Web site hacking: Terrorism or rogue diplomacy?
Connecting state and local government leaders
It doesn’t really reach the level of terrorism, but some countries seem to be including online attacks in their portfolio of diplomatic activities.
Recent Web site attacks apparently connected to sensitive international issues have generated a lot of talk about cyber terrorism. There was the spate of denial-of-service attacks in early July against government and financial sites in the United States and South Korea, supposedly originating in North Korea and, more recently, attacks against the Web site of an Australian film festival that had offended the Chinese government.
Neither of those incidents rose to the level of terrorism. Instead, they appeared to be part of a trend toward the use of online activism as a kind of rogue diplomacy. Countries that want to be taken seriously can grab a lot of attention by taking down a few Web sites.
The Korean activity came at a time of heightened squabbling between North Korea and the rest of the world about missile tests. According to security experts, the distributed denial-of-service attacks were about as sophisticated as the missiles the country has been launching. But, like the missiles, they received international attention.
More recently, the Web site of the Melbourne International Film Festival was defaced with a Chinese flag and angry messages July 25, shortly after a diplomatic protest from China against the showing of a documentary film, “Ten Conditions of Love,” about Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. The Chinese government blames Kadeer, now living in exile in the United States, for recent riots in China that left 200 people dead, and the country withdrew its films from the festival because of the documentary.
It is difficult to pinpoint the source of and motive behind online attacks, and beyond speculation, there has been nothing solid to tie the Korean attacks to the North Korean government. According to the Australian Broadcasting Company, a Chinese citizen who claimed to be the film festival hacker denied by e-mail any connection with the Chinese government and said he was acting out of anger over the perceived national slight.
This kind of hacktivism is not new, but it is appearing more often in connection with international issues. With an increasingly tense and fragmented international community, the number of such attacks is likely to increase.
The U.S. government claims that a number of countries are developing cyber offensive capabilities. That makes sense because the asymmetrical nature of cyber warfare could make even a small country a formidable opponent online. Countries that would never have the resources to attack us militarily could easily match us click for click with a relatively modest outlay.
In the same way, a country can use cyberattacks to bring attention to its concerns, sometimes out of proportion to its international influence. North Korea has a real image problem, and most of the world does not take its threats seriously. But if someone is kept out of Amazon.com for a few hours, North Korean concerns become a factor in his or her life. It is unlikely that many people outside Australia would have known about China’s displeasure with the Uighur film had someone not gone after the festival Web site. As tensions flare over major and minor issues around the world, we probably can expect corresponding spikes in online hostile activity.
NEXT STORY: Biometrics technologies vital for combat success