Cyber Security

A proper Armed Forces senior technical high school will prepare students for the type of combat to be expected in the future, particularly cyber warfare. 

Understanding Cyber Warfare

The cyber security realm does not currently have shared vocabulary upon which all involved parties have agreed for key terms. Even terms like cyber-attack or information have been used differently between different governments. It is also important to note that there are many forms of attacks and yet little agreement as to how they should be characterized or cataloged. 

It is important to note that many hackers on the Internet do not necessarily have a significant affiliation with states regardless of what their citizenship might be. Skilled warriors within cyberspace can be anonymous and individualistic, but there are broad classifications that provide better definitions to the actors contained within cyberspace. It is imperative to identify and understand all of the actors who populate cyberspace and how they can manipulate the environment. The Internet is a unique environment which is actually defined by its users. Cyberwarfare means conducting havoc upon institutions or governments. There are certain individuals within the cyberspace who are able to wield a considerable amount of power. The average user can contribute unwittingly to said power as a conduit for viruses or worms that can hijack servers and computers.

The tools and actors involved in this type of warfare are many, including:

  • Blackhats
  • Greyhats
  • Whitehats
  • Cyber mercenaries
  • Bots and zombies
  • Malware
  • Viruses

Major Cyber Warfare Actors

China is a major source of cyber warfare, an important component to study for armed forces. The Chinese spy network utilizes bots heavily. Chinese websites often have bots embedded into the site, and therefore geography no longer limits the cyber warfare abilities of China and that the government is able to break into anywhere around the world and install a bot. China has invested a great deal of their resources and their time to creating bot armies which focus on gathering the biggest quantity of raw data, and not necessarily focusing on the highest quality of raw data. They have, on lesser occasion, utilized more creative hacking methods such as injecting codes meant to exploit security vulnerabilities, a tactic known as SQL injections, or utilizing online game and chat software for infiltration in a method known as remote exploits for next generation.

One of the best things about these bots is that they can spread easily. This gives China a distinct advantage. Beijing can spy on computers outside of its national boundaries by installing a handful of bots on computers around the world. While a bot army is a large instrument, finding a bot on a computer takes the skills and expertise of some of the most tech-savvy titans of the technological industry. Additionally, China has worked to make their bots “user friendly” which means that they help the computer on which they are installed to run better by way of cleaning up the hard drive. Previous versions of bots would slow down the operating system and eventually lead the computer to crash, something that would kill the bot simultaneously. Today the Chinese have bots that are invisible to regular computer cleaners and scanners.

But this is not the only way in which the Chinese have expanded their spy network. China is also responsible for the manufacturing of computer chips and USB drives from the factory, many of which come from the factory infected with malware. The computers find their way into Western governments and companies, and even the Pentagon who in 2008 banned the use of USB thumb drives due to a security incident of that nature. The Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer by the name of Huawei Technologies was the subject of an investigation in the United States, which led to a withdrawal of the joint $2.2 billion bid for 3Com stake.

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