WEB WAR: Cyber attack

WEB WAR is the new word in the dictionary of a techno savvy which probably talks about a surreptitious smash of digital hearts. It means a war of words. It’s a much quieter act of violence which begins with just an error message here and a disconnected server there, ending up by making the governments crippled. It has proved to be a bane for the countries.

Estonia, a small country in the Northern Europe, believes in the cashless system. From the deposition of fee to transport, from buying household goods to selling, transportation, hospitals each and everything goes cashless in this country. Pioneering e-government and Internet voting, they’re a world leader in utilizing the Internet freedom.

In 2007, their system had to bear a setback as with an unprecedented speed, the website of their largest selling newspaper was brought to its knees. It was convulsed, crashed, and ultimately collapsed under the weight of a wave of internet traffic which couldn’t be supported by it. A horde of computers numbering in the hundreds of thousands were enslaved by hackers to act as a weapon for a botnet master to knock the networks down. Botnet; a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge. Within no time span, the botnets hit banks, broadcasters, police, and the government. The parliament and ministries networks were overwhelmed, government’s communication network was acquainted with. The national emergency number got buckled up. It Created havoc in every single citizen of Estonia as they were unable to buy, pay, commute or get treated in the hospitals.

A beginning of web war. Unbelievable!

America and Israel created STUXNET and destroyed centrifuges pushing the Iran’s nuclear program almost two years behind.  President of Iran Ahmadinejad ordered to build a strong cyber army to respond back to USA on 4 December 2011. The army hacked UAV, an aircraft piloted by remote control or onboard computers. It was brought down by its cyberwarfare unit which commandeered the aircraft and safely landed it,

Even India did not remain untouched with it. In July 2012, India’s power grid failed affecting 300 million people, which was the largest power outage in the history. It resulted in the halting of everything from railways to mines, from metro rails to the hospitals. Millions of people suffered in blackout.

Later on, the secret agencies came to know that it was China’s cyber army behind the attack.

A CIA’s (Central Intelligence agency) operation exploded Russia’s gas pipe line by deliberately creating errors in the software which was controlling the gas pipe lines. It was the biggest non nuclear explosion ever.

There are countless examples which manifests hunger for the data by many countries. Countries like USA, ISREAL, RUSSIA, CHINA, KOREA, GERMAY, FRANCE etc have created a new division of army called CYBER ARMY just to keep a vigil on other countries and to safeguard themselves from any cyber espionage.

It’s JUST A CLICK OF A BUTTON that changes the destiny of nations.

PRAVEEN KR SHARMA

MAPSIAN

THE MANN SCHOOL