states “the CIA thinks cyber attacks have the second greatest potential for national destruction behind only a nuclear attack”(Goldman 2011). This statement explains how big of a security threat to the United States cyber threats really are. There are hackers will hack important databases and collect important/confidential information exclusive to the United States government. Firewalls cannot even protect computers at this point. ISIS’s physical attacks have been largely mitigated but their ability to commit cyber warfare is troubling for the United States. CNN also warns that “Though nations are unlikely to attack our systems for fear of response from the United States, terrorists wouldn't hesitate. That's a worry, since our government is woefully unprepared for such an event” (Goldman 2011). Overall, cyber threats are a huge security threat to the United States and the country as a whole is unbelievably unprepared for that.

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 ethical issues surrounding hacking, stem from several sources mainly dealing with order and control, and information ownership. What is difficult to decipher from all the media hoopla surrounding the terms, "hacker" and "hacking" is both the simultaneous sensationalism and the condemnation of said activities. Of course just recently, even a movie was made and was appropriately called Hackers. The term and all that it implies has truly entered our popular consciousness when Hollywood has made a box office movie on it. As the advancement of computer technologies and systems of information become increasingly more and more complex in today's fast paced modern world and said technologies become an integral

The damage of a full-fledged cyber attack would be devastating, the destruction would be unparalleled to any other tragedy that has occurred America. Since technology is responsible for providing America with vital entities and resources, an unadulterated cyber attack would nearly fail the American economy; this is what is known as critical systems failure. Weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks present imminent threats of critical systems failure. Although currently Americas’ critical infrastructures are coordinated by controlled systems, majority of these systems are indeed connected to the American cyberspace. This exposes one of America’s most vulnerable spot amidst cyber security. Another major vulnerable spot within the nations IT security would be the geographical physical location for each of Americas primary infrastructures, as well as their productivity. Due to the proximal locations, the major infrastructures could very well be infiltrated by one efficient CNA.

John Mariotti, a well-known information-security author once said, “We worried for dec-ades about WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now, it is time to worry about a new kind of WMDs – Weapons of Mass Disruption” (Relia, 2016, 18). In this quote, Mariotti is stating that it is time for society to shift focus from worrying about, and defending, ourselves from nuclear warfare, to focusing on cyber warfare, a type of attack that is defined by J. Davis as “an attempt to damage another nation 's computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks (n.d.).” On a smaller scale, hackers are attempting to damage other users’ computer systems, or information networks, using the same methods. One of

Hacking has been perceived as a common act and scandal in news reporting. It involves widely accepted and ongoing controversy despite it reveals a variety of stories that are important and are behind the artificial facts. In the case of hacking in Dirty Politics, excerpts from private emails had been hacked from blogger Cameron Slater’s computer, which revealed some secrets and secret deals between Slater and some politicians in New Zealand. It therefore let the public know how Slater obtained and exposed some of the ‘big secrets’ of the left politicians, and doubt the objectivity of the blog and the direction of the voice. It argues that the hacking act was justifiable because exposing the activity they describe is in the public interest. This perspective is based on utilitarianism. However, the hacking issue in this case can be perceived differently via using different ethic concepts and approaches which depend on the standards used in different ethic concepts. Based on this understanding, the consequence of the hacking behaviour cannot be simply and solely used as an indicator to conclude this behaviour as morally right.