Chapter 2: The Cyber Wars

The text refers to a cyber attack allegedly perpetrated by a Chinese political movement against the US and other UN allies in 2007. That attack seems like a bug bite compared to the full-on assault that occurred in July, 2009, when a wide range of US and South Korean government, news and financial interests were besieged by a major Distributed Denial-of-Service attack. In this instance, it is suspected that North Korea was responsible for utilizing a botnet, basically a network of hijacked computers, to access targeted websites with the intention of overloading the servers.

Although the attack was not designed to hack into or take over the targeted systems, in this age of widespread internet usage, any disruption of service means lost productivity and revenue. Even the government websites, which are not necessarily intended to generate income, are susceptible to the negative impacts of these attacks because a lot of general government business is now conducted online, whether it be applying for benefits, bidding on or awarding contracts, etc. Shutting down the White House website only brings the issue home to the country's leadership.

Of course, this type of warfare is not restricted to nation-states. The tactic can be, and is, used every day by a wide variety of people, for their own monetary gain, or simply for the sheer joy of screwing with someone. Gone are the days of calling your ex in the middle of the night and hanging up. Now a jilted lover has a wide variety of options at their disposal. Text and email harrassment is a good start, followed up with a nice flaming on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. And the benefit of attacking someone through social networking sites like Facebook is that your message can be automatically spread to everyone on their contact list. Now all your ex-girlfriend's friends will know that she pads her bra.