¶ … Norse Map
I looked at the live cyber attacks on map.norsecorp.com at 9:20 AM on 30 Jan 2016. As the attacks happened, the majority of them originated in China (more than 400 attacks were sent in just a matter of minutes) and the majority of the targets were in the U.S. (about 1000 hits in as much time coming from several countries in the East and in Europe). The U.S. was also the second largest attacker, with roughly 200 attacks on other countries in as many minutes. Every so often a massive strike would occur in which several dozen attacks would be launched simultaneously by China and the Norse map would convey this with dazzling graphics, lighting up the screen. The most impressive sight, however, was that these attacks are virtually non-stop. They are being launched every single second, often multiple times per second.
The attack organizations include Chinanet, Riskiq, Microsoft, Beijing China, Comcast, and the University of Berkeley among others. The target organizations include targets in Palo Alto, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco but the specific institutions are unnamed on the site.
What I find interesting about these attacks is their overwhelming number and that it appears that virtually every country is attempting them. From a global perspective, the entire world seems to be set up for cyber warfare and the site certainly indicates that this war is already...
Indeed, this appears to be a massive, global world war using cyber technology. Whether any of it is effective or damaging is the question I would like answered. I assume that Norse is set up to help protect against such assaults, but considering the amount of time and energy that is apparently put into these attacks, surely there must be some overall strategy.
What then is the aim of these attackers (on both sides of the Atlantic)? Are they seeking merely to annoy one another, to disrupt services, to show that they can do this, to seriously destroy cyber infrastructure? Is this just normal, par for the course activity given the day and age in which we live? Is this activity not really as big a deal as one might think, knowing next to nothing about the nature of cyber security and cyber warfare?
What surprises me most is that clearly there is a lot of organization going on in these endeavors and not a lot of secrecy. If I can get on the site and see what an organization is doing by launching a cyber assault on the U.S. or Canada or an institution in Europe (and vice versa) it makes me think that there is not a whole lot of shame felt by these attackers. They obviously do not care that anyone can see what they are up to. There is no hoopla in the media about this. It is as though this were just standard operating procedure, and so perhaps it is. Perhaps this should be no…
