The New Face of War: A Picture of the Opening Salvo of a Potential New World War

Read somewhere N Korea's dear leader is displeased with a new Hollywood movie and could be using Chinese allies to retaliate. Any excuse for China to hack seems the norm but they must be getting something in return from N Korea if this is the case. The hacked Sony emails, then the retaliation from Sony, followed by counter attacks by China.... all because a pudgy little dictator is displeased. The scenario is pathetic but could happen.

So... I work and live with the internet, it is my life 24/7.
I did not expierence any issues in the past days and if your screenshot should be proof of an attack, you have never seen a real attack on these sites.
small edit: I just looked a lot longer on the sites and it really seems like some small DDoS operations are going on, a lot coming from unknown military sources, which is intriguing.
Furthermore these sites, like IPViking Live and Digital Attack Map, are just simulations based on honeypots and fake servers.
You never know how much traffic is really pushed as long as you do not observe the real servers, it is just a rough estimate.

I agree however, that the next war will be fought in silence and China and Russia are leading it.
The most attacks have their origins in China and Russia, China even has an own army base just for the hackers.

DDoS attacks are a huge threat to economy and even to security, if they shut down civil air control and stuff like that, a lot can go really really down the drain.
A lot of countries, like Germany, have somehow ignored that problem for so long, that they are now technological and educational behind the countries like China.
I have no doubt, that the US for example could compete in such a war, but I rank China way higher in their digital warfare capacity. They are doing this stuff for years!
Like I said, I live in Germany, a lot of countries somehow missed the step to establish a proper digital warfare defense.
Germany is slowly realizing it and is now on the way to set something up.

I have the feeling the US is way more used to conduct small operations, for example with Israel against Iran nuclear plants, than to huge scale DDoS attacks, in which China is #1.
Starting and conducting a DDoS attack is easy, even for you and me, every body can rent large botnets to knock down simple servers.
Government and huge business networks is another scenario that is another scale, like already and often mentioned, I see China leading this one.
I have no doubt the US could catch up at that in no time however.

Our world is so technologized, that this is just another step in the all-time booming war-business.

Edit: btw. if you want some news when it comes to DDoS attacks, this website summarizes all www.ddosattacks.net...

I recon ya right dude, I’ve been thinking the same thing this past week or so. I work in IT and I’ve been noticing some unusual occurrences online.

Some websites going offline without notice.

ISP’s and carriers in Australia having technical faults and always blaming local carriers. On Saturday, my ISP had incredible issues for general Internet coverage. Pinging different DNS’s had great results but no websites would load - blaming DNS. Then, our ISP came out and said a contractor accidently starting maintenance 3 hours too early than scheduled. At Peak hour, on a Saturday night? – I don’t think so!! Even something as simple as my online gaming with my PlayStation. It’s been behaving odd all week. Speeds across my firms link to offices on other continents have been inconsistent and we're dropping packets more frequently.

Then on Friday we have the UK Airport dramas

Airports around the UK have been returning to normal, although almost 40 flights were cancelled at Heathrow, the day after a computer failure at the national air traffic control centre.

Then ATS doesn’t work?..

I love asking people that same question, if there was a massive attack sending Banks & the internet offline, right now.. What would you do? How long could you last with the food in your pantry and the petrol in your car? How much money do you have in your pocket/wallet right this second? You can’t call your wife or your kids, your smart phones dead. It would be utter chaos immediately because those who know what’s happening around them - will already be stealing what they need to survive.

Heff, I’d like to say thanks! I saw that Norse site months ago when I was on the turps, loved it, but forgot it when I woke up. My brief google afterwards left me empty. You’ve just given it back! - It is now, a favourite shortcut!

a reply to: aLLeKs

I agree with much of what you said, except for the business as usual statements. An entire nation went down in a DDoS attack just a few days ago. That, as far as I can recall, is a first.

Packet levels have been much higher than usual for several days running. If you do work with computers then you understand that DDoS attacks effect the systems and subsystems of whatever they are aimed at - anything from a home router to RNS/DNS backbones.

