Welcome to Brainstuff from House staff Works dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what is cyber warfare and what tools do cyber warriors use? Over the past year, we've been hearing a great deal about cyber warfare. The Pentagon talks about it, and it's also come up in relation to wiki leaks China and Iran. Cyber Warfare comes in many forms, and it's interesting because
the battleground is so different from a traditional battleground. Cyber Warfare is essentially invisible to most people, and the combatants can, in theory, be just about anyone in any part of the world. Even though it's unseen and silent. However, it can still be quite destructive. Cyber Warfare occurs on and through the Internet and other computer networks. The goal is to attack servers on the Internet, the infrastructure of the Internet,
or things controlled by machines communicating through networks. It can be as simple as flipping a switch, or as complicated as a grand master's chess game. The best way to understand cyber warfare is to look at some examples. The simplest example looks more like spying and less like war, but can have big effects. It involves breaking into a computer to steal information. Imagine, for example, that all the plans for the D Day attack in World War Two
had been stolen. The enemy would have known exactly when, where, and how the attack would unfold, and could mount its defenses with complete confidence. It would have been a catastrophe. In the twenty century, just about everything is stored on computers, and in many cases these computers can be accessed from anywhere in the world. If you have the right password, you can log in and start browsing. Cyber Soldiers can discover passwords by guessing, by using dictionary attacks, by using
social engineering, or by accessing back doors. An example of a back door might be a well known account intended to be used for tech support when machines are being installed, but then never gets deleted. Another example would be data interception. Data flows between people and machines on the Internet, either through radio waves, wires, or optical cables. Data flowing through
all three of these media can be intercepted and copied. Ideally, sensitive data would all be encrypted so that this type of attack is pointless, but some things we commonly use, like traditional email, are not encrypted. In any way, and sometimes encryption can be broken in the data revealed. Another cyber warfare tactic was used shortly after the founder of Wiki leaks was arrested. Allies of WikiLeaks started attacking different entities perceived to be threatening to Wiki leaks. Several large
financial companies saw their so rivers fail. These attacks are called distributed denial of service or d d o S attacks. The idea is to overwhelm Internet servers with so much traffic that they can't possibly respond to all of it. Often d d o S attacks are launched by bot nets, collections of thousands of ordinary computers that have been compromised by computer viruses, so that other people can control their actions.
It's also possible to imagine thousands of people doing the same kind of thing by acting together in a coordinated way. Speaking of viruses, these computer invaders represent another way to break into an Internet server. If a machine is compromised by a virus or a worm, it would allow someone to copy out data on that machine or log all the key strokes typed into the machine, which would include account names and passwords. One of the most amazing worm
scene to date is called Stuck's Net. Apparently, it's a cyber warfare tool designed to damn certain types of industrial machinery, and it's specifically thought to be directed at a rand's ability to enrich uranium. The virus attacks computers that control machines found in factory settings. The existence of stucks net
opens up all kinds of possibilities. It's easy to imagine people or viruses that attack Internet connected power grids, drinking water supplies, traffic lights, trucking networks, and so on, and bringing parts of society to a standstill. For that matter, it's easy to imagine attacks on anything connected to the Internet. This is one of the unknowns of cyber warfare. It's so new that no one really knows how far it can go. We're sure to find out some of the
unexpected possibilities in the not too distant future. For more on this and thousands of other topics, doesn't house staff works dot com and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blot on the house stuff works dot com home page. You can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain stuff h s W. The hou stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes.