Netwar and Cyberwar

Berglund Authority Level 3

by Jeffrey Barlow <barlowj@pacificu.edu>
Editor, The Journal of Education, Community and Values: Interface on the Internet.
The Electronic Journal of the Berglund Center for Internet Studies

This editorial essay, while it stands alone, follows upon one on a related topic ("Netwar") written for the inaugural issue of Interface. There we began to construct an argument that the events of September 11, and the very nature of the war against terrorism and the putative guilty parties, Mr. Isama Bin Laden and his organization, el Qaeda, can fruitfully be understood as yet another impact of the Internet. The entire phenomenon belongs, we believe, to a particular form of conflict known as "Netwar." Before discussing Netwar proper, we need to develop an understanding of several related concepts, also related to the development and impact of the Internet.

We began by discussing a number of terms: Cyberwar; Information Attack; Information Warfare; and finally, in our next issue, Netwar. (1) Here we wish to further develop the concept of Cyberwar in order to gain a broader understanding of the relationship between forms of violence and the Internet.

Although most of us have been largely ignorant of them, there have already been many examples of cyberconflicts. The struggles in Kosovo, for example, had some minor attributes of Cyberwar.(2) Those were in large part nothing particularly new, but rather the logical extension of new tools into military space. They should more properly be termed "information warfare" or even psychological warfare in that they consisted largely of a struggle to dominate the flow of information.

Probably the most common form of Cyberwar has been to attack the Internet information resources of the opponent, WWW pages or servers. There have been, for example, major such clashes between Israeli and Palestinian groups. Hacker ethics generally restrain "hacktivists" from doing real damage to the opponent, so the level of violence has usually been the post-modern equivalent of counting coup--defacing the opponents' web pages. In this struggle, interestingly, the Palestinian hackers are said to have mounted 200 successful assaults vs. Israeli hackers' 40. (3) There have been similar clashes between Indian hackers and Pakistani ones (Pakistanis victorious), between China and Taiwan (China over Taiwan), Portugal vs. Indonesia over E. Timor (Portugal, no contest) and many lesser known ones, including Chinese hackers vs. American ones (a draw). (4)

Cyberwar, (all forms of electronic attack or defense) like all things cyber- , might give an impression of being so evanescent as to be unimportant. But to so dismiss them would be to make a grave mistake. It is true that the above examples clearly have an aura of adolescent hijinks about them. This is in large part because of the hacker ethos that unites the contestants. But a true struggle between nations or ethnic groups that escalates to deadly force will, of course, likewise escalate in cyberspace. There are already many examples of cyberconflicts with potentially disastrous outcomes for one or more of the participants.

Escalations of such conflicts include "denial of service attacks" in which one side disables the electronic resources of the enemy. In October of 2000, for example, the Israeli Knesset, as well as the Foreign Ministry Web site, were down for thirty hours due to blizzards of E-mail which crashed their servers. These attacks came simultaneously from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and North America, apparently coordinated from Lebanon.(5)

A more dangerous level of escalation is to gain sufficient access to a server to begin to exercise undetected control over some of its operations. In February of 2001 someone gained access to a server that controlled part of the California power grid. (6) This should not have come as a surprise. As early as 1997, in a National Security Agency (NSA) test, hired hackers gained sufficient access to disrupt power grids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, and New York had they wished to do so. (7)

Nor are the above simply a range of frightful possibilities: the conflict with Osama Bin Laden has long had elements of cyberwar. It was claimed in February of 2001 that the Central Intelligence Agency has succeeded in "mapping" Bin Laden's "financial and operational networks." (8)The implication was that the agency had succeeded in disrupting his finances. More recent events, however, suggest an element of optimism or possibly a disinformation campaign in those earlier CIA claims.

The question as to whether or not Bin Laden is truly in charge of the wide variety of terrorist actions often ascribed to him should probably be left open at present. To do otherwise is to risk later surprises in the event that he is captured or killed. But it is clear that the terrorist movement as a whole has recruited many talented and patient men. Ramzi Yousef, for example, the convicted bomber in the first World Trade Center incident in February of 1993, began studying in Great Britain in 1986. He attended Oxford College of Further Education and then took courses in Electronic Engineering in Swansea, Wales. (9) Mr. Yousef learned both the chemistry and the electrical engineering skills necessary to develop unprecedentedly sophisticated bombs, though the botched World Trade Center instruments were not such.

Groups like Hamas (Palestine), the Algerian Armed Islamist Group (Algeria), the Harkat Ul Moujahedeen (Pakistan) and Hezbollah (Lebanon), each at some time said to have been linked to Bin Laden, have demonstrated a high level of skill in utilizing the Internet for political purposes. (10) Louis Freeh, then Director of the F.B.I., ranked terrorist skills with computers among "threats to U.S. national security" as early as January of 1998. (11) Yousef himself was later linked to such terrorist groups as the Gama al-Islamiya, Islamic jihad, Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front and al-Fuqrah. (12) Bin Laden, of course, has been linked to many additional groups. It is probable that the interchange of people, skills, and equipment guarantees that computer hacking skills are very widespread in all the groups.

