Surprise E-ttack — The Short History of Cyberwar

21 February, 2013

China's army was recently implicated in a number of cyber attacks against American computer networks. Is Beijing preparing for cyberwar? — China’s army was recently implicated in a number of computer attacks against American computer networks. Is Beijing preparing for cyberwar?

Could the world’s next Pearl Harbor, or 9/11 for that matter, take place in cyberspace?

As an article today on Slate points out, scenarios like these are no longer confined to the realm of Hollywood blockbusters or sci-fi techno thrillers. The story, which comes in the wake of a New York Times investigation that exposes the Chinese military’s role in some recent high profile hacks of United States IT infrastructure, ponders this very question.

The article was penned by Slate’s “War Stories” columnist Fred Kaplan. It describes how the
Pentagon’s three-year-old cyberwarfare command is racing to protect against a massive surprise attack on some vital network like the U.S. financial markets or the electrical power grid. Even the mere ability of Beijing to crash one of these systems has the potential to deter Washington from confronting the Chinese somewhere in the globe in the coming years.

“In a brewing conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea (areas where China has asserted claims aggressively in recent years), would an American president respond with full military force if he knew that the Chinese would retaliate by turning out all the lights on the Eastern Seaboard?” Kaplan writes.

The author rightly points out that China is by no means the only country on the face of the earth with plans to fight the next war in cyberspace. Some are already there. Consider these examples.

Both Israel and America have already unleashed attacks on Iran. One attack temporarily crippled parts of Tehran’s nuclear program.
In 2006, Israel is suspected to have used computer attacks to degrade or neutralize parts of Syria’s air defences in advance of an airstrike against the Arab country.
A digital breech of unknown origin wrought havoc on the Republic of Georgia in 2008 at the same time Russian troops launched operations in the Caucuses. Coincidence?
The year before, a computer attack on the Estonian government and media coincided with a controversial plan by Tallinn to relocate a Soviet era war memorial known as The Bronze Soldier. The hack was traced to Russian government computers.
In 2010, hacktivist groups in both India and Pakistan orchestrated massive attacks on the other countries’ government computer networks.
In 2011, unknown assailants briefly locked the USAF out of its own drone fleet at Creech AFB in Nevada.

For a brief history of cyberwarfare, click on this infographic from Lewis University in Chicago.