Denmark's DR Horisont features Cyber Warfare Program

2008-07-04 09:01

"Cyber-Warfare is the use of computers and the Internet in conducting warfare in cyberspace." - Wikipedia.

Denmark's largest Public Service and Electronic Media Enterprise, DR Horisont, recently aired a program during primetime focusing on the growing threat of hackers in today's cyberspace. The program discusses the different cyberwars that have occurred around the world targeting several countries, including; Estonia, USA, China, Russia, and Denmark amongst others. Additionally, the program also reveals some of the actions that countries are taking to protect themselves.

While hackers have been previously known for targeting banking institutions for financial gain, or by web vandalism for notoriety, it seems that hacking has become increasingly politically motivated in the past 10 years.

The methods in attack for cyber war vary between web vandalism, propaganda, gathering data, distributed denial of service attacks, equipment disruption, attacking critical infrastructures, and compromising counterfeit hardware.

Denmark itself is still feeling the wrath following a newspaper article that published 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. This caused an uproar of retaliatory assault against Danish websites. In 2006, gangs of pro-Muslim computer hackers unleashed a huge cyber attack against Danish websites - carrying the .dk suffix - causing the sites to be defaced and knocked off line. Some estimate that 578 Danish websites were taken off line in one week alone. Just recently, on June 3rd, an explosive attack was made on the Danish embassy in Pakistan after several Danish newspapers reprinted the controversial drawings. The cartoons also caused Lebanese demonstrators to set fire to the Danish embassy in Beirut during a protest in February of 2006. Countries around the world have begun to publish the cartoons in an effort to push the envelope, stating that everyone is entitled to freedom of speech and that the attacks against Denmark are outrageous. Roberto Preatoni, founder of Zone-H.org, stated "This is the largest ever attack directed against a single country, bigger than the Intifada, the Chinese-US spy plane incident, and even the war in Iraq." This is just one example of a cyber war, motivated by political issues.

DR Horisont states that it is not enough for individuals to protect just themselves, there needs to be a global collaboration to stop these cyberwars from occurring.

You can read the article here or watch the video here