If you think hacking, spamming, and virus spreading rest only between nuisance and personal attack, think again: A leading news journal says the tactics were deployed in a huge way during recent international disputes.
The Economist reports that just hours after the Pakistani coup this month, a group calling itself the "Islamic Group of Hackers" rewrote a government Web site praising the army and condemning the fallen prime minister. The magazine says that that followed both Pakistani and Indian propagandists denouncing their enemies online and attacking each other's Web sites over the conflict in Kashmir - the Indian Army's site was hijacked, with stories of torture of Kashmiri separatists put in its place.
The tactics are even said to have happened during the Kosovo War last spring. The Economist says NATO hackers might have interfered with Yugoslavia's communications system during the war, while U.S. government Web sites were flooded with e-mails after the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was bombed.
The Chinese are said to be no strangers to cyberwarfare - the magazine says rival Chinese and Taiwanese hackers often compete to plant their national flags on rival sites, while the Falun Gong spiritual movement in mainland China (they conducted mass protests last spring and this week despite a government crackdown, The Economist says) is believed to be managed by e-mail.
"The group's Web sites are used to spread news and to encourage followers not to be browbeaten," the magazine says. "Dissident hackers have attacked Chinese government computers used to censor websites and in return, it is claimed, government technicians have attacked those of dissidents."
But The Economist says that the cyberwars heat up to suffocating degrees when hacking activists try to sabotage others' computers - as during the recent independence campaign and related violence in East Timor.
"East Timorese separatists threatened to employ scores of expert hackers against the Indonesian authorities if the government tried to rig the independence referendum in August," the magazine says, adding a Timorese leader, Jose Ramos Horta, swore that computer hackers would infect Indonesian banking system computers with viruses to trigger economic chaos - a threat which was never carried out.
When Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui said relations with China should be considered as those between countries (mainland China has long maintained that Taiwan is "a province which is long returned to the motherland," as cited in the famous Shanghai Communique in 1972, the year President Richard Nixon visited the mainland and met with Chou En-lai and Mao Tse-tung), that launched teams of hackers trying to disrupt rival computer systems, The Economist says. Taiwan's security bureau tells the magazine they have broken into government networks, including the Justice Ministry, over 150 times recently - with many incidents blames on Chinese agencies.
The magazine cites a report saying 72,000 cyberspace attacks were launched from mainland China against Taiwan just in August. But it's not as though Taiwan took it lying down - Taiwanese hacked into the Web sites of China's taxmen and the railways industry, The Economist says.
Before you start wondering how you can get tickets for this peculiarly contemporary style of warfare, be advised the toll can be worse than a bloodbath at a National Football League playoff game. The Pentagon claims the Taiwanese spread two viruses - the Bloody 6/4 and Michelangelo - last year, in part to protest the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. The Economist says the damage amounted to some 360,000 Chinese computers at a $120 million price tag.
Taiwan is saying aloud that cyberwar is a serious future concern, while a report for the U.S. Congress says American communications, defense, power, and emergency services are all vulnerable to computer attacks. Governments are developing defenses for computer networks, but The Economist says it is assumed they also prepare attack methods. The Taiwanese claim China held a military exercise last summer to see how computer viruses could cripple enemy command and control centers, the magazine says.
