Future Wars are Fought on the Net

An attack against Estonia took place at ten o'clock in the evening without bombs, without tanks and without soldiers. Instead an army of computers sent in 2007 was the first wave of electronic "denial of service" attacks against government sites. The Estonian defense minister Jaak Aaviksoo discovered the attacks when he tried to read the news on the country's biggest online newspaper. When he tried to enter, nothing happened, and just like with most of the countries other sites, the newspaper's website was overloaded and had collapsed. In the following days the attacks intensified against the government websites and against banks. Estonia was the victim o a cyberattack. The attack against Estonia in 2007 was the first cyber war but certainly not the last.

In 2008 Israel and Palestine hackers was at war with each other and Russia invaded their neighbor country, Georgia. In 2010 Chinese hackers had hacked Google and gained access to a number of email accounts of human rights activists and journalists. I believe Hillary Clinton said something along the lines that an attack on a nations network is an attack on everyone.

There is no definitions of cyber war and many questions therefore arise; can you compare attack in cyberspace with an attack on the ground and is a war without physical destruction at all a war? Iran and China is blocking public access to the internet for instance. War is not only about wining the battle on the battlefield but also about controlling the information available and people's opinions. In cyberspace we can  see the blocking of websites to keep people in some sort of restrain. It therefore seems important that there is a cyber defense developed since our lives are more and more taking place in cyberspace.