Norse’s IPViking attack map – This is how this century’s battlefield would look like. States firing at each other digital bullets intending to paralyse essential infrastructure as well as to steal sensitive information. (Map source: NorseCorp. IPViking)
Earlier today, the US Federal government confirmed that its database has been subject to a ‘massive data breach’ which it claims originating from China. According to the US authorities, millions of federal employees have been affected by the attack. The Office of Personal Management (OPM) the victim of the attack is the human resources department of the the US Federal government. Their databases store federal employee information, their job assignments as well as performance reviews and training. Most importantly, this database stores information of US federal employees possessing a security clearance who work in highly sensitive federal government projects. This wasn’t the first time the OPM had been a target of cyber attacks. In March 2014, attackers traced to China breached the secure networks in the department but failed to steal any information. This time it seems that their attack was a success.
The US is often a target of such cyber intrusions and attacks. In the recent years, there have been an increase in the attacks against government departments and companies-such as Sony Entertainment-originating from mainly China and Russia.
yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances – Susan Collins, member of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the latest security breach.
In 2014, another cyber attack targeting the US Department of Homeland Security resulted in the compromise of more than 25,000 homeland security employees. However it is not just the United States which is a victim of such attacks. In April, French television network and its social media outlets were compromised by attacks by a group allied to Islamic State which led to a closure of TV5Monde’s websites and social media accounts. In 2011, one of France’s nuclear power group Areva fell victim to an cyber intrusion. This is one of the scariest aspects of cyber intrusion, where a computer program hidden in the network could effectively paralyse the whole nuclear infrastructure of a country. Iran had a taste of this type of attack with the famous Stuxnet virus which succeeded in bringing iranian nuclear program to a screeching halt.
There are also instances where cyber attacks are being used for more concrete military operations. When Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine, one of the first things Russian army did was to attack Ukrainian law enforcement agency computers to steal information that could be used to aid Russia’s military operations. With the help of these stolen documents, Russian army was able to quickly identify and learn information about the battalions and weapons that the Ukrainian army was using against them.
Apart from spying and stealing of classified information, cyber warfare is being waged by states in social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. In one recent example in the New York Times, it was revealed the extent of the Russian propaganda arm in the social media. These ‘keyboard warriors’ would often troll or spam social media accounts in order to spread propaganda and sometimes false information.
Combatting these digital foot soldiers has become a priority among countries who are spending increasing amount of money training network security personnel and strengthening their internal networks and databases. Even North Korea, a supposedly hermetic state, spending large amount of resources to train personnel that could launch cyber attacks on its enemies. This was revealed recently by a defected North korean computer science professor.
All these developments points to the crux of the matter, it is the internet which will be the battleground of coming decades and it is where the battle lines will be drawn.