Hacking and inputting malware is unethical and wrong in all ramifications, but did you know it is sometimes considered to be used in fighting wars, chasing bad people and also attacking an enemy state? I guess not. Some acts adapted from cybercriminals are sometimes used in wars, or for protection, and this is termed cyber warfare.

What is cyber warfare? From Wikipedia, cyberwarfare is the use of cyber-attacks against an enemy state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, manipulation, or economic warfare. It is mostly used for defense and has never been a cause for war. 

Cyber warfare has been defined in different ways, by so many people. For example, an expert defined it as a word used in a broad context to denote interstate use of technological force within computer networks in which information is stored, shared, or communicated online. However, when we relate cyberwarfare to the use of computers, two scholars, Parks and Duggan, defined it as, “A combination of computer network attack and defense and special technical operations.” Since then, this has been the most preferred definition. 

TYPES OF WARFARE

  1. Sabotage: Computers and satellites that arrange, supervise, and organize other activities are vulnerable components of a system and could lead to the disruption of equipment. They can be breached by anyone when it comes to cyber warfare.
  2. Denial-of-service-attack: In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an act of making a machine or network resource unavailable to its users. The people responsible for DoS attacks target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and so on. DoS attacks often focus on internet-connected devices with weak security measures to carry out these attacks.
  3. Propaganda: Cyber propaganda is an attempt to control information in whatever form it takes, and in turn influence public opinion. It is also a method of psychological warfare, but in this case, it uses social media, fake news websites and other means.
  4. Electric power Grid: This kind of warfare mainly centers on power grids that have weak and vulnerable security systems. This usually leads to a mass power outage.

 

SOLUTION

Because cyber space has been used as a warfighting weapon, this has led to efforts to decide how it can be used to ensure peace. Efforts of cyber peace include policymakers coming up with new rules and methods for warfare, organizations, people, and tools to protect infrastructures, establishment of cyber security centers, auditing of infrastructure cybersecurity, and many more. From Wikipedia, an example is the German civil rights panel. They ran a campaign for cyber peace: “For the control of cyberweapons and surveillance technology and against the militarization of cyberspace and the development and stockpiling of offensive exploits and malware.

 

CONCLUSION

The subject of cyber peacekeeping and cyber peacemaking have been studied by researchers, to restore and strengthen peace in the aftermath of a cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare is often seen as a violent means, but sometimes, it is the only means to restore peace in a territory. 

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