The Code War

In an article in Bloomberg magazine I came across the article "The Code War" which I found very interesting because I though cyber terrorism was new but in fact its not. In my last blog I wrote about the Internet kill switch. Not familiar with cyber terrorism this article list all the attacks that have happen in the past. According to the article cyber attacks were kept quiet and when an attack happen people tend not to talk about it. One example of an attack is a famous one called the Stuxnet warm. it was reported by a blogger Brian Krebs it targeted programmable logic controllers. Stuxnet was designed to harm only one kind controllers processing uranium fuel at the nuclear facility in Iran. They suspect the worm was slipped in a thumb drive on a Windows PC. Once the worm was in the computer it disabled alarms and fed fake log reports that set back Iran's nuclear program for months. Because of that it prevented the use of tanks and missiles on the plant. So it is important not to use a flash drive because it can carry a virse

Cyber weapons continues to evolve and even though the Stuxnet worm seemed to be helpful however the most enticing targets in this cyber war would be civilians example there electrical grids, food distribution systems, and essential infrastructure that runs on computers. That would really have an huge impact on city or country if there was no power and people were starving.

Instead of bombs and weapons there are new ways to cause mass destruction to a country without bombing it. And since the growing number of hackers the possibles are endless of what the next cyber attack will be and the power will go to the highest bidder. I can understand why its a big deal that the U.S. government to find ways to protect our country from a catastrophe.