Chapter 16: Information Warfare: Arsenal of the Future

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OVERVIEW

Terrorists take control of the New York Stock Exchange? Terrorism over the Internet? Computer viruses in the arsenal of Hizballah? As discussed in preceding chapters, such possibilities are currently being discussed by strategic analysts under the catch-all title of 'Information Warfare.' To date, the defense establishment has yet to agree on the exact definition of the term 'information warfare.'

Only the entertainment industry, in the form of films and novels, has popularized the notion of an electronic doomsday scenario in which covert terrorist groups manage to penetrate critical nodes of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and Defense Information Infrastructure (DII) and are able to, variously, launch nuclear weapons, crash the telephone system, cause mayhem on the railways or in the air, or bring the financial sector to a catastrophic halt (see sidebar, 'Will The Real La Femme Nikita Stand Up'). Warnings also come from more sober sources. In 1996 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that the convergence of vulnerable information infrastructures with traditional critical infrastructures had created a tunnel of vulnerability previously unrealized in the history of conflict. In other words, the one thing that everyone agrees on, in the digital age, information, and its dissemination, has achieved the status of a vital strategic asset.

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Will The Real La Femme Nikita Stand Up

Section One (in USA's LA Femme Nikita) is the most covert antiterrorism organization on the planet. Section One is a skilled team of operatives responsible for protecting human life around the globe from chaos and destruction.

Sound implausible? Maybe. But the creation of such covert antiterrorism organizations are currently in the planning stages by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA.

NSA and the CIA realize that conventional IW tactics will not be enough in the future to thwart the very dangerous and often suicidal world of covert terrorist organizations. Like the character Nikita (USA's LA Femme Nikita), who 'transforms into a highly trained agent dedicated to fighting global terrorism by any means necessary-legal or otherwise,' today's agents will have to do the same.

In the very near future, agents trained and armed with an arsenal of futuristic high-tech weapons, and trained in the most sophisticated techniques on how to carry out successful assassinations will swoop down upon deadly terrorist operatives. Like Nikita, they will all have to be the perfect weapon. They will also have to keep their wits about them, as well as ingenuity to keep themselves alive, where a single mistake could mean death. This will be their most vital weapon-and the best hope for the future of all that is good in the world.

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If the response of the American defense establishment is any indication, strategic analysts are taking the possibilities of infowar seriously. The first global cyberwar will be like no other war ever fought before-where the enemy is invisible, the battles virtual, and the casualties all too real. Special committees in every branch of the U.S. armed forces are studying the potential of infowar, both as a defensive and an offensive weapon. The National Security Agency (NSA) is reportedly studying a rather imaginative arsenal of 'info-weapons.' Among the current possible offensive weapons are:

  • Computer viruses, which could be fed into an enemy's computers either remotely or by 'mercenary' technicians.

  • Logic bombs, another type of virus which can lie dormant for years, until, upon receiving a particular signal, it would wake up and begin attacking the host system.

  • 'Chipping,' a plan (originally proposed by the CIA, according to some sources) to slip booby-trapped computer chips into critical systems sold by foreign contractors to potentially hostile third parties (or recalcitrant allies?).

  • Worms, whose purpose is to self-replicate ad infinitum, thus eating up a system's resources. An example is the infamous worm that crashed the entire internet network in 1994.

  • Trojan horses, malevolent code inserted into legitimate programming to perform a disguised function.

  • Backdoors and trapdoors, a mechanism built into a system by the designer, to give the manufacturer or others the ability to 'sneak back into the system' at a later date by circumventing the need for access privileges.

A few other goodies in the arsenal of information warfare are devices for disrupting data flow or damaging entire systems, hardware and all. Among these, as explained in earlier chapters, are High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) guns, which focus a high power radio signal on target equipment, putting it out of action; and, ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) devices, which can be detonated in the vicinity of a target system. Such devices can destroy electronics and communications equipment over a wide area.

All of the preceding current and future offensive and defensive IW weapons arsenal will be discussed in specific detail next. Let's take a look.



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Computer Forensics. Computer Crime Scene Investigation
Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation (With CD-ROM) (Networking Series)
ISBN: 1584500182
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 263
Authors: John R. Vacca

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