This course introduces the cybersecurity-centric programming and networking concepts. Students will develop problem solving skills by using low-level programming languages (including C and assembly) and learn fundamentals of network protocols. This course is the technical base for students to take cybersecurity major courses. No prior knowledge of programming and networking is assumed.

Research Paper

This and many of my classes focused heavily on Israel and Iran, the specifically the Cybersecurity issues surrounding the two nations. They have been at the focal point of Cyberwarfare and Cyberterrorism. Multiple attacks and “tools” used by and against both sides to disrupt infrastructure or cause pain and suffering. This is why I decided to focus my final paper for this class on the Dangers of these types of attacks and warfare.

Interconnectivity of the world and the Dangers of Cyber Warfare

Abstract

This paper discusses the importance of cyberwarfare in the next great war. War has gone through drastic changes in the last 120 years, before the war was fought in two domains, on land and on sea. After 1907 Air became the 3rd domain and drastically changed what constituted power in battle and who had the air superiority. However with the change of the millennium, the world became evermore connected through the internet and computer systems. Electricity, water supply are all connected to some type of network that could have vulnerabilities.

Key Words: Worm, Cyberterriosm, Cyberwarfare

Introduction

War is an eventuality to some, so planning for the worse is the best. For the longest time war is said to have 3 domains, land, sea and air,  But only in the past 10-15 years war is entering a fourth domain, cyberspace. Currently the domain of cyberspace is fought through cyberterrorism, cyberattacks created by small groups of hackers, that either work alone or are state sponsored. However, in the coming years and what has happened in the past five with Iran and Israel, show that the world’s next great war could be fought primarily in cyberspace. A great cyber war could be started by a cyberattack that had unintended consequences on a united target, starting a domino affect like the Duke Ferdinand. This creates complications with our current way of thinking about war and what this does to borders as the world is so reliant on the somewhat borderless internet and its interconnectivity. 

Israel and Cyberattacks

Currently Israel is a nexus of cyberattacks and cyberterrorism attacks coming from Iran and Palestinians.First use of cyberwarfare was in 2010 by the United States and Israel against Iran called Stuxnet. It was a worm that was design to infect any machine running windows. A worm is a type of malware that after being injected on to a system it needs no human interaction to spread and infect more machines (Bedell, 2022). After it successfully infected a machine it checked to see if it was the targeted machine, specifically Siemens made machines. It successfully physically damaged Iranian machines and centrifuges, by using a Zero-Day bug and set back their nuclear development quite a bit. However, this worm did infect over 200,000 machines, without anyone noticing. This is very important since the inception of Stuxnet it has been modified and changed and produced offspring worms, such as Flame and others alike. This worm was developed back in 2005. Imagine the types of malwares and worms being developed out there right now. Israel has been a hotspot for cyberterrorism and cyberwarfare, being involved in the Stuxnet attack left them a quite angry neighbor with Iran. Following the Stuxnet attack there have been a series of cyberattacks between Iran and Israel, most of them minor and just gathering intelligence but once Iran hacked an Israeli water treatment plant and tried to increase the levels of chlorine which would have made many civilians sick or even died.

In 2019 the first use of physical retaliation was taken against a cyberattack. According to the Israeli government a group of palestinian hackers were attempting to breach Israels cyberdefenses. This is a huge precedent since this now opens the door for other attacks on potential hacker groups, false until could lead to multiple civilians getting killed. What if the attackers are based in your own country, do you just bomb a block to be safe. And what pushes these attacks out of cyberterrorism and brought them into normal warfare with the use of drones.One of the attacks on Iran in 2021 where on its gas stations, as nearly half of the gas stations in the country where crippled. No one was hurt but this did do some damage on the economics and government systems set up in Iran. The attack is claimed to have been carried out by Israel and the US government, by the Iranian government.

Now generally the conflicts that involve israel have been pretty localized within their countries respectfully. However these countries have lesser technology and not as much infrastructure based around networks or computers. The main reason why the Stuxnet attack was so successful was due to Iran’s old equipment and unable to receive security updates for that machine they used a known exploit of an outdated system.

This is drastically different if it were the United States and China were having a cyberwar. For example say if china invented the Stuxnet worm but instead of it targeting Siemen systems it targeted systems used by Air traffic controllers and cause widespread crash of air traffic controllers systems which would lead to some injuries and the loss of life, some not even from the target country due to them being foreign travelers.

Cyber attacks on countries with much larger networked base infrastructure can cause damages way past the countries borders.. Another example provided by Boylan in his, is another worm attack on New York Stock Exchange which could disrupt the current trading or create thousands of fake sells and buys to ruin the market. This would affect companies, people, and governments all over the world if something like this were to happen.

Unintended consequences are another factor that are harder to determine when it comes to cyberwarfare or cyberconflict in general. Attacks on larger countries such as the US or European Union where networks and utilities are commonly shared without border issues. For example the water attack done by Iran if done by another country in say Germany this could affect the water supply for the Netherlands and other surrounding countries. This would be even more detrimental due to the EU having constant water gaps and drink restrictions over the past few years. Aside from networking, another way the world has been more interconnected is through the use of social media and abusing it with social engineering to create fake fear or cause more turmoil within the country. This has happened in the United States with a group of russian hackers set up bots to boost posts that spread misinformation or more radical beliefs. These attacks, especially those committed in the Iran-Israel conflict, is that the countries never take ownership of the attacks, the other party discovered evidence that ties the other to the attack. Whos to say one of the attacks during the cyberconflict was not done by either government, but instead a third party who left a little evidence to try and blame it on the other government.

Conclusion

Currently I think the current way of cyberconflict will be along the lines of cyberterrorism, a full fledge cyberwar would require more political pushing than just new technology developments. The super power countries’ relations would have to deteriorate even more than they are for any nation to attempt to take over the world through cyberwarfare. If current events keep escalating I believe that at some point one attack will be the one to push the domino over. 

Citations

The Associated Press. (2021, October 27). A cyberattack paralyzed every gas station in Iran. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/27/1049566231/irans-president-says-cyberattack-was-meant-to-create-disorder-at-gas-pumps#:~:text=Vahid%20Salemi%2FAP-,Cars%20wait%20in%20line%20to%20fill%20up%20at%20a%20gas,-issued%20card%2C%20stopping%20sales. 

Bedell, C., Loshin, P., & Hanna, K. T. (2022, September 13). What is a computer worm and how does it work?. Security. https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/worm 

Boylan, M. (2013, September). Can there be a just cyber war? . https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/54138/1/JAEP5_2_Boylan.pdf 

Kushner, D. (2022, November 22). The real story of Stuxnet. IEEE Spectrum. https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-real-story-of-stuxnet