HAcker Attacks in Cyberspace essays

HAcker Attacks in Cyberspace essays As NATO troops, combat aircraft, and warships were preparing to attack during the Yugoslavian Conflict, NATO's computers were being attacked on a second front. NATO was prepared for this cyber attack. For the past few years, the U.S. military has been engaged in a quiet but seemingly never-ending series of e-mail skirmishes against an unseen enemy. These cyber battles are helping the military develop the tools it needs to defend itself and are proving to be better than any training exercises. For 78 days, from March to June 1999, the United States and its NATO allies engaged in a military operation to bring an end to Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. This operation was known as Operation Allied Force. Three days after the bombing began hackers from an unknown location began an attack to disrupt the e-mail communication of the NATO allied forces. "Pings" or a method of hacking was the most widely used method to disrupt the communications of NATO. In this method one computer repeatedly calls another computer and delivers a large volume of messages that are meant to overload a system. These "e-mail bombs" caused only a few hours of disconnected service. While the actual identities of these hackers are unknown, a likely suspect was a Belgrade based five-member hacker team called Crna Ruka, which means Black Hand. This group had hacked into Kosovo Information Centre and had been quoted by a Belgrade newspaper as saying "NATO is our next target." It is almost impossible to locate these hacker groups or even to convict them. Hackers can access almost any server from anywhere in the world and use that to disguise their locations. Cyber warfare skills are being honed by these cyber attacks. The increased amount of attacks gives experience to the military. The attacks on the NATO e-mail network were indeed a worthy note in the history of war. It was the one of the first times that computer hackers co ...