Military Officer - June 2008 - (Page 62)

I I 62 In the unseen reaches of cyberspace, America’s enemies quietly are taking the postmodern form of warfare witnessed on Sept. 11, 2001, to a new level: These enemies no longer are just transnational — they are non-national, hiding and attacking in a world where there are no borders. They no longer are just stateless — they are place-less. And they no longer are virtually invisible — they are, well, virtual. he was quick to note that some of the attacks were traced to Russian government ofﬁces. That helps explain why Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has suggested NATO might need to update its 20th-century defense commitments in light of this 21st-century threat. “Cyberattacks are a form of offensive action that can paralyze, weaken, [and] harm a nation-state,” he says. NATO, which sent specialists to Estonia to carry out a battle-damage assessment, seems awake to the danger. With Estonia, Germany, Spain, and the U.S. leading the way, the alliance is developing a Center for Cyber Defense in Tartu, Estonia — and for good reason: NATO reports all of its member states have weathered cyberattacks of some kind in recent years. U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Stanley Davis Phillips calls the Center for Cyber Defense “an essential part of our efforts to combat this growing threat.” If the Russian government was involved in the attacks, it would seem to qualify as an act of war. In fact, high-level Russian military ofﬁcials have argued “the use of information warfare against Russia or its armed forces will categorically not be considered a non-military phase of a conﬂict, whether there [are] casualties or not.” Even if the Estonian attacks were the work of renegade cybernationalists, as Moscow claims, then this amounts to terrorism and Russia is obligated to punish those responsible. Whether or not Russia actually was behind Web War I, Estonia thought so, opening the door to far graver consequences: an Estonian request that NATO invoke Article V, which could have led to an old-fashioned war. Some argue a war waged in cyberspace, with streams of code rather than bullets and bombs, can’t hurt us. They’re wrong. With irony beﬁtting a Greek tragedy, the very thing that makes the U.S. and its allies so powerful — mastery of new technologies and the capacity to incorporate them into political systems, economies, and armed forces — also makes them more vulnerable to a crippling attack in cyberspace. Just ask our friends in Estonia. Trying times t all started not in cyberspace but in the real world, after the Estonian government decided to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial. The decision incensed Russia, and what followed has been called Cyberwar I, Web War I, a digital invasion, and a cyberriot. Cybersavvy Russian nationalists unleashed a withering volley of “distributed denial of service” attacks — crushing Estonian Web sites with countless computer-generated “zombie” hits, ﬂooding servers in Estonia with junk data, and, as the International Herald Tribune explained, overwhelming “the routers and switches that direct trafﬁc on the network.” The cybersalvos hit NATO ally Estonia especially hard because the tiny Baltic country is one of the most Webdependent places on Earth. The attacks, lasting about three weeks in April and May 2007, crippled Estonia’s communications infrastructure. They targeted newspapers, the mobile phone network, the country’s emergency 911 equivalent, and the country’s largest bank, costing millions of euros. In addition, key government Web sites were attacked, critical in a country where voting is conducted online. “It turned out to be a national security situation,” Estonian defense minister Jaak Aaviksoo concluded after the dust settled in cyberspace. Although he conceded Estonia was “not able to prove direct state links,” MILITARY OFFICER JUNE 2008 E Cybersuperpowers stonia wasn’t the only country to come under cyberassault in 2007. China penetrated several German government ministries around the same time as Estonia’s cybersiege. In interviews with Der Spiegel magazine, German ofﬁcials blamed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for the massive at-

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Military Officer - June 2008 Contents MOAA Online From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire MOAA Member Services Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor MOAA Scholarship Donors Cover Story: Mission to Modernize World War Web Playing to Win Fitness in Numbers Fighting Infection Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - June 2008

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