Cyber Warfare as the Growing Battle Many is Unprepared for…

When the term warfare is used it is often related to desolate fields, charging armies and exploding bombs. Historically this is largely true. Modern society, however, has become so incredibly interconnected through technology that it is difficult to really imagine a time without it. Many of the financial transactions that take place are now virtual and the credit systems, on which countries thrive, are completely digital. It is this interconnectivity that brings rise to a new form of warfare, which exists only in cyberspace, that is designed to attack and disrupt these transactions on a large scale. Cyber Warfare is a term used to reflect a large scale attack directed at disrupting the functions of a complex system. It can affect a single individual or an entire nation. However, one thing that has become a growing concern of many nations over the globe is how prepared they are for a dedicated assault from a foreign or even a local source.

The PDF written by a retire General Eugene E. Habiger highlights the need for the United States to prepare for the growing inevitability of a cyber attack on a large scale. Vulnerabilities can be seen today with group like Anonymous who are capable of launching crippling DOS attacks on major corporations almost on a whim while coordinating these attacks through instant chat services like Twitter. The internet has largely become a battlefield with the only safes zones being the areas that go unnoticed by the larger society. Cyber attacks happen everyday and happen with very little warning. They can install monitoring devices, access databases, crash entire networks and steal confidential information. This begs the question as to why, with so much evidence of their lethality, proper security measures have not been taken to protect against such attacks.

There are two reasons that are often held to be the cause of the general perceived apathy toward cyber attacks. There first reason is that unlike warships and bombs, the internet has such a broad range of uses and, as such, is not a visible sign of destructive potential. The internet is used for so many things in modern society that it is often elevated as the greatest of human achievements. These ideas are compounded with the fact that, while major attacks happen everyday, they are often downplayed or go unmentioned. This creates an aura of misinformation on how devastating or how compromising these attacks can be. The second reason is that there is simply no way to really prevent them, only defend against them. Much of modern security doesn’t directly target an attacker but only defends against the potential of attack. When the idea is brought forward it usually sounds like “not only is there a small chance to get the attacker but we can’t really even predict what type of attack could be next. Only defend against what we already know exists and take measures so that if something bad happens we won’t be completely crippled…” This has a dangerous habit of leading to a “deal with it when it happens” mentality that can sow the seeds of major disaster. This is not to say that there are not steps that can be taken to make a system more secure, it’s that they usually aren’t taken to the degree that they need to be. In order to adequately prepare for the growing war, countries and companies alike need to start taking steps to design security measures that will protect against potential attacks. As impossible as it seems, it is either work toward controlling these attacks or simply letting them happen.

http://cybersecureinstitute.org/docs/whitepapers/Habiger_2_1_10.pdf