Cyber Warfare Over the Ages

Cyber Warfare

Over the ages since man first took hold of a weapon and entered the battle field, the mode of warfare has changed drastically in every aspect. From close face-to-face lethal encounters to intellectual attacks by means of technology, warfare has advanced and developed to new heights. One of the latest forms of warfare, or one can say the modern twenty first century mode of warfare, is the cyber warfare. Technological and communicational advancement in recent years has been on its peak, with new developments being made at a very fast pace. Such advances have allowed man to expand the horizon of technological use to warfare as well, specifically towards the latest mode, the cyber warfare. The term cyber warfare can be understood as the means of making effective use of the vastly unregulated and independent internet-based cyber space to attacking other people or entities' technology or information systems that make use of computer equipment.

More technically, cyber warfare can be defined as a move that is politically motivated which entails hacking of data sources of others to primarily carry out espionage and sabotage. This type of warfare is based upon information systems and can be classified as a branch of a wider network of information warfare, but can also be seen as similar to the conventional mode of warfare.

Attacks can be made in various ways using this category of warfare. Some of these ways include hacking on to the websites of the people one means to attacks or bring harm to, sending out tailored viruses that can effectively dodge system security providing tools such as antivirus and anti-malware softwares, and creating malware or worms that can steal confidential and private data without being able to be detected by the party that is under attack until it is too late. In recent years, many people who are involved in activist movements have shown to the human world that how simple it can be for someone to destroy the other person without the need of lifting a weapon in the hand. Cyber warfare is not only limited to the use by or for military forces, but it is a mode of empowering the general public and making them to get involved in battles. This warfare method, like other modes as well, is also used for military and political purposes by governments of many countries to supersede their enemies out there on the global front.

Just like the free and unregulated internet, cyber warfare also has no limits or boundaries. It can be used by almost everyone, given that the user has a specific set of skills that are required to carry out an attack on their enemies. Since the turn of the century, there have been many cyber attacks on several various occasions for many different purposes. One such attack was the anonymous attack on the Iranian official facilities and systems that could have derailed Iran's possible plans to enrich uranium to create a nuclear bomb. This attack was referred to as the 'Stuxnet' cyber attack which came out on the surface around midway through 2010. At the time of this attack, Iran was involved in the enrichment of Uranium against the will of the western powers and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The section of the world against Iran conducting its nuclear enrichment process carried the fear that Iran might use this enrichment to develop a nuclear weapon that could definitely bring about a threat of a possible nuclear battle being engaged in the future.

Iran, however, kept maintaining its stance amid tough international sanctions that enriching the uranium was its right as a free nation and it was primarily getting involved in this activity to tap the abundant capability of renewable nuclear energy to help the country become sustainable in power generation and save the costs and efforts of using natural non-renewable energy resources like oil and natural gas. Therefore, Iran continued to carry out its work over this task despite increasing pressures from international states and unions to halt its processes indefinitely.

Midst their normal routine progress with the enrichment of nuclear energy, in 2010 Iran accepted that its nuclear program came under attack by a malware program that aimed to sabotage its nuclear research work completely. Upon detailed study of this 'Stuxnet' bug or program, Iranian officials reported that the program was heavily coded and contained complex structural programming. They believed that such a program can only be developed by the help of state sponsorship and blamed the United States of America and Israel as the two conspirators who had combined their efforts to develop this very advanced and multifaceted malware to achieve the common goal of derailing the efforts of Iranian scientists to be enable to enrich the uranium isotopes.

Although until now, no one has officially claimed to have created the malware program, it has become clear that some state was involved in using this program as an attack on the entire nuclear program of the Iranians. Many people have accepted the fact that this was an attack by one of the two governments, the Unite States of America or the Israel, and now believe that 'Stuxnet' was so effective that it is now seen as the first true cyber weapon (Farwell and Rohozinski 2011). Although it is unknown for a sure, but the obviously assumable idea for the motivation of this cyber attack on the Iranian scientists was to refuse them to continue with their efforts with nuclear enrichment.

