Cyber Warfare - the new war front

In the last century we have seen several new fronts opening up in war. First came the Aeroplanes, and missiles. The space race and subsequent research help countries build faster and strong planes, and more powerful missiles with advanced capabilities and varieties. The biological and chemical weapons were present but the two world wars and the cold war led to an increase in research and subsequent developments of more deadly nerve agents and a variety of different biological weapons. Deadly flu viruses, Anthrax are to name a few of the deadly biological weapons created. As per several Conspiracy theorists AIDS was also a artificial disease.

But now the world wide web of internet and cyber space has opened a new front. As more and more systems are getting connected to the internet, Governments around the world are spending more in research and development of weapons and defensive mechanisms for this brand new front. We have already seen how US and Israel gave major setbacks to Iran's nuclear bomb making capabilities by using specifically created worm called "Stuxnet".

This is only the beginning as Governments have very recently discovered the possibilities and advantages of Cyber warfare. Many countries have their whole financial structures, and even essential services like power grids connected to the internet or intranet,and they are fast becoming targets for cyber attacks. This is not a future scenario, but a present reality. In fact in 2009 a reports surfaced that Russia and China had infiltrated the power grids in USA and had left behind backdoors to disrupt the system in times of war.

Internet hacking and its various deadly uses which came into limelight by various escapades of the hacking group Anonymous has become a tool for fighting proxy wars by various governments. Gone were the days when spies would infiltrate enemy camps to extract vital information. Now a hacker from a remote corner of the world would get into the system of the enemy camp and with a few mouse clicks would gather as much information as he want, from the comfort of home or own office.

This is not all every country is building its own army of hackers who can attack as well as defend their cyber borders. This scenario have given rise to a new breed of super powered countries. Iran, Syria, China has built a vast number of cyber armies who regularly attacks infrastructure of enemy countries. Syrian  Electric Army of Syria and Nuclear Group from Iran had repeatedly attacked various public and private infrastructures of US, England, Israel their traditional enemies.

On the other side we have NSA of US snooping on networks from all over the world and bullying internet giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Google to submit user data. The hackers under NSA had also reportedly hacked and infiltrated the personal phones of many world leaders to gather vital information.

There is also the ever increasing threats of terrorists hacking their way into public or private networks to cause mass data damage. Days are not far when terrorists groups, instead of blasting bombs will release specially designed computer viruses targeting networks of their enemy states to cause information outages and bringing down essential infrastructures.


In the near future countries having powerful ICBMs and automatic weaponry would live in perpetual fear that hackers from enemy countries would infiltrate their defensive firewalls and use their own missiles on them. In the near future generals would not fear the onslaught and war cry of hundreds of soldiers but a single silent hacker. As a skilled hacker with a few strokes in his keyboard could destroy a whole country by just hijacking its nuclear weaponry and using it.