The specter of those latter entities being subject to attact is the excuse the Feds use for wanting a "kill switch".

Enough packets can bring any system down - either forcing the system to shut down or to be shut down as a precaution.

The wild card in this is that we cannot truly gauge what damage is happening in China on a civilian level thanks to the Great Firewall. I'd love to see if they're getting hammered as well.

a reply to: Hefficide

the future belongs to hackers...really...even a few of my chess sites were down...who the # attacks a chess site!?

a reply to: Hefficide

wasnt sweden the country where the company developed software to keep games from being hacked?

I remember reading that so many people were upset about the new anti piracy software, and i believe it was there or norway it was developed, but I could be wrong....

Could that gaming site be the target because of this? at least in that situation?

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

The Netherlands ( Sweden included ) traditionally were the port in the storm for hacktivists and internet enthusiasts. But the raid and shut down of The Pirate Bay recently shows that the situation is changing.

As I mentioned earlier - our new reality, a dystopian one, is that we now have Corporations that have the resources to act as nations - even if a few have to band together to accomplish it. It recently leaked that several movie studios are trying to basically kill the 'Net to prevent piracy.

It's a brave new world.

It sounds like a massive Y2K prediction.

It may be too complex to do this. Too many servers and no central servers running everything. But its scary since its theoretically possible to cropple a lot of infrastructure.

There's been a lot of hacking and craking but there is still too much stacking and racking to prevent this massive cyber war, I hope…

I would think that the NSA is leading the way in the defense of the US cyber warfare; they certainly have enough of the resources...

But they seem to be more interested in just spying on American citizens.

Though I'm sure they do have powerful security software, I hope.

One thing is for sure any pearl harbor like attack without a doubt in this age will include a powerful cyber attack as well.

a reply to: Willtell

Protecting our Interwebz is the domain of Cybercommand and the major telecoms which were, several years back, basically deputized. That became formal law either last year or this via Executive action.

Im sure you guys remember the massive panic of Y2K; I mean it was massive...the world was going to end..

In the IT Company I worked for we went to All our customers, ended up being for nothing, to load patches on every thing they had.

It turned out that, if I remember correctly, maybe one Server somewhere had a problem!

All that panic and world ending warnings were for naught

I hope this fear is a similar exaggeration, but I doubt it.

a reply to: Willtell

Y2K was based upon a coding error in the original source code of DOS. It was a passive threat. DDoS is an active threat that can come and go at a whim.

Nations have this power, as do Corporations, as does Anon - or at least the people closest to the top tiers of the botnets. There are also rogue companies and contractors who possess their own botnets.

If there is a historical analog to the risks inherent to this subject, I cannot find one. This is the wheel - and way too many people have it, with only one nation potentially having a defense network capable of surviving it - that being China.

a reply to: Hefficide

Thanks for that info.
It really helped.
I noticed we both heard the EXACT Megadeth song when this happened.
S&F.

And I'm especially happy someone got that NORSE site to work and grab a screen cap of it.

originally posted by: Hefficide
a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

The Netherlands ( Sweden included ) traditionally were the port in the storm for hacktivists and internet enthusiasts. But the raid and shut down of The Pirate Bay recently shows that the situation is changing.

As I mentioned earlier - our new reality, a dystopian one, is that we now have Corporations that have the resources to act as nations - even if a few have to band together to accomplish it. It recently leaked that several movie studios are trying to basically kill the 'Net to prevent piracy.

It's a brave new world.

I read this also and think it is absolutely ridiculous. These mega corporations are essentially going to try to do what Big Brother has wanted for so long...

And how is it "OK" for Sony to attack sites that may possibly air their hacked dirty laundry? It would be illegal for you or I to launch such an attack towards a website, but it is perfectly acceptable for a HUGE corporation like SPE to do it? Am I right? Very Illuminati-like (and creepy to boot!) if you ask me...

