HACKING: The Future of Warfare

Large and small networks, businesses, and personal gadgets are all targets for most hackers, typically. However, nation-state hackers devastate large infrastructure projects, paralyze entire nations, and infect millions of computers.

That was the case in the 2007 cyber-attacks against Estonia, the Stuxnet strike, and Operation Shady Rat. Nobody could have predicted the scope and sophistication of each of these hacks beforehand. And each of them was carried out by nations that employed cyberspace as a military tool.

Cyber Police, Armies & Mercenaries

Depending on what purposes nations need them for, cyber armies can take many different shapes and forms.

Vietnam & Kazakhstan

Some of them, for instance, function somewhat like covert cyberpolice. Ocean Lotus, a hacker collective frequently connected to the Vietnamese government, is a prime example of such. It primarily targeted Vietnamese nationals and groups whose opinions differed from those of the government.

A further example of this is Golden Falcon. It has been connected to the Kazakh government and has been involved in a massive cyber-espionage effort against different Kazakh citizens.

Both of them were involved in neighbouring states?attacks, which are extremely prevalent worldwide. Many nations are engaged in fierce cyber-warfare with their neighbours, particularly in regions of the world where armed conflict is prevalent. Their cyber armies, usually connected to one or more intelligence agencies, frequently function as an extension of the regular army.

UAE, Israel & Iran

For instance, it has been claimed that the United Arab Emirates has hacked into the phones of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the Emir of Qatar, and other officials from rival nations, even employing former American cyber experts to assist in the hacking attempts.

Israel is another nation that can accomplish this. It waged conflicts with neighboring nations for many years, building up a strong cyber army as one of its military intelligence units, known as 8200.

Iran, a fierce adversary of the United Arab Emirates and Israel, has its own enormous cyber army and launches offensive operations throughout the Middle East. The Iranians are thought to be exceptionally skilled in cyberwarfare.

This brings us to yet another category of cyber operations: those carried out in aid or support of a more powerful entity. The most well-known cyber-attack in history, Stuxnet, was probably the result of cooperation between Israeli and US secret services. It used a virus to attack Iran’s nuclear production facilities, physically damaging several turbines in the process. Stuxnet was used in more than just a plot to undermine Iranian nuclear progress. It was a weapon of a new kind.

Russia

Russia frequently relies on the assistance of its allies. For instance, Belarusian secret services have been linked to Ghostwriter, a hacker organization that supported Russian invasions of Ukraine by launching significant operations against Poland, the Baltic nations, and Ukraine. These services served as proxies, a cyber-army for hire.

Russia is a nation whose history with cyber warfare dates back to the early Cold War. It was on the verge of creating an internet rival and went to great lengths to achieve that.

The Russian Army’s 26165 Military Intelligence Unit, led by a lieutenant colonel, was responsible for the Fancy Bear project. Similar organizations can be found all over Russia. They broke into the Democratic National Committee in 2016 with the intention of stealing some papers and influencing the elections for president.

They launched an attack on Ukraine in 2017. Rapidly spreading, the cyber weapon NotPetya crippled big businesses and caused damages exceeding $10 billion.

Russia has one of the strongest cyber armies in the world, thanks to a variety of factors. It was assisted by scientists, intelligence officers, and military personnel. Additionally, it essentially made hacking lawful, producing a new generation of competent cybercriminals.

North Korea

While?normal hacker groups are frequently linked to theft and extortion, certain cyber army and mercenary?groups do engage in these crimes. Case in point is?North Korea and its nation-sponsored threat actor, the Lazarus Group, which was?linked to the North Korean?state’s military.

According to some, hackers from North Korea are to blame for about half of all crypto currency theft that occurs globally. Crypto theft has become, in essence, a significant component of the?nation’s economy. Not only that, but North Korean hackers also broke into Sony due to a movie they purportedly made?that mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and they carried out WannaCry, which resulted in $4 billion in damages.

China

Massive hacking of this kind has also been reported from China; however, their target is industrial secrets rather than crypto currency. Operation Shady Rat gathered everything from medical records to blueprints from businesses and agencies around the globe.

According to some, it significantly aided China’s aerospace sector, enabling it to make up for decades of research.

It was not until the 2000s that the nation’s elite began to take cyber warfare seriously, and since then, it has grown at an unprecedented rate.

Clumsy phishing attempts that were indistinguishable from?ordinary hacking attempts from regular hackers characterized its early days. However, they would launch some of the most extensive industrial espionage activities in history a few years later. The fact that they obtained the data of American aircraft manufacturers is already well-known, but that is only the beginning.

Numerous Western organizations, including DuPont, Google, Motorola, and General Motors, acknowledged at some point that they had been compromised by Chinese hackers. And for the sole purpose of bolstering China’s economic might.

Under the Army’s leadership, China’s cyber army functions as an integrated organization with its own units, officers, and soldiers. Beyond that, however, very little is known, save for the fact that its actions exhibit astounding levels of intelligence, cunning, and preparation.

Volt Typhoon is one of the most well-known names connected to Chinese hackers. This Chinese hacker outfit, which is state-sponsored, was looking for ways to sabotage vital communications between the United States and Asia. It has been responsible for multiple noteworthy hacks, each more significant than the last.

A vivid instance was revealed not too long ago when Volt Typhoon breached significant communications infrastructure throughout the Pacific, accessing every node utilized by US military and commercial entities. They largely engaged in surveillance, but they also kept an eye on a kill switch that, in the event of an invasion of Taiwan, would turn off those networks.

U.S.A

The US military is credited with creating the internet, so it is only natural that they will ascend?to the top of the global cyberpower rankings. But it’s not simple to keep up this status in a world where every other nation has its own army of hackers.

U.S. Cyber Command serves as a form of unified framework that aids the American government in doing that. With a projected annual budget of more than $13 billion, it unites the cyber forces of the several divisions of the US military, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. That is nearly the whole GDP of North Korea, for comparison.

It is evident that the US possesses an unfathomably large cyber army at its disposal in the event that something needs to be penetrated.

US intelligence agencies have been linked to some of the largest and most sophisticated cyber attacks in history. Operation Glowing Symphony (2016) is one instance of that, in which US agents broke into nearly every computer utilized by ISIS and pulled them down all at once,? destroying the media, intelligence, and communication channels in a whole newly formed state.

Whenever ISIS attempted to regroup, acquire resources, and establish fresh communication channels, the United States would just repeat the same actions again. This is only one of the several highly advanced offensive operations that the United States carried out.

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Boney Maundu

Tech Contractor & Writer

Slim Bz TechSystems: Nairobi