Cyber warfare has developed into a more sophisticated type of combat between countries, where you can destroy critical infrastructure such as power, telecommunications or banking by damaging the computer systems that control those infrastructures. It’s widely acknowledged that offensive cyberattacks will be a necessary component of any future military campaign, and the extreme cyberweapons are being developed now. U.S., Russia, China, North Korea and other countries have developed advanced cyberwarfare capabilities.
As Russia rains artillery fire down on Ukrainian cities, cyber attackers from around the world have been targeting Russian media, cryptocurrency services, and retail brands with denial of service attacks. DDOS attacks against Russian media, internet service providers, cryptocurrency sites, and retail sites—in that order—have been on the rise in the first quarter of this year, according to a new report published by Cloudflare. The company, which specializes in helping sites prevent or recover from DDOS attacks, estimates that Russia became the fourth biggest DDOS target in the period from January until the end of March (2022) , up from the sixth largest target in the final quarter of last year.
“The majority of HTTP DDOS attacks that targeted Russian companies originated from Germany, the U.S., Singapore, Finland, India, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. It’s important to note that being able to identify where cyber attack traffic originates is not the same as being able to attribute where the attacker is located,” Cloudflare notes in the report.
The United States has been accusing Chinese government and military of cyber attacks against U.S. government computer systems. Beijing denies those claims and also says it is a victim of hacking. Many countries starting with US and which now includes U.K., China, Russia, Israel and others are setting up Unified cyber commands for more effective and coordinated efforts for conducting cyberspace operations , both offensive and defensive. The offensive operations are seen as deterrent to adversaries. US, Russia and China are also implementing various defence measures to protect their Classified networks from Cyber Warfare.
The PLA Daily has made it clear that China’s “cyber territory” must be defended as vigorously as physical territory. “If China doesn’t occupy and defend its “cyber territory,” then nameless “hostile forces” will use it as a “bridgehead” to attack China. “ The control of cyberspace means for the 21st century what control of the maritime domain meant for the 19th and air and space superiority meant for the 20th century.” China has built its own internet, the “Great Firewall” that blocks many social media services, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Google, along with many rights groups sites and some foreign media agencies.
US has developed SIPRNet, or Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, global military Internet system used for transmitting classified information, intelligence, targets, and messages at the secret level. In other words, SIPRNet is completely parallel Internet, uses the same communications procedures and has been kept separate from the ordinary civilian Internet.
Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Russia is another among of only a handful of countries to have developed its own internet, including its own search engines, e-mail systems, and social networks. Russian military forces have completed the creation of own electronic communication system that is completely independent from the internet and protected from unlicensed connections, allowing for fast and safe transfer of classified information. ‘Our goal was to provide an uninterrupted internet service on Russian territory under any circumstances,’ Deputy Communications Minister Aleksei Sokolov said.
Speaking e to the state-owned news outlet Tass, Putin explained that this was purely a defensive play. Runet, he said, “is aimed only at preventing adverse consequences of global disconnection from the global network, which is largely controlled from abroad. This is the point, this is what sovereignty is — to have our resources that can be turned on so that we would not be cut from the Internet.”
“As far as I understand, Edward Snowden has been working for one of the NSA’s subcontractors and had access to this network which allowed him to gain access to the data that he made public. I hope our people have not made similar mistakes when they planned the network and that they have taken additional security measures.”
IDST Monthly Access Membership Required
You must be a IDST Monthly Access member to access this content.