Cyber battles will only intensify
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US President Obama has issued a top-secret directive to step up offensive cyber-attack surveillance capabilities at potential overseas targets to protect infiltrated computer-security systems from destruction and advance US global objectives.
It’s not science fiction that threatens global security – it’s all-too-real cyber attacks that rely more on abusing digital drones than on using misguided missiles and bullets to overcome genuine, contrived or imagined enemy threats. Cyber wars may be to the 21st century what the blitzkrieg was to the 20th. Cyber battles can come in any shape or size – digitally and physically – and are already raging. The masterminds’ intent is to disrupt, dismantle and damage social services and systems infrastructure connected to the Internet – emergency services, financial markets, bank systems, power grids, weapons systems, communications networks, water and fuel pipelines.
The Web is far from secure, and there are a multitude of ways to exploit vulnerability, infiltrate unguarded systems by implanting codes and zombify machines with malicious software that can be activated later. Viruses like Code Red, Slammer and Nimda spread rapidly across the Internet, causing billions of dollars in collateral damage. Viruses offer “hacktivists” a low-risk/high-reward payoff because it’s extremely difficult to track down and prosecute the maverick cyberspace cadets who created them. Cyber attacks don’t threaten world peace – people do. The major problem isn’t about hi-tech capabilities. It’s because anonymous techno geeks abuse capabilities, seeking ways to dominate unsuspecting victims and gain control.
Charles Frederickson
Bangkok
