Introduction to Cyber-Warfare - Proiect SEMPER FIDELIS

IntroductionIt is 2006. An American businessman sitsdown at his computer to check his e-mail.A mysterious message from an “Israelcyber-terrorist hunter” claims thatHezbollah has hijacked one of his company’sIP addresses in order to disseminate theirpropaganda on the Internet. 1 Not taking itseriously, but just to be sure, he calls his IToffice. A few hours later, they confirm thescary truth; the Israeli sender was correct—one of the world’s most fervent insurgentgroups had used his IT infrastructure fortheir strategic communication.Two years later. The political situation betweenGeorgia and Russia becomes nervewrackingas tensions rise over Georgia’srecent hostilities with South Ossetia. Reportsindicate that Russian armor formations areamassing near the border poised to invadethe Western-friendly Caucasus state. Suddenly,Georgia is hit with a massive distributeddenial of service attack (DDoS) againsttheir main Internet servers 2 —just about severingtheir ability to communicate to the outsideworld. The Georgians, now unable totell their story to the rest of the world, arefaced with an unencumbered Russian militarycrossing the border one day after thecyber attack.It is 2009. Iranian scientists at the NatanzFuel Enrichment Plant have been scratchingtheir heads for months. Even though theyhave nearly doubled the number of centrifuges,the amount of enriched Uranium producedhas been stagnant—and worse, theyare running out of ideas on how to fix theproblem. Tests ruled out mechanical andelectronic failure. Further, the Siemens Step7 software reports that the controller cardsare receiving the proper instructions. The scientistsare mystified. Then a small Belarusiansecurity firm discovers a piece of malwarehidden on a USB drive of the computer thathosts the controller software. As it turns out,this stealthy piece of software, named“Stuxnet,” has been tampering with theIranian machinery for months. 3Still in 2009. In the neighboring country ofIraq, U.S. soldiers tasked with counterinsurgencyoperations raid a house inhabitedby a member of a Shi’ite insurgent group. Inaddition to finding weapons and Shi’ite insurgentpropaganda, they confiscate a computer.Booting it up, they discover scores of Predatorvideos 4 —the insurgent had somehow beenable to see everything the mightiest unmannedaircraft was looking at—in real time.It is 2010. The Tunisian government hasjust been hacked and numerous sensitivee-mails are published on the Internet forthe world to see 5 —imposing a twenty-firstcentury version of Glasnost on the NorthAfrican country. The responsible hackers,though savvy, are not affiliated with a governmentor traditional organization. Theyare simply an agglomeration of self-selectedindividuals who refer to themselves as“Anonymous.” The posted documents donot endear the population to the government.The already tense situation buildsup. When a despaired local street vendor setshimself on fire in December, Tunisians taketo the streets. Thus starts the first revolutionof a series of upheavals in Arab countriesaround the Mediterranean Sea, which wouldbecome known as the “Arab Spring.”xiii