Cyber Warfare

An article in the New York Times titled “Iran’s Hand IsSuspected in Computer Attacks” written by Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger explains a recent attack of cyber warfare. Iranian government developed a cyber-attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry’s computer systems. Due to this silent and killer attack, Iranian government successfully crippled about 30,000 of Saudi Arabia’s systems by erasing files and overwriting them.

Even though Iran’s attack was not as powerful as something Russia or China has the potential to do, it still wreaked havoc among the Saudi’s systems. This has become a new threat to the world. Instead of going to war like we use in the past centuries, now we have a new threat through the internet. Due to the internet’s potential access to confidential files and special ops systems that is dealt with our government and military, our enemies could possibly have access to these files information. Or they could even erase essential information for America’s well-being. 

According to the article, James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote Friday in an essay for ForeignPolicy.com, “Iran has discovered a new way to harass much sooner than expected, and the United States is ill-prepared to deal with it,” thus, we as American’s need to become more aware of these potential cyber threats, and develop constructive ways to help protect ourselves from these enemies. 

Iran is only one of many potential cyber threats. These attacks are not only happening between countries governments, but also between regular people and ordinary companies. These viruses can be conducted by anyone and sent through emails or websites, consequently putting everyone in risk. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of cyber-attacks. It has the potential to get stronger, more destructive and ultimately more frequent. Therefore, it is important to protect yourself, your files and your information kept on your private or work computers. 

Hopefully, in the near future America’s government and military will develop stronger fire walls to keep these threats away. Possibly even create a new style of protection for the civilians as well. Ultimately, now as a nation we not only have to worry about terrorist attacks consisting of plane crashes, bombs or shootings, we also need to be aware and possibly worry about attacks over the internet. This can be attacks from other countries or even attacks from within the own comfort of our nation.