Cyber-War and Cyber-Terrorism Defined

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

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

Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb (National Research Council1). The United States Department of States defined terrorism as: “…premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.” Terrorism not only occurs on the real life today but also on the internet. As the technology rapidly developed, there is an increase in the usage of internet, the threat comes along the way. Due to the occurrence of internet terrorism-generating fears to the public, the term “Cyberterrorism” was coined by Barry Collin in the 1980’s (Cyberterrorism Defined). The definition of cyberterrorism differs from various legal systems and government

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

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

Cyberterrorist attacks can be threats, intimidation or even a violent act for personal gain, whereas a hacktivist will use less threatening approaches like a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to take down a service in an attempt to promote social change.

“Terrorist groups are increasingly computer savvy, and some probably are acquiring the ability to use cyber attacks to inflict isolated and brief disruptions of US infrastructure. Due to the prevalence of publicly available hacker tools, many of these groups probably already have the capability to launch denial-of-service and other nuisance attacks against Internet-connected systems” (Mavropalias, 2011). This issue is seen within articles published through many al Qaeda websites. ‘As terrorists become more computer savvy, their attack options will only increase” (War on Terrorism, 2003). In a speech by Napolitano on May 30, 2012 to business leaders and government officials, said that besides "al Qaeda and al Qaeda-related groups," cybercrime is, "the greatest threat and actual activity that we have seen aimed at the west and at the United States. Unfortunately, it is a growth arena.” Napolitano cited a study by Symantec's Norton that estimated the cost of cybercrime worldwide at $388 billion -- more than the global market for heroin, cocaine and marijuana combined (Kalberer, 2012). This is an issue that has been a constant battle since 2012 when the Stuxnet worm was publicized. The internet can be a very reliable resource or a cyberweapon if put in the wrong hands. Al qaeda’s use of information technology have been deemed harmful to potential and established

Technology in the twenty-first century changed terrorism quite a bit. The evolution of the internet introduced cyberterrorism to us. Cyberterrorism can be defined as the intentional use of computer, networks, and public internet to cause destruction and harm for personal objectives.

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

Since 2010 there have been over 13 major cyber attacks in the US, the FBI categorizes the severity of the attack based on what could possibly be at stake such as information on US citizens or hijacking of critical information . Cyber attacks are classified as crimes committed with the aid of a computer. Cyber crimes are considered felonies, however most people who commit the crimes can usually not be found. Recently there has been an uprising in cyber crimes, in the year 2017 alone 9 minor incidents have occured (minor attacks can consist of malware and internet “trolling” which is a form of cyberbullying) and 4 major crimes have been committed. Most crimes consist of identity theft, robbery, and hijacking private information. Recently programmers have been able to build security systems that can detect a threat almost immediately. With a growing expansion of technology protecting information gets harder day by day. Cyber security is the body of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs and data from attack, damage or unauthorized access.

Cyberterrorism is generally understood to refer to highly damaging computer-based attacks or threats of attack by non-state actors against

A cyber attack was made on Estonia in 2007, on 26 April 2007 at sharp 10'o clock; government of Estonia was made the target for a preplanned cyber attack by some secret foe (Stacy Prowell, 2010).

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.