CyberWar
I have heard a lot of hype about an imminent CyberWar and i do agree its going to happen. But i never think digital attacks will replace soldiers. I mean a team of Hacker's probaly could cripple a nation's power, Water and warning system's and this is something not every hacker appreciates. But what do you think about this? Do you think instead of a missile strike are we gunna drop a trojan? or are hacker's just going to become another accesory of war? You see it already Hack teams competing against each other. What are your views on this?
I'm seeing more technology in the wars.. so hackers could actually have more of a presence in the field… countering equipment trying to take down missiles and the like but i don't the a cyber war with virii will ever take the place of the men women and kids in the battlefields, blood is shed in war and i think it will remain so. Just my opinion:happy:
viruses can directly lead to death of hundreds of people through countless ways. from hacking missile launch facilities (balistic or cruise) to messing up GPS and navigation systems of food-carrying ships which would cause whole nations (like iceland) to starve to death, literally. this was in fact one of NATO's submarine command main worry to ensure in case of war against the warsaw pact nations, that the flow of food is secured.
well its back to those days again, when people must work hard to keep other people safe. only that nows its with ccomputers versus computers instead of subs versus subs.
Yeah you see it already the FBI, NSA and many other security agency higher hackers i just wondered. Because im a gray hat and i practice open warfare on my school ever since thay said this to me. "You got 100% on every test in IT this year… you must have cheated" soon afterwards there server miraculously crashed. The school network went down, 4 computers literally exploded (i actually switched the PSU from 110v to 220v) and im continuing my war. I just thought that others might share teh same view as me. Im no soldier but i am trained in 4 martial arts (add me to talk about them :ninja: lil_bro_92@hotmail.com) and i can fight with technology does this mean im the perfect digital soldier? because i have no intention of helping my country police the world. Sure if an Iraqi insurgent group killed my mate i would fuck them over with whatever skills i have but im not very patriotic.
Here's how I look at it. Think about everything that is stored on the internet. Now, what kind of damage could a hacker do with this information if he has access to it? Banks, stock trading sites like etrade, google, and if hackers had access to this and could manipulate it, it could be devistating. I watched a documentary on this actually a while ago, called like digital 911 or something.
in full agreement, and its only a matter of time before cyber attacks are used as front-line for war related attacks.
economical damage is far more devastating then killing soldiers.
already gouvernments use hackers for intelligence gathering, i.e infiltrating forgien gouvernment systems. In time gouvernments will be using large scale electronic attacks to cripple a countries economy. Just like an authorirsed verion of the russian attack on estonia.
Mr_Cheese wrote: in full agreement, and its only a matter of time before cyber attacks are used as front-line for war related attacks.
economical damage is far more devastating then killing soldiers.
already gouvernments use hackers for intelligence gathering, i.e infiltrating forgien gouvernment systems. In time gouvernments will be using large scale electronic attacks to cripple a countries economy. Just like an authorirsed verion of the russian attack on estonia.
that's right is the modern way to siege an entire country.
Mr_Cheese wrote: in full agreement, and its only a matter of time before cyber attacks are used as front-line for war related attacks.
economical damage is far more devastating then killing soldiers.
already gouvernments use hackers for intelligence gathering, i.e infiltrating forgien gouvernment systems. In time gouvernments will be using large scale electronic attacks to cripple a countries economy. Just like an authorirsed verion of the russian attack on estonia.
Didn't you state that the attack on estonia could've been done by a fifteen year old teenager?
Anyway, digital wars will never grow very large. In wars, shields clatter, swords wave, flags will be proudly carried to the front, names will become lists, lists become tears, tears will become peace.
I don't see hackers play a big role in that process.
spyware wrote: Didn't you state that the attack on estonia could've been done by a fifteen year old teenager?
Anyway, digital wars will never grow very large. In wars, shields clatter, swords wave, flags will be proudly carried to the front, names will become lists, lists become tears, tears will become peace.
I don't see hackers play a big role in that process.
i do. think about it. you have your troops on the front line but in some base there could be a group of hackers targeting key servers. it would be a major asset if the enemy found suddenly his communications went down or something similar.
anyway heres my rewrite of your shields and flags bit
In cyberwars, firewalls block, trojans sent, avatars will be proudly displayed on defaced enemy webpages
the modern war… will all american households proudly own a trojan instead/aswell as a gun?
