INTL440 Assignment 2 Philip

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Jan 9, 2024

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Assignment 2 1 Assignment 2 INTL440: Cyber Warfare Professor Opstal August 4, 2023

Assignment 2 2 Technology, it is the corner stone in every single first world country across the globe. In today’s world technology plays a pivotal role in every part of our society. Besides simply using social media, the internet and other types of devices that can access it are involved in every part of our country, from banking systems to everything across the electrical grid. Technology is still a fairly new element for us and as we have seen firsthand it is something that is always developing. With new hardware and sofwatre being developed there are always newer methods being created to exploit them. Todays modernized world has become a lot more globalized, which means we have become more dependent on technology to run our economy keeping it stable. Because if this the odds of these systems becoming compromised are a lot higher and most likely these systems will become disrupted. The cyber world has very quickly become home station for the testing of new methods of attack by individual users, terrorist groups, and other state-sponsored actors. With the newest age of cyberwarfare here it can very dangerous and in some ways unethical. This is going to force the United States to act a lot faster in order to create and implement policies and procedures which would allow for better types of countermeasures and defensive tactics. This needs to be accomplished fast enough before cyberwar become the standard method for conducting attacks against our country. Cyber attacks can be done in multiple different ways but at the end of the day they all serve the same purpose. The attacks are usually designed to go after infrastructures, networks, or someone’s personal home computer. The intent is to gain access to a person’s data that can be used against them, or they want to access their information system in order to disrupt someone’s access or possibly eliminate network access. Cyber attackers are very dangerous and can be flexible people who think outside normal thoughts. This makes it difficult for us to identify them and counter their attacks making it even more difficult for inexperienced personnel. Some of the

Assignment 2 3 most common types of attacks we might see are malware, phishing scams, DDos attacks, and SQL injections attacks just to name a few. Some of these attacks are small and very easy to look past of we are not paying attention. Depending on what these attacks are designed to do they will have different intentions. Some types of malware are designed simply to conduct surveillance which would allow the attacker to gain Intel on a person. This would give the attacker the ability to conduct blackmail or phishing attacks and allowing access to someone else’s account. When attackers use DDos attacks they are trying to disrupt someone’s access to a service or allowing an opening for an additional attack. An SQL injection would be used to give the attacker access to someone’s data base and gain sensitive information or completely shut down their data base. The cyber attacker must wait for the right opening before they can conduct an attack and just as quickly as the opening exists so does the development of security and detection. The cycle of development is something that will always continue and so must the ability to conduct a cyber-attack. These attackers must also fully understand just how to create malware and conduct their attacks. With malware if attacker know where to look, they can find forums created by other hackers that help to explain the process in depth. The lack of knowledge by these individual really limits their ability to update, develop and execute these attacks. In the future, the methods and rules of warfare will become almost obsolete when it applies to how cyberwarfare is conducted. If you are looking at the rules of traditional warfare it would be illegal to target a building like a hospital or school. But with cyberwarfare it is a totally different viewpoint. If you apply the same traditional war standards to cyber war, then attacking a system like a banking system or even the electrical grid could be viewed as a war crime. That’s because just like attack a hospital or school, attacks on a banking system or electrical grid would affect people’s lives. Being able to establish Rules of Engagement (ROE) are going to prove very

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Assignment 2 4 difficult because the individual actors and cyber terrorists involved in this. The unpredictability of all factors involved are going to make in very difficult to pinpoint exactly who conducted these attacks and make it tough to prosecute each person for conducting a war crime. With warfare today you can easily identify what weapon a person is using. If someone is using a firearm or some type of explosive device, it is clear they mean to cause harm but with cyberwar it may be much more difficult to determine the purpose. The purpose of cyberwarfare is having the ability to use any type of electric device that can access a network as a weapon or a weakness. With the evolution of cyber war coming, we may see tighter regulations on personal electronic devices that have access to the internet. We may even see more drastic invasions of our privacy in an attempt to deter cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare an happen both in the United States and across the globe which means tracking those responsible can and will prove to be very difficult. State sponsored attacker works in the favor of other countries are going to be the more difficult ones to find. As I mentioned before cyber attacker may end up conducting their attacks on the civilian population. When looking at the legal aspect of these attacks, cyber-attacks on civilian personnel may not necessarily be viewed as an attack but more of an inconvenience for that person involved. This would make it more likely that civilians would get targeted for this attack. These attacks being interpreted as war crimes could be a grey area due to outdated policies and agreements (Barrett, 2013). The Geneva convention needs to be updated to cover more areas that involve cyberwarfare, and until this can be done, we will more than likely see a rise in unethical attacks that will involve more civilian personnel that have no part in the war. How cyberwar is conducted and the effects of it could summarize all of cyberwar as unethical. The

