Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from House staff Works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what
Speaker 1: is cyber warfare and what tools do cyber warriors use?
Speaker 1: Over the past year, we've been hearing a great deal
Speaker 1: about cyber warfare. The Pentagon talks about it, and it's
Speaker 1: also come up in relation to wiki leaks China and Iran.
Speaker 1: Cyber Warfare comes in many forms, and it's interesting because
Speaker 1: the battleground is so different from a traditional battleground. Cyber
Speaker 1: Warfare is essentially invisible to most people, and the combatants can,
Speaker 1: in theory, be just about anyone in any part of
Speaker 1: the world. Even though it's unseen and silent. However, it
Speaker 1: can still be quite destructive. Cyber Warfare occurs on and
Speaker 1: through the Internet and other computer networks. The goal is
Speaker 1: to attack servers on the Internet, the infrastructure of the Internet,
Speaker 1: or things controlled by machines communicating through networks. It can
Speaker 1: be as simple as flipping a switch, or as complicated
Speaker 1: as a grand master's chess game. The best way to
Speaker 1: understand cyber warfare is to look at some examples. The
Speaker 1: simplest example looks more like spying and less like war,
Speaker 1: but can have big effects. It involves breaking into a
Speaker 1: computer to steal information. Imagine, for example, that all the
Speaker 1: plans for the D Day attack in World War Two
Speaker 1: had been stolen. The enemy would have known exactly when, where,
Speaker 1: and how the attack would unfold, and could mount its
Speaker 1: defenses with complete confidence. It would have been a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: In the twenty century, just about everything is stored on computers,
Speaker 1: and in many cases these computers can be accessed from
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. If you have the right password,
Speaker 1: you can log in and start browsing. Cyber Soldiers can
Speaker 1: discover passwords by guessing, by using dictionary attacks, by using
Speaker 1: social engineering, or by accessing back doors. An example of
Speaker 1: a back door might be a well known account intended
Speaker 1: to be used for tech support when machines are being installed,
Speaker 1: but then never gets deleted. Another example would be data interception.
Speaker 1: Data flows between people and machines on the Internet, either
Speaker 1: through radio waves, wires, or optical cables. Data flowing through
Speaker 1: all three of these media can be intercepted and copied. Ideally,
Speaker 1: sensitive data would all be encrypted so that this type
Speaker 1: of attack is pointless, but some things we commonly use,
Speaker 1: like traditional email, are not encrypted. In any way, and
Speaker 1: sometimes encryption can be broken in the data revealed. Another
Speaker 1: cyber warfare tactic was used shortly after the founder of
Speaker 1: Wiki leaks was arrested. Allies of WikiLeaks started attacking different
Speaker 1: entities perceived to be threatening to Wiki leaks. Several large
Speaker 1: financial companies saw their so rivers fail. These attacks are
Speaker 1: called distributed denial of service or d d o S attacks.
Speaker 1: The idea is to overwhelm Internet servers with so much
Speaker 1: traffic that they can't possibly respond to all of it.
Speaker 1: Often d d o S attacks are launched by bot nets,
Speaker 1: collections of thousands of ordinary computers that have been compromised
Speaker 1: by computer viruses, so that other people can control their actions.
Speaker 1: It's also possible to imagine thousands of people doing the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing by acting together in a coordinated way.
Speaker 1: Speaking of viruses, these computer invaders represent another way to
Speaker 1: break into an Internet server. If a machine is compromised
Speaker 1: by a virus or a worm, it would allow someone
Speaker 1: to copy out data on that machine or log all
Speaker 1: the key strokes typed into the machine, which would include
Speaker 1: account names and passwords. One of the most amazing worm
Speaker 1: scene to date is called Stuck's Net. Apparently, it's a
Speaker 1: cyber warfare tool designed to damn certain types of industrial machinery,
Speaker 1: and it's specifically thought to be directed at a rand's
Speaker 1: ability to enrich uranium. The virus attacks computers that control
Speaker 1: machines found in factory settings. The existence of stucks net
Speaker 1: opens up all kinds of possibilities. It's easy to imagine
Speaker 1: people or viruses that attack Internet connected power grids, drinking
Speaker 1: water supplies, traffic lights, trucking networks, and so on, and
Speaker 1: bringing parts of society to a standstill. For that matter,
Speaker 1: it's easy to imagine attacks on anything connected to the Internet.
Speaker 1: This is one of the unknowns of cyber warfare. It's
Speaker 1: so new that no one really knows how far it
Speaker 1: can go. We're sure to find out some of the
Speaker 1: unexpected possibilities in the not too distant future. For more
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