Cyber-War: The End of Conventional Warfare

In a day when we live surrounded by international conflict, finding our nation in the midst of battle in Iraq, people have their guard up towards many things. A few years back, everyone was afraid of receiving anthrax in the mail. Certainly, media and transportation are targets or vehicles of attack. We've seen this to be true during 9-11. We've seen this with the train bombings in Spain, and the subway bombings in London. But, perhaps a new form of war has emerged, or is at least being protected against.

Cyber-war. The ultimate, crippling attack. Recently, the Estonian government claims to have been attacked by a "botnet" that they trace back to Russian government officials, which has incited a scrambling of governments (including our own) to become protected against the threat of a cyber attack. Although cyber-war could come in many different forms (such as viruses and "distributive denial of service"), any attack could cripple the infrastructure of our country. Much needed water and gas delivery systems are run by computers. Telephone lines, power, and even service agencies like the police and fire departments depend on computers to operate. As such, the Department of Defense has been progressively trying to totally secure their computer systems. IT companies from all over the United States have been helping the DoD, since these companies feel that a cyber attack is almost a certainty. Peter Wollacott, chief executive of Tier-3, one of the companies that advised the government of such threats, said, "Whether it's a group of university students setting up a 'botnet' or someone more ideologically motivated, all those possibilities are there."