In this digital era, every country stores and operates digitally like storing of public information, storing of country’s secrets etc. Every country wants to protect its secrets because all these are the backbone of the country’s growth, other countries try to steal and destroy them. To protect their valuable information, every country needs a cyber team to defend from any type of attacks. To gain the valuable information of any country, many countries either hire a hacker or make a team. By gaining valuable information, the country weakens the other’s country.
There is a war on borders between any two countries in which they fought for some part of the land, but in the digital war between two states in which by attacking cyberspace the countries gain the whole control over any other country’s digital space. Every country stores their data like public identification details, military details, country’s budget, strategy for development of country, etc. They create attack and defense techniques by which they protect their data from any cyber attacks and attacks on any other country if required.
Many countries hire hackers who perform these types of activities unethically, the country pays the hackers to gain any access to the other country’s government systems or to steal the valuable information.
Involvement in Cyber Warfare
In cyber warfare mainly either countries or government sponsored hackers are involved to attack on the cyber space of others. Governments hire different hackers from the dark web or, by some other contacts, to hack into different countries’ cyber space to gain access. Many times some governments have their own hacking group for types of tasks. These practices done by any government are completely unethical. There are some agreements between any two governments on borders to not cross the borders or to follow some rules and regulations. Likewise there are some rules and regulations which have to be followed by any government to not try to enter cyberspace or unethically enter into others systems. To keep the reputations clean, many governments fund different hackers from any other countries other than their to do such types of tasks that if later on the victim country finds out that their systems are compromised by any hackers then the attackers can deny to take responsibility for the attacks.
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Mainly these types of hackers are hired from the dark web which are known as government sponsored hackers which are funded by the government. Many times the government systems are compromised due to some internal threats like if any government employee got an email (which is from the attackers government) on their office systems of any exciting offers and the employee clicks on the links and the malware files downloaded in their systems that infected the database, servers of the whole organization of the government, by this the attackers government get what that want by just using a simple phishing email.
Cause of Cyber warfare
In this digital era, each and every information is stored digitally. Each country trying to gain that information knows about the future development strategy of the to keep them down from theirs or gain control over them. The Cyber war is not only done by attacking the Cyber space of any country, these can be done by posting something irrelevant to the country, social media platforms which are widely used in the victim country. Each country prepares some strategy by analyzing the attack and defense surfaces of other countries to use in the case of emergency, others one want to know about that by which they strengthen their own defense of their cyberspace.
If any country has ideas about other countries’ military technologies, weapons, contracts signed with other countries or companies to develop their military power then the attacker’s country can attack their military and gain control over any part of the country.
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If any country has the personal information of each citizen of any other country like their name, address, fingerprints, education details, photo, etc. They can sell this data in black market or misuse it.
Effect of Cyber warfare on any state
Now, we already know how the data of any country is stored digitally and all the processes are done digitally through servers. If any country or organization attacks on the servers or system the processes which are done digitally will be completely stopped. All the things like all transactions, citizens government ID verification etc. are paused for 1-2 days. The backbone of the country is broken these days. The current situation will occur if the serve of the attacks is low or medium.
If the serve of the attacks is high then the consequences will be different. On the high end of the attacks the data of the citizens will be stolen, the transaction details of the deals between the countries will be exposed, the country’s secret will be revealed. The country’s economy will have fallen down. The information secret agents which are planted in the different places by the country will be revealed. The defense deal with the different states will be revealed.
All countries want to increase their GDP for the growth of the country, but if a country faces any type of attacks which reveals how and when their capitals are used in different places then the country faces a very effective downfall in their GDP.
Basically, any country wants the downfall of their rival country by hook or by crook and now in the digital era data is more valuable than anything. So, each one focuses on stealing the data rather than focuses on attacking physically on defense systems. By attacking the cyber space of any country, anyone can take full control over another one.
Steps taken to minimize the impact of war
Many countries hire either different hackers or hacking groups for their defense while in a surge of war. Every country has a different department in their organization for such types of tasks, they continuously work to protect their country. They create different attack and defense vectors to know how strong their systems are, which types of attacks they can handle, and what the damage percentage.
Rather than having their own hacking group every country must have a private hacking group to tolerate any type of attack on their Cyberspace. Any developed country or which are developing must have at least one private hacking group in their organization. There are many technical institutions in their countries which have such talents which are good in hacking and all those technical things, the countries just have to find the hidden talents from there.Every country has to conduct such types of challenges to hire the talents of their own.
By doing such types of things the countries can boost themselves in the technologies and their cyberspace is much more secure than ever.
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Every master is necessary to teach a noob to pro so therefore there must be a team of master’s which teach the new joinee to train them at least that level so that he can secure the country’s cyberspace.
The government should conduct an awareness training program in each of its organizations for their employees by which they are aware about the latest cyber attacks. They should be aware about social engineering tricks, phishing tricks by which they should not click on any malware file links.
Is there a necessity for Cyber war?
Cyber war is not started by any purpose of any country. If any country or any organizations which are supported by them will attack on the Cyberspace of any other countries then in defense they will attack on others and that’s how the war is started.
Many countries didn’t like others to grow, to develop. They want them down so that they attack the cyber space of others to steal their sensitive information regarding their military, finance, citizen’s information etc.
A country should not attack first on anyone but if any country or any group which is run by that one then the victims should not be stopped in response.
War is not a solution for any problem but that does not mean to keep the mouth shut whatever anyone does on your surface.
A few real life examples of digital war
Here are some of the examples of Cyber war :-
Cyber warfare began in 2010 with Stuxnet, which was the first cyber weapon meant to cause physical damage. Stuxnet is reported to have destroyed 20% of the centrifuges Iran used to create its nuclear arsenal.
In june 2019, the United States launched a cyber attack against Iranian weapons systems in retaliation to the shooting down of a US drone in the strait of Hormuz.
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Research and submission by: Anubhav Kumar