The nature of hacking makes it difficult to assign responsibility to particular incidents. It is known that hackers have successfully penetrated even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory computers which held data pertaining to commercial air traffic, Global Positioning System navigation satellites, and the location of Stealth aircraft among other bodies of information. This particular hacker was traced back to the Persian Gulf. But whether or not he was associated with al Qaeda is unknown. (13)

It is clear that present conflicts already involve substantial elements that can be seen as an impact of the Internet. It is certain that the "war against terrorism" will involve a substantial electronic element, accurately described as "Cyberwar."

In our next and concluding piece, "Netwar and the War on Terrorism" to be posted in December, 2001, we will argue that the conflict now described as the war on terrorism must be understood as a new phenomenon, "Netwar," and that a failure to understand this concept will result in continuing conflict rather than an end to terrorism. The very nature of warfare has changed as a result of the Internet. Non-state players have been afforded new opportunities, have created new organizational forms suggested and facilitated by the Internet itself, and have been able to use the Internet to prepare and to stage their attacks. They cannot be stopped by conventional warfare, indeed, conventional warfare will, in the long run, feed the machinery of terrorism with the energy and personnel it will need to expand.

NOTES:

1) We defined these as:

* Cyberwar: This concept has been defined as any form of electronic attack or defense. We think that it should be defined as involving a level of violence or harm above conventional "hacking."
* Information Attack: This concept is defined by the U.S. Air Force as "directly corrupting adversary information without changing visibly the physical entity in which it resides." (Stein, Information Attack, Executive summary)
* Information Warfare. This concept appears to embrace all forms of electronically-mediated warfare. For example, an electronic attack upon a particular web site or server, and the posting of spurious electronic material intended to engender a particular psychological or policy response, would equally be termed Information Warfare (IW) (Rathmell, 1.)
* Netwar: This term in its origin means, according to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, "societal-level ideational conflict waged in part through internetted modes of communications." (Stein, Information war, Cyberwar... p 2)

2) See McGirk, Tim. "Wired for Warfare," Time.com <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,32558.00.html > Accessed 10/30/2001 See also Brewis, Bob. "Kosovo Ushered in Cyberwar," FWC.com <http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/1999/fcw_092799_newscyber.asp> Accessed 10/30/2001

3) Americo,R.P.C. "Cyberwar: The mouse is Mightier than the Missile," QSDG Magazine <http://www.qsdg.com/phpelements/retrievearticles.php?article_ID=12444> Accessed 10/30/2001

4) For a page of links to fascinating examples of hacker coups in the Sino-American clash, see: "Cyberwar with China: Self-fulfilling Prophecy" <http://www.attrition.org/security/commentary/cn-us-war.html> Accessed 10/30/2001

5) Kalman, Matthew. "Middle East conflict spills into cyberspace." USA Today. <http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti723.htm>

6) Bickers, Charles. "Cyberwar: Combat on the Web" Far Eastern Economic Review, <http://www.feer.com/2001/0108_16/p030innov.html> Accessed 10/30/2001

7) Sullivan, Bob. "Cyberwar: the threat of chaos." MSNBC <http://www.msnbc.com/news/295227.asp?cp1=1#body> Accessed 10/30/2001

8) "U.S. Makes Cyberwar on Bin Laden" NewsMax.Com <http://www.newsmax.com>

9)Mackay, Neil. "The British Breeding Ground," The Sunday Herald, (Glasgow) September 30, 2001. <http://www.Sundayherald.com/18874>. Accessed 10/31/2001.

10) See Whine, Michael. "Islamist Organizations on the Internet. <http://www.ict.org/il/articles/islamnet.htm> Accessed 9/25/01, and Piller, Charles and David Wilson. "The Terrorists are Winning the Cyber War." latimes.com <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091901techspy.story> Accessed 10/23/2001.

11) Freeh, Louis J. "Threats to U.S. National Security" Statement for the record before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington D.C., January 28, 1998. Infowar.com. <http://www.infowar.com/civil_de/civil_022798b.html-ssi> Accessed 10/31/2001

12) "February 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City" Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, <http://www.cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/wtc93.htm>.

13) Piller, Charles and David Wilson. "The Terrorists are Winning the Cyber War." latimes.com <http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091901techspy.story> Accessed 10/23/2001.


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RESOURCES:

The Institute for the Advanced Study of Information Warfare <http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html> This is a metasite for links relating to all forms of electronic warfare. A number of the materials on the site seem to no longer be available, perhaps as a response to the events of 9-11. Accessed 10/30/2001