Kevin Tallaksen Warfare in (CMC)

Kevin Tallaksen Blog

With the new age of technology and the dependence of this new media with computer communication, many people fear this as the new battlefield. Our dependence on (CMC) can be manipulated as a vulnerability to our new way of life, whether choice to combat it, for those that understand its existence, or remain ignorant of the fight waged on technology consumers, it has become a part of the new age of technology. Dr. Lani Kass states throughout the history of warfare, anything on which people depended… always became a target for the enemy (as cited in Dowd 2008, p.64) As more people learn the delicate nature of the applications that run our society there are those that have learned to group together to exploit the vulnerabilities that exist in these applications. “Some argue a war waged in cyberspace, with streams of code rather than bullets and bombs, can’t hurt us. They’re wrong” (Dowd 2008, p.62). The weaknesses that are being exploited such as cross site scripting, spoofing, Denial of service attacks, and brute force attacks are ways that hackers and cyber terrorist are waging their war. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), 80% of U.S. commerce depends on the Internet, which means an attack on America could have grave economic consequences (Dowd 2008, p.64).For every minute that American Express is not able to perform their key function the company is losing $250,000. (Anthony Watkins, Network security Analyst AXP 2008) According to the CSI/ FBI 2005 Computer Crime and Security Survey, it was reported that the largest losses due to attacks consisted of viruses (33%), unauthorized access (24%), theft of proprietary information (24%), denial-of-service (6%), insider Net abuse (5%), laptop theft (3%), financial fraud (2%), and the remainder is composed of the misuse of public Web applications, system penetrations, abuse of wireless networks, sabotage, telecom fraud, and Web site defacement (Colarik 2006, p.83). The unfortunate problem is that who used to write Viruses for recognition and respect are now using these talents to make money. The Hacker with moderate knowledge can access a Server and take ownership of this server. The owning company has no idea that their server has been forced into a slave relationship and a virtual server has been created. The hacker can then use this server to host live network game/Simulation sites for $30 per person per month fee, with a client list of 1000 people hosted, this Hacker has now created a revenue stream of $30,000 a month Tax free. The most dangerous part is that now they have all the time they need to learn and network with each other on new and better ways to exploit companies. The Game sites are also large methods of funneling money off stolen credit cards. The Game site can make payments with stolen credit cards and the payment goes to the pay pal account. If the card is reported stolen and payment is not received the card number is dropped from the database of cards and the rest are charged again the following month. These operations have their own particular agendas including profit, societal governance and control, and ultimately, possession and power over information in this so-called Information Age (Colarik 2006, p.36). Once a target (i. e., an individual) has been identified, an attacker may wish to assume their identity such as social engineering, electronic credential forging in order to interact with others to gather additional intelligence. When sufficient information is available on an individual, a terrorist may wish to assume his or her identity on a continuous, daily basis. Identity theft continues to be a growing problem on a global scale, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars. For a terrorist, identity theft is primarily about freedom of movement and creating avenues of escape (Colarik 2006, p.117). These assumed identities give the terrorists the ability to feel as though they have true anonymity. The ability to assume someone’s name, credentials, and now the computer system has made these terrorist like ghosts. They can spoof the targets victim’s computer making them almost impossible to trace. Police do not have the training or funding to hire people to track and locate the virtual computers that are acting as the computer sitting on the victim’s desk at home. These terrorist are able to make their computer match the IP address, and the internal MAC serial number address of the victim’s computer. This whole identity can be discarded at will by these cyber terrorist. With this type of crime now a reality and Cyber terrorists learning from each other on the internet and at conferences such as DEF CON (the name of an annual conference in Las Vegas that teaches hackers how to improve their skills) This type of crime will continue to exist because in reality, information security has become an industry that resides in the realms of economics, and now is emerging into a critical national security issue. (Colarik 2006, p.150) Until the law requires the security of personal information, businesses will continue to make decisions based on cost, not customer protection.


References

Colarik, Andrew, M. (2006). Cyber Terrorism: Political and Economic Implications.
Hershey, PA, USA: Idea Group Publishing,.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/asulib/Doc?id=10110333&ppg=168

Dowd, A. W., (2008). World war web. Military Officer, 6, (6)60-64.