CyberWAR...

Just imagine that you are sitting there typing up a plan, documents, spreadsheets, emails and files, and then all of a sudden there is an awkward silence and your computer shuts down and a picture of a burning American flag appeared. What if the documents that you were working on were the governments’ top secrets? What would you do? Who would you tell? Recently I have read an article called, “CyberWar” by Patricia Smith about how there have been many physical wars in the past, but now our country’s enemies have found a better way to “get even.”

In the article, Smith talks about a few “CyberWars” that have taken place, and the fear of them happening here in America. The hackers were smart, they were smooth, and they were swift. Smith says, “They knew that last August 15, more than 55,000 Saudi Aramco employees would be at home preparing for a Muslim holiday…at 11:08 , a computer virus began erasing data on 75 percent of Aramco’s corporate PC’s…” What Smith means by this is because majority of Saudi Arabia is Muslim, so most of them were at home celebrating the holiday. The attackers obviously knew that there would be low staff that day, which made the company open to attack.

Also in the article, Smith talks about the attacks conducted by the U.S. She says “The U.S has conducted Cyberattacks against adversaries, although it has never been publically admitted.” Which basically means that even though there were Cyberattacks conducted toward the U.S, in many perspectives, the U.S would have been wrong for their retaliation.

I think that the U.S had the right to conduct cyberattacks against other countries beforehand because they were starting preparation for retaliation ahead of time. If the U.S was cyberattacked, we would all probably be in great danger because they would take all over our government, our technology, and be able to take control of our incomes. My advice? Plan ahead. Only attack through cyberspace, or we’d all be dead.