Cyberattacks - Warfare's New Militia

Well before a shot was ever fired, and as early as July 20, 2008, the republic of Georgia was under attack. It's government’s websites were under a constant barrage of attacks by a network of hackers that some have called the new militia.

"They mobilize themselves without a need for a central location to do so, distribute the targets, discuss the attack approaches, come up with a plan on the coordination, and you have everyone participating," Bulgarian security researcher Dancho Danchev said in an instant messaging interview. Danchev and others have found evidence that points to a self-starting militia composed of volunteer hackers and cyber criminals who control large-scale bots, or collections of previously-compromised computers. While the forces may appear to be uncoordinated to the untrained eye, they are in fact very coordinated, both researchers argued. In a lengthy post on ZDNet, Danchev spelled out the coordinated steps that someone — or some group — took to rally the hacker troops and turn them against specific targets. And yes, there is evidence that the coordination comes from mother Russia.

For everyone in the military or the civilian world, the lesson is that any modern conflict will include some type of a cyberwarfare component. Why? Because it is simply too cheap and inexpensive not to. While countries like the United States spend billions on missle shields and fire rates, we’ve left our back door wide open to attacks that could cripple our efforts on the world stage.

So how does this apply to brands? Well, take note. Some simple hacker can have fun with your message through spam, illicit postings, or with DOS [Denial of Service] games. It may seem funny at first, but when your customers start screaming, you’ll have wished you spent a little bit more time listening to your IT people.