For certain countries, cyber attacks can be much more consequential than just the loss of theoretical knowledge. They can be a direct threat to their day-to- day national security as well. An example of this is India. The country faced many challenges to the cyber security of its national security plans, which included web defacements and other intrusions, with regard to the Kashmir issue that it faces against Pakistan, as well as the testing of nuclear weapons in Delhi. As a result, in 1998, the Indian government embraced electronic warfare and information operations, allowing the world-class Indian software industry to aid the military in coming up with a doctrine in order to protect the Indian government and military database against political cyber attack. This involved the establishment of new government agencies, Defense Intelligence Agency, with responsibility of dealing with cyber war, psychological operations, and electromagnetic and sound wave technologies, and National Defense University, in order to train its officers in cyber warfare tactics and techniques.

In June 2010, the attack from this new type of malware became public knowledge. A firm of security researchers based in a security firm located in Belarus, with the name of VirusBlokAda received a report of a relatively new type of malware. The report was received by an Iranian customer of the security firm and it the initial complain from the customer was of experiencing repeated and unintentional system reboots. The system was actually a SIMATIC WinCC Server, a program made by Siemens for the operation and modification of the programmable logic controllers (PLC). Upon closer inspection of the malware, people at the security firm deduced that the malware was actually a Windows zero-day, which is a previously unpatched vulnerability. The malware was found to be so severe that the security firm informed the researchers at Microsoft about such vulnerability. Microsoft at researchers identified that the malware was quite larger than normal malwares and reverse engineered its binary codes to bring it into a form that would have allowed programmers to read its programming. When it became readable for the programmers, they announced that the binary code of the malware was extremely complex and had the capability to exploit a Windows operating system and gain admin rights for itself, spreading itself through a network and functioning as it wished. The programmers identified that this malware had used such programming codes against the operating itself that did simply exist within the operating system but were unknown to the computer experts at Microsoft.

Upon further research and analyzing, the programmers deduced that this malware had attacked an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility. The function of this malware became clearer as it seemed to target the gas centrifuges at the enrichment facility and attack at specific timings that had the target at its most vulnerable position. It became clear that the aim of the malware was to sabotage the capability of the enrichment plant to continue with its processes. Furthermore, it also revealed that the programmers of this malware had prepared this worm to attack this specific facility and had top secret knowledge that could only be accessible by any inside source or some external source that had top level intelligence knowledge, bringing the intelligence agencies of the United States and Israel in the limelight.

Initially, the state of Iran refused to accept that the attack by Stuxnet had damaged any of their facilities or research information, but eventually in November 2010, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accepted that the malware program, named the Stuxnet, had resulted in disruptions in their enrichment program and had damaged several centrifuges at their facilities (Yong and Worth 2010). This piece of information revealed that the malware program had infected resulted in heavy damage for the Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. The program became the very first of its kind as there had never been any cyber attacks that lead to a computer program resulting in physical damage to mechanical systems on a large scale basis as was the desired attacked of the program. Additionally, the malware program also infected the local household and office computer systems throughout the country of Iran. This caused damage on a very large scale to the Iranian nation and its people.

Nobody has come out to claim the creation of the Stuxnet and neither the actual intentions of the attackers have surfaced. But the attack revealed that the attackers intended to either sabotage or espionage the nuclear enrichment process being conducted by the Iranians. The complexity and intricacy to become such a damaging malware clearly reveal that the attackers had to be quite a lot resourceful and had strong support. Nevertheless, Iranian government has not held back in blaming the specific group of countries for attacking the country and its nuclear enrichment program with the Stuxnet worm. After the widespread impact of the malware program attack, the angered officials of the Iranian government announced that the attack was a plot of the Western world who did not want Iran to continue with its nuclear activities by indulging into psychological form of attacks using the latest means of warfare, the cyber attacks.