The internet is bubbling with information, resources and also an arena for digital warfare. The possibility of a digital warfare is extremely high. Recent researches by analysts and cyber security experts has made them warn every government agency. News Today reached out to experts of this field who spoke about cyber warfare between powerful nations. According to researchers, nations are determined to interfere in other countries operations’ especially in the defence sector.
“Take China for instance, a few months ago, a western news giant broke the story of what China was doing in the routers and servers manufactured/assembled in its territory for global tech giants, including Apple and US defence wing to carry out its global data transfer operations. The news article published came this January, revealing how China has secretly installed micro to the core level chips – which cannot be easily detected, in the motherboards to eavesdrop people’s actions. Also, there were few allegations disclosed that those chips could ruin the lives of millions by making them financially weak,” said a top cyber security expert, who did not wished to be named.
* Espionage allegations
Following this came reports unveiling the stealthy operations carried by dominant countries on developing countries, including India. “Recent allegation of astronomer, Jonathan McDowell on US to have spied India’s anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test is a perfect example, Though US’s secret service and the Pentagon denied the allegations of spying India’s mission, one can’t be sure of it,” the expert added.
If these are considered to be the secret operations, on other hand, there were news reports revealing malware attacks, supply chain attacks and cyber espionage caused by state-run actors. When asked a researcher associated with a global tech giant about those state-run hackers attack, the expert said, “Mostly, actors attack for monetary gain. But at some point of time, there were reports revealing, the crime committed to show the power scale and show dominance.”
* Potential threats from new generation of hackers
When asked another key player in the cybersecurity industry, Kaspersky once about militarisation, the agency spokeperson told the reporter, “Generally people think countries use militarisation in cyberspace for defense and protection purpose. But the process is not that simple and not many are using for protection alone. There are chances to use cyber weapons for fight, which eventually leads to issues in cyberspace.”
Recently the research lab (GReAT) associated with Kaspersky said, the world is about to face threats from the newcomers, causing loses to government organisations, research institutes, military sector and law enforcements who work in the political sphere have been targets in the past and even aerospace, oil and gas companies. “Some of the newcomers can be mercenaries; they steal intellectual property and then sell. Quite often, they’re not interested in money,” ended the statement with open note.