An independent research group predicts that cyberwarfare will accompany future military conflicts and is recommending international action to blunt its impact. The nonprofit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit studied the cybertactics used against the country of Georgia during its military conflict with Russia last year. Cyberattacks in August 2008 shut down the Web sites of crucial Georgian government agencies, the media and banks.
The 24-year-old Singaporean research analyst is constantly on the lookout for bomb-making manuals, video clips of Islamist militants in training and fiery extremist chatter that could hint at an imminent attack somewhere.
In two previous articles entitled “Southern Azerbaijan to Secede from Iran – Middle East´s Most Influential and Most Unknown Factor” ([1] www.americanch…) and “Liberate Southern Azerbaijan – Save the Life of the Azeri Activist Yunis Aghayan” ([2] www.americanch…), I offered an introduction to the critical issue of Southern Azerbaijan, denouncing the theocratic Shia Islamist tyranny carried out against more than 20 millions of Azeris in today´s Iran. I republished, amongst others, an Appeal to save the life of an Azeri Human Rights activist, Mr. Yunis Aghayan.
Messages left on defaced Web sites have either supported or condemned China’s rule over Xinjiang, the western province where rioting killed nearly 200 people. Chinese government Web sites have become the latest targets, adding to online attacks against an Australian film festival and a Turkish government site.
This week, the United Kingdom’s Interception of Communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy, announced his latest statistics for Britain’s phone and email surveillance systems, to generally shocked responses by the British Public. In 2008, law enforcement, local authorities and the secret services in that country demanded “communication data” — the “who, how, when and where”, but not the actual content of messages — 504,073 times. That’s 1,381 times a day; or one inquiry every year for every 78 people in the UK.
The resignation of the White House’s senior aide on cybersecurity, following long delays in the appointment of a cyber director, should be a wake up call to policy makers. Though President Obama’s cybersecurity initiative to bolster offensive and defensive cyber capabilities should be commended, without a leader to direct these efforts little will get done.
Do you see the country between Syria and Iran ?? It is supposedly Iraq , well for Fox News it is Egypt !!?? What kind of editors and technicians they hire in Fox News who do not know geography basics !!??
This Q&A aims to question the current state of cyberwarfare in international relations and its impact both in military doctrine and the way we perceive information and communication technologies. The challenge was graciously accepted by Prof. Armando Marques Guedes, coming to life in a series of questions and answers rather longer than the typical blog post. The Q&A will be published in its entirety in a series of posts during the next days.
Chinese military leaders have always been aware of the military advantage the US has over the People’s Liberation Army. Reading through their published assessments of Sino-US war possibilities confirm our belief that we would dominate them in the air, land and sea. However the PLA was born of asymmetric warfare and this remains a core part of their strategies against any possible wars with the US. Specifically the PLA writes about the use of cyberwarfare as a means of countering this imbalance. This makes a lot of sense from a military perspective. The US economy is intimately tied to information services which rely on the Internet. China’s economy is primarily based on manufacturing physical goods. Taking down their network infrastructure would not have devastating effects while taking down ours would be near catastrophic. But the effects on our economy isn’t the only asymmetry worth talking about. The Chinese Internet is simply different than the US Internet. Their network is self contained and has only a handful of choke points which interact with the outside world. China has gone as far as null routing various non Chinese services in the past, such as Youtube and Google, simply for the sake of censoring unflattering media about the PRC government. The US doesn’t have this capability nor the style of government which would permit this type of unilateral action.