Cyber warefare will never be a replacement for conventional military action. All it will do is add another theatre of operations to the battlespace. In most cases it will be used by civilian government bodies to disrupt communications, gather ELINT, spread false information and to delay mobilisation before the commencent of conventional military strikes.
The economic damage that could be caused has the potential to be huge, but once a country has declared full scale war, rationing and other measures would be introduced to limit this. Missile silos launch systems are NOT connected to any kind of external network, and as such cannot be launched via a comprimised system, unless the installation itself has been infilitrated.
Unfortunately, I dont think us soldiers will ever find ourselves out of a job, no matter what happens warfare will still come down to people having to kill each other.
I think DDoSing might be used frequently, and hacking may be used successfully against less developed countries or newer systems, but if you look at a well developed and maintained system it can become apparent that governments have a good record of keeping sites secure…
The CIA websites server (or is it FBI, can't remember) is attacked an estimated 1 billion times a year, yet hasn't been hacked in years and has pretty good uptime…
While it is highly likely that cyber-warfare can be useful it is also apparent that there are many cases it wouldn't work and nothing more than a DDoS would work in many cases, especially since once cyber-warfare starts to be put into place governments will start to invest huge amounts into security
EDIT: That said I'm not saying it won't be used much, but there WILL be a limit to what can be done, and DDoSing may be effective, I'm not referring to simply knocking down a website by that either, I mean if computers or the internet is used to communicate with troop DDoSing could be the modern frequency jamming… And of course intercepting packets would be immensely useful but I'd say that'd be secured by even the stupidest military
Mr_Cheese wrote: in full agreement, and its only a matter of time before cyber attacks are used as front-line for war related attacks.
economical damage is far more devastating then killing soldiers.
I'm quite interested to hear how you believe a cyber attack would be able to be used as a front line attack. If you could post your views I'd love to discuss them further.
The point of war is actually not to kill soldiers it is generally to seize or defend objectives, the killing is just one step. Destroying a countries economy would undoubtly hurt it, but it would not have the same effect as getting 'boots on the ground' in my humble opinion.
imagine how efective it would be is the countries gouvernment computers all get infiltrated and formatted.
or all of the countries websites, online services get haulted by huge ddos attacks.
banks get shutdown due to ddos, or possibly all funds within the bank get errased.
woudlnt be long after those things that the coutry soon becomes very messed up. the economy would collapse, hundreds go unemployeed, it would be germany post ww1 all over again.
i think computers could be hugely effective in a war against a digitial nation.
well, all modern countries,which means,coutries that have armies themselves,DO HAVE means,of waging digital warfare. they all have had these for a long time.basicly,they are 0day viri. this is the real truth,and to be honest,i guess,10 or maybe even less security professionals,CAN take any government computers down,anytime. :happy:
//darksun
SANTA wrote: lol but most hacker's are smarter than security professionals.
I seriously doubt that one ^^ however many hackers or SK's want to believe that they're more skilled than professionals because they can use an already existing exploit (which they'd never even be able to patch themselves) :ninja:
LoL @ santa :happy: a security professaional,would be some1 YOU consider to be a hacker :S lmao they themselves,dont wanna be considered a hacker?but, they dont get jobs like that for no reason? :happy: still: LMAO! also,what does it say about you,calling yourself smarter then some1 else? :S but whatever.
