Cyber warfareThe next Cold War has already begun – in cyberspace

By Conor Deane-McKenna

The world is fighting a hidden war thanks to a massive shift in the technologies countries can use to attack each other. Much like the Cold War, the conflict is being fought indirectly rather than through open declarations of hostility. It has so far been fought without casualties but has the potential to cause suffering similar to that of any bomb blast. It is the Cyber War.

When we think of cyberattacks, we often think of terrorists or criminals hacking their way into our bank accounts or damaging government Web sites. But they have now been joined by agents of different governments that are launching cyberattacks against one another.

They aren’t officially at war, but the tension between the United States and Russia — and to a lesser degree China — remains high over a number of disputed decisions. Cyberattacks allow these countries to exert their power against each other in an often anonymous way. They can secretly make small gains but a wrong move could spell disaster, much like the operations of nuclear submarines during the Cold War.

There are numerous forms of cyberattacks that can be used. Malware, typically in the form of a Trojan horse or a worm, installs itself on a computer and takes control, often without the knowledge of the victim. Other attacks can disrupt computer systems through brute force. For example, distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks involve flooding a system with so many requests to access a website that it crashes the site’s server.

Countries are also trying to build up their cyber defenses. Many infrastructural systems connected to power plants, for example, have been physically disconnected or “air-gapped” from the internet. Other defenses such as firewalls and security programs are in place in all government systems to prevent their hacking by outside sources.