Dummies Guide To Cyber Warfare

Why spend a billion schmillions on an invisible jet tank with nuclear gills when you could just call upon the patriotism of your countries hackers and Spam Lords (for it is they who send me missives about Angelina in a mud bath) and get them to turn on your enemy with ‘denial of service attacks’.

World of Warcraft ain’t got nothing on this (via Slate):

‘As Russian and Georgian troops fight on the ground, there’s a parallel war happening in cyberspace. In recent weeks, Georgia’s government Web sites have been besieged by denial-of-service attacks and acts of vandalism. Just like in traditional warfare, there’s a lot of confusion about what’s going on in this technological battle—nobody seems to know whether this is a centralized Russian attack, the work of a loose band of hackers, or something else. Having read so many contradicting accounts, I knew that the only reliable way to find out what was really happening was to enlist in the Russian digital army myself.

Don’t get me wrong: My geopolitical sympathies, if anything, lie with Moscow’s counterparts. Nor do I see myself as an Internet-savvy Rambo character. I had a much simpler research objective: to test how much damage someone like me, who is quite aloof from the Kremlin physically and politically, could inflict upon Georgia’s Web infrastructure, acting entirely on my own and using only a laptop and an Internet connection. If I succeeded, that would somewhat contradict the widely shared assumption—at least in most of the Western media—that the Kremlin is managing this cyberwarfare in a centralized fashion. My mission, if successful, would show that the field is open to anyone with a grudge against Georgia, regardless of their exact relationship with state authorities. ‘

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