September 11, 2001, terrorist strike set the tone for warfare in the 21st century. But the 21st century has also seen the rise of another kind of warfare, which led the nations to battle without guns or bombs. Cyberwarfare is the use of hacking techniques by military forces to target foreign countries’ key systems. It can be used to steal or alter information or disable essential infrastructure. Cyberwarfare is probably the greatest challenge which every nation would be concerned about. The actual potential that cyberattacks can achieve is deeply concerning. Cyber Warfare will be a new battlefield; an unseen invisible battlefield were hackers from various corners of the world fight. A well-known example of cyber warfare was when a computer virus named Stuxnet demolished Iranian nuclear weapons.

In the 21st century, a life without the internet is impossible. The Internet has become essential to us in our ability to breath, eat, sleep and to entertain ourselves. However, these days cyberspace has been increasingly viewed as an area of power competition or power contest and even open warfare. Cyberwarfare is tactics, means and tools on how to achieve success by inflicting maximum collateral damage. As always said the most vulnerable commodity is information. It takes years to build a reputation and a few seconds of a cyber incident to ruin it. Cyberspace is used to steal information and even to induce fear, maybe in the form of cyberbullying or fear that can cripple the nations. Majority of counties register hundreds of cyber-attacks on a day to day basis. There are no rules while waging war.

The age of cyberwar is real. It does not differentiate between big government or poor vulgar ones but affects all of us, our families, neighbours and friends. One among such countries is Estonia. It is the former Soviet Republic and had a difficult relationship with Russia. Their relationship became worse when Vladimir Putin came into power. In 2007, the Estonia government announced plans to remove a statue which was built in honour of Red Army Soldiers who defeated the Nazis during World War II.

But the plans to remove this statue outraged the Russian Nationalists. But Estonia attained independence in 1990 and became a member of NATO. Further, the military alliance headed by the U.S ensured that Russians would never invade Estonia again. So instead of launching a conventional military strike, the Russians used a new weapon. On April 27th 2007 a series of cyberattacks hit the Estonian government offices.

The attack existed for a long period. However, the Russian attack failed ultimately. Since then the Estonians are well known for their cybersecurity expertise. They have invested in numerous amounts in e-government, digital society and information technology. They travelled around the world giving cybersecurity advice and NATO became the alternative for the establishment of cyber centres. It was during this time when the US got into the game.

 In 2010, a new piece of malware started to infect computers all around the world. It is the Stuxnet, which was very sophisticated that made the researchers believe that it can be made only by a state-sponsored group. Stuxnet was a type of software like a worm that was introduced into Iran’s Nuclear Power Station on a USB memory stick. It explored the power station’s network looking for specific weaknesses to alter its key system operation and led to the failure of key components.

When researchers dug deeper, it was revealed that Stuxnet targets only very specific kinds of machinery that are used in centrifugation for the enrichment of uranium carrying action work. Hackers at the Symantec corporation unravelled its mysteries. One year later an altered version of the same virus was found to be targeting almost all the organisations in Europe. There were no suggestions that these were military attacks instead it is believed that the virus is reverse engineered by the cybercriminals and then secretly used to gather and transmit important financial information. The virus was engineered to self-destruct after 36 days leaving no trace of what it has done.

Cyberwarfare can disable financial and organisational systems. They can access, transmit and also classify data to undermine networks, websites and services. There are other types of cyber warfare too. Cyberwarfare encompasses everything from highly targeting phishing attacks, distributed denial of services or dos attacks, hacking and real-time control of these systems.  

Another notable example is that of Sony Pictures. Sony is still dealing with the fallout from hackers who stole millions of pages worth of documents including emails from top executives, health records of employees, private information about mega movie stars and a lot more. Attack on Sony is the first time a destructive malware has targeted a firm inside the U.S and is similar to physically destructive attacks on the nuclear programme through Stuxnet. In 2014, a hacker group called Guardians of Peace leaked a massive amount of confidential data from Sony Pictures.

The group posted a message online warning people to stay away from cinemas showing THE INTERVIEW, a comedy starring Seth Rogan and James Franco that depicts a fictional assassination attempt on the North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un. Apart from deploying malware to raise Sony’s computer infrastructure, the group led terrorist threat at any theatre that screened the film. According to the Stanford Centre for International Security Cooperation it was the beginning of a cyber nightmare. The cyberattack was eventually attributed to the government of North Korea. It was one of the most damaging cyberattacks in any national history and was perpetrated by one of the isolated and poorest countries on earth.

Further in 2015, 2,50,000 Ukrainians were left without power after hackers successfully infiltrated three energy companies and the second attack in 2016, they used new sophisticated pieces of malicious software that automated the whole attack. But the Russians took this as a ground of experiment in future attacks in the US Presidential election in 2016. The CIA and other intelligence agencies had concluded that the Russians government was behind the email hack into the Democratic National Committee and other political organisations. They flooded the social sites like Twitter, Facebook with fake news to deter Americans against each other.

As the Stuxnet example, it is only a matter of time before more military techniques and tools are employed by cybercriminals, be vigilant. Always check that the emails are genuine and don’t open documents or links without ensuring that they are legitimate. While using memory sticks, keep them secure at all times. Law enforcement has incredible powers today. Yet the days to come are going to run on technology, by technology and for technology. However, the role of the prominence of cyberwar in conventional conflicts continues to escalate. Hence always remember we, ourselves are the first pillar of defence when it comes to protecting organisation systems and valuable data.