Mr_Cheese do you really believe a massive DDoS could take down the Pentagon or something, they have in the region of 1 BILLION attack a year, and have record up times. Also, if you did get in they use millitary level encryptions which you can't get passed. The serious stuff is kept behind a air wall anyway
i partially agree with mozzer. but its a fact,that people are very well capable, of breaking and entering into let say government computers. also,it's for a reason the US restricts encryption strength. basicly,the amerricans are very dumb people,who think money can buy you knowledge.which it obviously can't. and military encryption,is basicly not far from what we use? they are produced in the same laboratories,using the same methods. most of them come from RSA labs.which produced all Message Digest algorithms,and Secure Hash Algorithm…so anything they develop, can be broken with older techniques…like collisions. give some1 who knows what he,or she :P is doing,a foothold,and some time…and they can prove,US government security,sucks. just like that!off course,you dont hear shit like that on the news :S no,you only hear and see what "they" want you too? ("they" would be the world dictating US government.) i wanna make a bet,that let's say russian government, or israeli government,are far more capable,then the american governement, with much much less computing power,and technoligy and recourses, and that basicly says it all.and it has been like that,for as long as i live. any computer can be taken down. it has been proven lots of times,and will be proven lots of times more,difference is,that nowadays,you dont hear these things in the news,because it would be a major faillure of a government if, let's say,John Doe from here or there,21 y/o broke down a government pc :O so…it still happens,you just dont hear about it…
also,lots of sensitive stuff is not kept frm the internet!!!! i dont know what you know about bittorrent?i was developed for americans,by "some guy" for use during the first gulfwar? for many reasons,i wont get into now. but,that ment,source files,were in more then 1 place online? these files were accesible remotely? so… :happy: that's not completely true there…that sensitive stuff if kept far away frm the internet…hellano!
Mr_Cheese wrote: the serious stuff is kept on internet 2 i thought?
Interestingly enough, I was having a conversation with head of IT at the local police station, and he was talking me though their security. All police records are kept on a closed system. I would expect that military operations follow that too
EDIT to respond to other guy
They use 1024 bit encryptions which have yet to have been decrypted, so don't give me shit about them using MD or SHA
Those kind of attacks I would not class as a front line attack, they would disrupt normal day to day operation of a country, but would have little to know affect on military action. The attacks would be incredibly useful as a diversion and to sow confusion, but I would not view them any differently to sabotage and espinoage, both of which are not front line action.
Any system can be broken in time if enough effort is applied, but by the time the system has been compromised chances are whatever strategic gain that couldve made would already be lost. I am not sure if all countries follow the same protocols, but I know that our military systems are fully independent with no outside access and also have an incredibly huge level of redundency.
k, what about disrupting communications between command center,and troops? or apache's?planes that do airstrikes?even missisles? maybe,just sneaky intercept it… digital warfare is not a dream dude :S it's very VERY real,andf it has been for more the 15 years now. so,think whatever the hell you want. because what you believe is true :happy:
What I believe is actually quite accurate, having served in the military and intelligence for the last 3 years has given me a bit of an insight into the way things work. Radio interception and jamming is classed as Electronic warfare, Cyber Warfare is attacking network based infrastructureand systems.
SANTA wrote: Yeah it is VERY real i only just found out my dad (Ex-SF) is triend in digital war-fare. His techniques are ale-be-it a lil bit out dated but they might have worked 10 years ago :P
It almost certainly worked though :P
ya know, given that it was in the military and they had a unit/wing/division/WHATEVER (some group of people) devoted to it.
This is just my thoughts on this. I imagine that one day it will come down to the use of hacking or something of the sort to cause some kind of damage, however I don't think that they will ever do away with the troops becuase that is who fights the battle. We are trained then given missions, with details and then get guidance on teh mission and then carry out the best way we know how…
Now as far as how the government stores information. It is setup through different intranets, with nodes that never get let out of site, and are never connected to the internet or any form of land line, or air line. They are kept behind vaults and in secure buildings. And so on and so on. I imagine that if someone wanted to do something, they could fork up enough money and man power to get it done, but it would take forever for it to get done. As well as alot of research, which would lead to more research, becuase of how often things change, or get redone.
@mozzer, if they used 1-way encryption itd be pretty useless for storing data… theyd have to use 2 way encryptions of some sorts, and 2 way encryptions can always be broken.
With the types of encryption that the government uses… it is almost useless to try and form a key or something of thta sort…. becuase the algoroithim is always changing month to month, and the segments change week by week if not day by day… and there other factors that play into that, depending on what is being encrypted and also where the information is at.
I think hacking is jsut going to be a new strategic tool, i dont think it will have any effect on a tactical level, its too time consuming, I mean look at the US advance in Iraq, no matter what anyone says about it, the initial invasion was brilliant, they penetrated so deeply and so quickly, by the time someone had 'hacked' a system any tactical benefit would have been lost! But yeah I have a feeling I am going to retire not find out that there is no work for me :P