Assignment 2 5 methods in which cyberwarfare can be executed is still a mystery to the world and it is something that is going to continue being used by countries across the world. One example of how a cyber attack was used to damage a nation infrastructure was the Stuxnet computer worm which was a malware created to target the Iranian nuclear enrichment in 2010. Because it was a malware there was no civilian casualties involved, but the attack did however damage multiple centrifuges inside of the nuclear facility. One of the bigger concerns the Stuxnet presented was it has the ability to create the same collateral damage as the atomic bomb or we may even experience the same effects that were seen at Chernobyl. These types of effects would easily be viewed as unethical on every legal level (Lindsay, 2013). If there was a confirmed attack on a nuclear power plant this would clearly be viewed as an act of war. But if these types of attacks were not verified, they would be viewed as cyber terrorism especially if they were conducted by a non-state actor. A typed of attack like these would easily cripple a nation’s infrastructure as well as any personal that may be working inside of that power plant. The type of collateral damage that can come from cyber-attacks can have a long term or never- ending effect on a nation. A cyber strategy was created and implemented by the Department of Defense (DOD) which defines the United States cyberspace objectives. (2018) The strategy covers the defense of civilian assets that are able to give the United States an advantage such as the non-DOD networks. Another one of their objectives to make sure they can prevent cyber-attacks and, improve relationships across the globe and among our nation. The United States has put forth the effort to improve their own capabilities and policies that have to do with cyber warfare. This includes but is not limited to the stand up of commands like the Navy’s 10 th Fleet. Their entire role is to the work within the cyber domain.

Assignment 2 6 The advancement of technology and companies speed will enable their ability to identify the vulnerabilities software which will allow the nation to better prepare for cyber warfare. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming the future for many cyber security companies in order to help them identify any vulnerabilities. If we are going to create and maintain strong cyber defense for the military and our nation we must be able to develop machine learning and reasoning techniques. AI, although its creation has been mainly for defense measures it also has the potential to be used for offensive measures by using means of Cyber Artificial Intelligence Attacks (CAIA). If used correctly they have the ability to ruin a network and have consequences that will be heard of and felt by entities outside the domain. Attacks that use machine learning and reasoning if left uncheck absolutely have the ability to destroy a nation (Whyte, 2020). Cyber warfare is a method of attack that will show how an attack can affect the people while crippling an infrastructure and this has the ability to cause massive damage. If not kept in line this type of war will easily surpass nuclear warfare especially because you can set off a nuclear plant with the push of a button these days. If a cyber attacker wanted to they can attack a nations electrical grid which would cause a large amount of damage ending in deadly consequences and initiate humanitarian disasters. A large amount of our lives today is involved with technology and electricity which would be traumatic of lost. A strong cyber attacker could cripple a superpower nation like the United States or even Russia if enough damage was caused by the attacker. If a nation is going to prevent this they are going to have to develop an extensive strategy and ROE. This will allow them to operate inside the cyber domain and they can push the information across other nations. This could help to prevent war crimes from other nations and non-state actors.

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Assignment 2 7 Cyber warfare is new territory that we have not had much experience with and have not had to manage at the same level as most warfare in the past. The occasional attack by cyber attackers is not very uncommon in today’s world like phishing scams, DDos attacks, there is however a trend beginning that is showing concern. It is beginning to be noticed that state- sponsored actors as well as terrorists are beginning to use cyber warfare with the intent of causing a massive amount of damage and crippling a nation’s infrastructure. If we do not keep these cyber attackers in check, we can expect to see an overall increase of cyber attack against our nation and other friendly nations across the globe. The result of this would undoubtedly cause crippling effects to nations infrastructure and cause damage to civilian data. We need to create guidelines that can determine what exactly would fall under the realm of a war crime and would ne considered to be an off-limit section for attack. With the constant growth of disputes between trade and territory happening, we are going to see a rise in espionage and attack across the globe. These attackers are going to use cyber-attacks to easily accomplish their goals. It is also safe to say we will begin to see more attacks on nations nuclear plants through cyber warfare. As we enter a world of cyber warfare it will be harder to determine what weapons are being used.

Assignment 2 8 References Barrett, Edward T. “WARFARE IN A NEW DOMAIN: THE ETHICS OF MILITARY CYBEROPERATIONS.” Journal of military ethics 12, no. 1 (2013): 4–17. Djaja, Andrian Willyan. “The Rise of Cyber Warfare.” Jurnal Kajian Peradaban Islam 3, no. 1 (2020): 19–21. DOD Cyber Strategy 2018 . Department of Defense, 2018. Lindsay, Jon R. “Stuxnet and the Limits of Cyber Warfare.” Security studies 22, no. 3 (2013): 365–404. Whyte, Christopher. 2020. "Poison, Persistence, and Cascade Effects: AI and Cyber Conflict: SSQ." Strategic Studies Quarterly 14 (4) (Winter): 18-46. https://search-proquestcom. ezproxy2.apus.edu/trade-journals/poison-persistence-cascade-effects-aicyber/ docview/2472333165/se-2?accountid=8289. Powered by

INTL440 Assignment 2 Philip

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