Cyberwarfare refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage
and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as
analogous to conventional warfare,
Cyberwarfare in the United
States is a part of the American military strategy of Proactive Cyber
Defence and the use of cyberwarfare as a platform for attack.[27] The
new United States military strategy makes explicit that a cyberattack is
casus belli just as a traditional act of war.[28]
In 2013
Cyberwarfare was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al
Qaeda or terrorism, by many U.S. intelligence officials.[29]
Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, for instance, said in late July, 2013, that
"most Americans" do not realize that the United States is currently in
the middle of a "cyber war."[30]
U.S. government security expert
Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), defines
"cyberwarfare" as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another
nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or
disruption."[31]:6 The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth
domain of warfare,"[32] and William J. Lynn, U.S. Deputy Secretary of
Defense, states that "as a doctrinal matter, the Pentagon has formally
recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare . . . [which] has
become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and
space."[33]
In 2009, President Barack Obama declared America's
digital infrastructure to be a "strategic national asset," and in May
2010 the Pentagon set up its new U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), headed
by General Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency
(NSA), to defend American military networks and attack other countries'
systems. The EU has set up ENISA (European Network and Information
Security Agency) which is headed by Prof. Udo Helmbrecht and there are
now further plans to significantly expand ENISA's capabilities. The
United Kingdom has also set up a cyber-security and "operations centre"
based in Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British
equivalent of the NSA. In the U.S. however, Cyber Command is only set up
to protect the military, whereas the government and corporate
infrastructures are primarily the responsibility respectively of the
Department of Homeland Security and private companies.[32]
In
February 2010, top American lawmakers warned that the "threat of a
crippling attack on telecommunications and computer networks was sharply
on the rise."[34] According to The Lipman Report, numerous key sectors
of the U.S. economy along with that of other nations, are currently at
risk, including cyber threats to public and private facilities, banking
and finance, transportation, manufacturing, medical, education and
government, all of which are now dependent on computers for daily
operations.[34] In 2009, President Obama stated that "cyber intruders
have probed our electrical grids."[35]
The Economist writes that
China has plans of "winning informationised wars by the mid-21st
century". They note that other countries are likewise organizing for
cyberwar, among them Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran boasts of
having the world's second-largest cyber-army.[32] James Gosler, a
government cybersecurity specialist, worries that the U.S. has a severe
shortage of computer security specialists, estimating that there are
only about 1,000 qualified people in the country today, but needs a
force of 20,000 to 30,000 skilled experts.[36] At the July 2010 Black
Hat computer security conference, Michael Hayden, former deputy director
of national intelligence, challenged thousands of attendees to help
devise ways to "reshape the Internet's security architecture",
explaining, "You guys made the cyberworld look like the north German
plain."[37]
In January 2012, Mike McConnell, the former director of
national intelligence at the National Security Agency under President
George W. Bush told the Reuters news agency that the U.S. has already
launched attacks on computer networks in other countries.[38] McConnell
did not name the country that the U.S. attacked but according to other
sources it may have been Iran.[38] In June 2012 the New York Times
reported that President Obama had ordered the cyber attack on Iranian
nuclear enrichment facilities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwar...
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