I don't know all the ins and outs of the web, or the laws related to these types of attacks so any info regarding this question is appreciated from those of you in the know. TIA.

a reply to: Hefficide

You stated
Scott AFB.. ( as shown on the attack map )why not the new NORAD in Colorado or the data center in Utah? Both seem equally if not more than Scott AFB? And buy that, the base in Colorado from my understanding is CyberCom.
Schreiver AFB Colorado.
Or is are those more of a listening station?

So glad I'm not the I.T. Guy. :-)

a reply to: Hefficide


Of course the technical issues are different, I wasn’t implying that, but the fear of the results is the same—apocalypse--passive or whatever. A passive time bomb people feared.

In fact, Y2K was much worse than these fears by a long shot.


Regarding China: Everybody thinks China is the big honcho in this, it’s understandable

The thing that we have to fear is that in China they don’t allow everything to be based on capital formation, therefore the Chinese have EVERY underground software you could ever want, and in hacking Im sure their the wizards.
In any pc resources legal or illegal they got it...

If you want to pass any of those Microsoft Cetified IT tests some Chinese company underground internet group could get you a MCSE in a few months!

Every thing here is about the money all the time. China is a little wiser than that

originally posted by: Hefficide

In the OP I mentioned nations and Xuenchen pointed out that things can get blurrier than that. Which is true. Mindlessly surfing a minute ago I found this which serves to remind us that Mega-Corporations, in this day and age are, essentially, nations unto themselves:

9. Sony Pictures Entertainment is fighting back.

The studio is reportedly using a hacking technique to stop – or at least slow – the spread of its stolen emails released by the hacker group calling itself Guardians of Peace. Sony has employed a company to issue a counterattack against websites offering files containing its emails, Re/code reported. The measure, called a denial-of-service attack, involves using hundreds of computers in Asia to flood the sites’ servers with requests, which essentially paralyzes the servers and forces them to deliver empty files.

Studios often use the technique to stop pirated copies of its movies from being downloaded.

Source

The article also disusses that movie studios are collaborating in something called "Operation Goliath" - which is basically a privatized effort to destroy the open internet using copyright infringement as the means of leveraging that into law.

So, are we seeing a war, war games, or a private company waging war against a Nation? Whatever the case, it's paradigm shifting.

Wait a second here... DDoS attacks are supposed to be illegal right? I know that doesn't stop them from happening, but Sony is launching DDoS attacks at specific targets and they are not being charged? WTF is up with that?

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Bigburgh

Scroll through and look at the support and signals units assigned

An attack on this base would be symbolically and realistically damaging to the military due to the nature of the bases functions. Coms, supplies, intelligence... it's all there, under one roof, so to speak.

We peons still think in colloquialisms like "countries" and "people" - quaint ideas the actual PTB find sometimes useful, sometimes annoying but mostly irrelevant. Money now flows electronically between ALL nations. NOBODY can afford to cut the cord lest they bleed themselves dry. This is why I can't believe this is an attack by any country but simply a "gotcha" to scare us in to relinquishing any claim to net neutrality.

"Oh no, SONY has been attacked! AAaaahhHH ATS is gone! " They might even cut actual goods and services and even power down for a few days to convince everyone we are once again - here it comes ...........Being Attacked!!.

It's a shakedown in the digital age - street thugs claiming the information highway. Don't give ANYONE control over the net.

One more charade to make us all afraid.
Haven't we caught on yet?

a reply to: Hefficide

But the raid and shut down of The Pirate Bay recently shows that the situation is changing.

In my mind thats the most compelling reason for whats occurring now. Tit for Tat?

Some where last night I read the the police used a DOS against their site(s) to find out where they were…

a reply to: intrptr

I've actually only browsed one story about it - an interview with the man who ran it, saying that he was content it was shut down and that he'd planned on shutting it down anyway. He didn't seem upset.

Then again, as I've mentioned somewhere recently, people one could call "hackers" who have been pressured in the past tend to end up agents or information sources even though they seem to beat the system. So who knows?