Cyber Wars: From Regional Nuisance to Global Threats
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Today’s small wars and border conflicts are being fought online and under the radar, but the conflicts could escalate into real world wars.
Last year, a full-blown hacking war erupted between India and Pakistan, with groups on each side defacing websites belonging to organizations in their rival nation. “We’re seeing this as a common form of attack,” says Martin Libicki, senior management scientist with the RAND Corp. “This is a relatively easy attack to carry off, and the cost in terms of damage isn’t very large.” But as it continues to develop, cyber warfare has the potential to cause a lot more harm than mischief and nuisance. Cyber warfare has become an extension of traditional small war politics. In most cases it isn’t meant to cause physical or even economic damage but is one that is more of mass annoyance or mass distraction. Outside the economic harm it caused, the alleged North Korean cyber attack on Sony is an example of how it fits into the mass annoyance category.
Sometimes a cyber attack is another way of spying on another country. In 2014, North Korea was also accused of a cyber attack on South Korea’s Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd. That attack didn’t cause physical damage but it may have been conducted to gain plant blueprints and test data. This is a clear example of the way cyber warfare has become an extension of the classis war, this time in the form of espionage.
As noted by the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, countries spy on one another all the time—and this includes allies spying on each other. But most security breaches are likely kept quiet to avoid the embarrassment that comes along with it. But what if the reprucussions for cyber attacks become become too dangerous? For instance, government operatives, as in spies or sources, can be compromised through these kinds of breaches. We haven’t yet witnessed a situation where things get out of hand, but it is surely a possible future scenario and some believe it is only a matter of time before someone cross some line.
