There’s no doubt that we are becoming more and more dependent on technology, the age of convenience is upon us. Many of us may have gone years without setting foot in a bank and how often do you write paper checks? Instead of getting our news from a newspaper we head to our favorite website instead. Cloud storage is on the rise and soon much of our data will be stored on remote servers, if it isn’t already. Everyday we become increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks as we have more and more to loose.
Warfare today still employs man power to get things done but the modern battlefield is also a war of machines. Robotic technology is being used not only for surveillance but also as a weapon. If hackers are somehow able to get into these systems, it could spell disaster on an epic scale. Imagine if a hacker were able to take down GPS systems and major data centers, then think about how that would impact the intelligence community and eventually the troops on the ground.
Now, imagine a scenario where both the military and businesses of a particular country are suddenly, without warning under attack. The economy could crash as banks and businesses are systematically shut down. What’s scary about all of this is that hackers are already threatening to bring this type of digital-warfare into reality. Small groups of hackers, usually brought together under one particular cause, are often decentralized and therefore extremely difficult or near impossible to track down. A digital assault could come from anywhere in the world and when one individual gets shut down another can take his or her place. Our digital world can essentially be held hostage until demands are met, there needs to be serious thought in how to avoid such a tragedy.
What becomes obvious here is that governments will need to create and maintain their own team of hackers and they will need to be spread through out the world as well. The future of countries could come down to a battle of wits in a digital battleground. It almost writes itself as a graphic novel, a team of super hackers defending the world against digital tragedy. What’s also apparent is that in some scenarios, we don’t really know how vulnerable we are until an attack has already occurred. We need to take a proactive effort to prepare ourselves for such a worst-case scenario.
Denial of service attacks (DDoS) have already been underway and have seriously impacted large banks like PNC Bank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase. For these banks, online access becomes impossible and seriously impacts customers. It’s also important to note that these DDoS attacks aren’t just coming from any angry kid in his mothers basement, they are coming from groups, often called hacktivists, that have major resources and are capable of doing serious damage.
My answer to the question in the title of this article is yes, war will undoubtably be fought online and the future of digital-warfare is already underway. We need to do a lot better in order to properly protect ourselves, the time to prepare is now.