This article is a great example of cyber war and the use of
computers to cause conflict. Hackers unleashed a computer virus on the world’s
most valuable oil company, Saudi Aramco. It erased data on three-quarters of
Aramco’s corporate PC’s replacing it all with an image of a burning American
flag (creepy). The US intelligence
found the perpetrator to be Iran. The hackers called themselves the “Cutting
Sword of Justice.” The company was forced to shut down its internal corporate
network. The virus was called Shamoon, and it had a kill switch set to attack
at the exact time the computers were wiped of memory. The erasing mechanism was
named Wiper, which is the same name given to an erasing component of a virus
that had attacked Iran in May. This lead to suspicions that this attack was a
retaliation by Iran.
In this attack, the hackers got into the system somehow and
disrupted it. This article reminded me a lot of what we discussed in class. In
this attack it seems they were doing it for revenge/retaliation. The hackers
sent an image of a flaming American flag and also sent a list back of all the
computers that were hacked. This was sort of a bragging list; the Iranians proving
to themselves that they could accomplish it and they did. I don’t think that
conflict in the digital age is anywhere near over; if anything it is only going
to get worse. Right now we don’t know of any ways to stop it.
Americans believe that Iran was also responsible for the
attacks that disrupted the online baking sites Capitol One and BB&T. This
is all a wake up call and the reality it that other countries do have the
technology and skills to attack our computer systems. If Iran is capable of
these attacks Americans can only fear that China and Russia are working on
attacks as well. If America fights Iran back it could lead to a cyber war that
we might not be ready for. In fact I don’t think any country is ready for any
sort of cyber war. But at the rate we’re going it seems that it is inevitable
if we don’t change something about the way we protect our computers.
These cyber attacks may mean that we do need to start from
fresh with the Internet. We need
more secure and private systems that no other country can hack into. Even
though it would be a lot of work it may be more beneficial to start over. This
is only the beginning of cyber attacks; with time other countries may be able
to develop even more destructive viruses. America can’t afford for any of our
computer systems to be attacked.
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