Pakistan's 'cyberwar' for control of the web

In a dingy Internet cafe, Abdullah gets round the censors with one click and logs onto YouTube, officially banned for a year and at the heart of Pakistan's cyberwar for control of the web.

What makes SKorea cyberattacks so hard to trace?

The attacks that knocked South Korean banks offline this week appear to be the latest examples of international "cyberwar." But among the many ways that digital warfare differs from conventional combat: there's often no good ...

Risks of boomerangs a reality in world of cyberwar

(AP) — The Obama administration is warning American businesses about an unusually potent computer virus that infected Iran's oil industry even as suspicions persist that the United States is responsible for secretly ...

Israeli hackers attack Iranian sites

A group of Israeli hackers said on Thursday they have attacked several Iranian websites, a day after a number of Israeli websites were taken offline in the latest incident in a low-level cyberwar.

Cuba says US waging 'cyberwar' against Havana

Cuban authorities are accusing the United States of waging "cyberwar" against the communist-ruled island -- an effort that Havana claims includes an American contractor on trial for espionage.

China Telecom denies US web hijack allegations

State-owned China Telecom on Thursday rejected US claims that its servers "hijacked" highly sensitive Internet traffic on American government and military websites earlier this year.

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Cyberwarfare

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 although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.

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.":6 The Economist describes cyberwarfare as "the fifth domain of warfare," 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."

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 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.

In February 2010, top American lawmakers warned that the "threat of a crippling attack on telecommunications and computer networks was sharply on the rise." 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. In 2009, President Obama stated that "cyber intruders have probed our electrical grids."

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. 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. 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."

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA