Cyber Warfare
Samuel Newman Professor Cox Censorship & the Media 5 December 2012
The Fusion of Censorship with Anonymity Computers have become an integral part of human activity. We rely on them to answer our questions, to communicate, and recently for cyber warfare. Cyber warfare is anonymous political or social attacks that are conducted via the internet. As time progresses computers will advance and play a larger role in our lives, inevitably cyber warfare and the internet will fill a void. The internet allows cyber warfare to exist globally and for individuals to become more powerful. The evolution of the internet has opened the gates of censorship into a new era of inconspicuous concealment. When you attempt to access a gaming site on your high school’s system and see the heart-breaking “Access to site denied” phrase, you know that a school administrator is prohibiting you. You are censored from information or access, but you are aware of what administrator or company is censoring you. However, cyber warfare has changed the ability to recognize the locus of control. For example, look at the most recent cyber warfare attack on Iran’s nuclear facility, Stuxnet. This virus was created to infect a computer that was linked to a specific box that regulates temperature and timing. The ingenious part of this virus was that it was designed to discreetly disrupt the number pattern of this particular box so that the company would not see immediate effects. It turns out the particular box that Stuxnet was searching for was located in only one computer in the world, Iran’s nuclear facility. People disregarding cyber warfare as an imminent, sincere threat may be asking how this particular attack is different than any other military procedure that has happened in the last century. I have one simple response; who did it? Despite hours of tracking, the source of Stuxnet was never discovered. For all we know it could have been a twenty-four year old college graduate who
The Fusion of Censorship with Anonymity Computers have become an integral part of human activity. We rely on them to answer our questions, to communicate, and recently for cyber warfare. Cyber warfare is anonymous political or social attacks that are conducted via the internet. As time progresses computers will advance and play a larger role in our lives, inevitably cyber warfare and the internet will fill a void. The internet allows cyber warfare to exist globally and for individuals to become more powerful. The evolution of the internet has opened the gates of censorship into a new era of inconspicuous concealment. When you attempt to access a gaming site on your high school’s system and see the heart-breaking “Access to site denied” phrase, you know that a school administrator is prohibiting you. You are censored from information or access, but you are aware of what administrator or company is censoring you. However, cyber warfare has changed the ability to recognize the locus of control. For example, look at the most recent cyber warfare attack on Iran’s nuclear facility, Stuxnet. This virus was created to infect a computer that was linked to a specific box that regulates temperature and timing. The ingenious part of this virus was that it was designed to discreetly disrupt the number pattern of this particular box so that the company would not see immediate effects. It turns out the particular box that Stuxnet was searching for was located in only one computer in the world, Iran’s nuclear facility. People disregarding cyber warfare as an imminent, sincere threat may be asking how this particular attack is different than any other military procedure that has happened in the last century. I have one simple response; who did it? Despite hours of tracking, the source of Stuxnet was never discovered. For all we know it could have been a twenty-four year old college graduate who