Many thanks to Steevo for drawing our
attention to an article regarding Russia's 'cyber-warfare' attacks
on Georgia.
Steevo's message, amongst a number of other pieces that have been published over the past few months, highlights the increasingly important aspect of 'cyber warfare' in modern conflicts. Sod Grotius' age-old concepts of jus ad bellum and jus in bello; the internet has introduced a new dimension to global conflicts which potentially pits the might of a man with a modem against the weakness of a country and an army.
In May last year, following the removal of a Soviet war memorial from a park in Tallinn, Estonia's government was forced to request urgent international assistance following weeks of sustained and coordinated Russian attacks upon government and private sector web servers in the country. Whilst the Russian government has strongly denied sanctioning the attacks, domestic investigations into the source of the attacks have proved strangely inconclusive.
Commenting on the crisis, the Head of IT Security at the Estonian Defence Ministry said: "Estonia depends largely on the internet. We have e-government, government is so-called paperless... all the bank services are on the internet. We even elect our parliament via the internet".
The goal of achieving a "paperless government" is, of course, a hugely noble one but along with the benefits of cost savings and increased efficiency, "paperless government" brings with it an alarming new set of security challenges. Whilst to date the majority of 'cyber warfare' attacks have been relatively low-level in nature, bringing down the odd government website here and there, it can only be a matter of time before the essential public service infrastructure of a country is brought to its knees.
In the case of Estonia, what would be the repercussions of a 'cyber warfare' attack on the servers of its election agency on general election day? How would the United Kingdom cope if the computer servers coordinating the orders and stock levels of all the country's largest supermarkets were rendered useless for weeks on end following a 'cyber attack'? Imagine the repercussions if the United States Air Traffic Control System was taken offline at 8am on a rainy Monday morning.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on Estonia, NATO was quick to establish a Cyber Defence Management Authority, yet with only a handful of resource-strapped staff the organisation appears powerless to make any meaningful impact in the fight against 'cyber warfare'. It's only real role appears to be coordinating national responses to attacks as opposed to pre-empting and protecting against them.
The attacks on Estonia and Georgia prove that it is high time for an ad hoc coalition of democracies - from established NATO members to developing countries such as India, Brazil and (dare I say) Georgia - to come together to form a well-resourced and authoritative global organisation dedicated to protection of domestic computer networks - a "NATO of the internet".
If we don't act now, we'll only live to regret it.
