American experts believe that the Internet began a cyber war of the Israel, China, Russia, USA and France. In order to limit the threat, they propose to introduce international regulation of interaction on the Internet, and cyber weapons equated to chemical and bacteriological weapons.
On Tuesday, November 17, an American developer of antivirus software McAfee published a Virtual Criminology Report on cyberwarfare.
An example of a typical Internet attack conducted by one state against another, experts consider attacks on Georgian sites that coincided with the conflict in South Ossetia. The authors of the report do not doubt that they were sanctioned by the Russian authorities, although representatives of the "private sector" directly engaged in "fighting". For example, in the network were laid out programs for the organization of DoS-attacks (Denial-of-Service, "denial of service"), which could download any one who wants to "patriot", says the study McAfee.
Information warfare
Objectives of attacks of one state against another can be very different. For example, in the case of an attack on Georgian resources, the most important thing was to achieve an information victory, neutralizing the Georgian media. And we can talk more about traditional media sources - active bloggers and users of social networks can become the target. In the example of experts, they lead an attack on the pages of the user on Facebook and Twitter.
Asymmetric response
But it is possible and another option, when as a result of cyber attack, the normal operation of financial institutions, electricity networks, water supply systems, telecommunications, which have access to the world's web, is disrupted. Before such a threat, developed countries are the most vulnerable, most of whom depend on Internet. Moreover, it is in developed countries that important elements of infrastructure are owned by private companies that do not pay enough attention to security problems.
The McAfee report provides an example that during a military operation in Iraq the security services USA decided to abandon the cyber attack on Iraqi bank accounts, as they were afraid that their actions would lead to a global malfunction in the global financial system.
Davos discussed Internet security issues
January 30, 2010
The participants of the World Economic Forum proposed to develop an international treaty on the prevention of total cyberwar, create an international organization to quickly respond to web threats on the basis of WHO, issue Internet users with an analogue of driving licenses, etc.
