Weaponizing the internet

Put together on May 17, 2007 6:51 pm by Thomas
3 Comments

I’m wondering, has any country developed a department (which would probably be attached to the ministry of defense) which would, in case of war, attack the enemy’s IT infrastructure? Interrupt communications with massive DDOS attacks, bring them to a crawl and thus prohibiting crucial coordination between parts of the enemy government?

More importantly, such an attack would spread complete chaos as the public would be completely in the dark. A war of fear, if you will.

Hey, I’m not suggesting we do it, I’m just asking. Anybody know any country which has “innovated” in such a way?

tags: question

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Comments

3 Responses to “Weaponizing the internet”

  1. Dimitris on May 18th, 2007 1:21 pm

    It was probably this article that gave you the idea, right? Apparently, Russia did something similar to what you describe to Estonia:

    “… the country [Estonia] has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies.”

    And althought Russia is not explicitly named as the perpetrator, NATO officials, who

    “… have dispatched some of their top cyber-terrorism experts to Tallinn to investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defences.”

    were also very certain:

    “I won’t point fingers. But these were not things done by a few individuals.”

  2. mave on May 31st, 2007 6:26 pm

    I think that “officially unofficially” we do have a department like that in Greece. Officially its role is always …defense but I think like the flights over the aegean and parts of asia minor, we and the …other side test things like that all the time..:)

    ps: Good luck Guys!

  3. Thomas on May 31st, 2007 6:41 pm

    That’s interesting, I had no idea. Should I feel proud for my country’s early adoption of this type of technology? Probably not.

    Hopefully they’ve also done some work towards defending against this sort of attacks.

    And thanks for the wishes :)

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