Preparing for cyberwar

This text is a forum published by El Mundo de Venezuela and can be read in pdf here.

The American administration has revolutionized their bodies with a new military intervention force: the "cibercomandos." Dependents of U.S. Air Force and with a budget of 2,000 million dollars in its first year of operations, ensuring the protection of American military systems on the Internet and respond to the recent discoveries that provide the assurance that for years hackers linked to countries such as China and Russia have dominated at home in NASA computers and various military organizations, stealing classified military information and data from satellites, rockets and even space shuttles.

It may seem a future need for the armies of major states incorporate computer elite corps to conduct offensive and defensive actions over the Internet, but the reality is that for our uneasiness, some countries take us far ahead. The year was 1996 when Beijing was established in the first military information warfare that since then, is to serve the Chinese Government for all types of operations. Many are internal operations, such as censorship, advertising or control of opinion and dissent, but preparing for cyberwar.

Internet control should be understood as control over information and telecommunications. On one side is the defense capabilities of the systems of a country to an attack, but also control over the citizens of a country many are external, like the attack and theft of classified information from companies and foreign governments. The Republic of Estonia suffered between April and May 2007, most offensive sites known to date. Business, media, government, communications and banks stopped working. The result was the total collapse of the country's computer. Suspicions about the authorship of the attacks fell on Russia.

A weapon too powerful to overlook the dangers they may evolve as a misuse of power. Cyberwar, and even cyberterrorism, open new and unexpected security camposde and suffocated battle moves to Internet. The increasing reliance on network communications and the activities of millions of people and organizations make a field that should be protected and safe away from the interests of each country.

Cinematic and apocalyptic scenarios as narrated in the movie "Network" (1995), where Sandra Bullock discovers a mysterious spy network on the Internet that will envelop you later in a dangerous international plot, are not as distant and technically impossible. Governments all countries should prepare for these scenarios. And the sooner the better.

Tags: cibercomandos , cyberwar , elite group of computer science , war , Internet