Hackers in Cyberwar

Following my attempts to link cyberwar to robotics, I mean to link my CAJ topic to yet another one: Hacktivism. As you all can probably imagine hackers play a central role in the ongoing cyber conflicts and could play an important role in a future cyberwar.

The first example I want to mention is the cyber conflict that took place in 2012 between Israeli and Saudi Arabian hackers, sometimes even whole teams of hackers. During the ongoing cyber conflict, the credit card information of thousands of Israeli credit card holders was revealed on numerous websites. Those attacks lead to counterattacks, which lead to more counterattacks, causing increasing damage to innocent civilians. Hackers attempted to uncover the other hackers’ identities. Meanwhile the following attacks revealed the passwords and e-mails of thousands of people, official websites, including stock exchange sites, were targeted and taken down. Even though these attacks did not physically hurt the residents of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, numerous people suffered partly great financial losses.

As the cyber arms race continues, military thinkers and governmental advisers attempt to persuade the US government to recruit elite computer hackers. John Arquilla, a professor of defence analysis at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, mentions that the brilliance of hacking experts is needed, as the US’ cyber technology is not as sophisticated as the technology its foes use to launch cyber attacks.

The main problem of this plan is that hackers and the government are not quite on good terms, mainly due to the lengthy jail terms for hacking. Arquilla estimates that there are only around 100 master hackers in the world, most of them situated in Asia and Russia. This is another reason why security agencies should exploit the talent and abilities of those genius hackers that are actually willing to work for them. He mentions that it is possible to stop militant organizations such as Al-Qaeda by disrupting their communications.

Arquilla stresses that he did not fear a full-scale cyberwar on the U.S, but instead multiple, small attacks which could lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Russia, China, even North Korea own highly sophisticated computer systems and know their strategic uses, but the average American system is completely helpless when he is used in some hacker’s botnet. With simply recruiting computer hackers, the U.S military could save millions of dollars and regain its position in the cyber race.

Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jul/10/us-master-hackers-al-qaida

http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/01/18/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-ongoing-israeli-saudi-hacker-struggle/