The new era of warfare
We can expect to see ever-growing resources allocated towards cyberwarfare amid a new era of modern combat, according to Clem Daniel, director of technology, media and telecommunications practice, at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.
It follows a report from Iran that its government was probing a possible cyber attack on its main oil terminal. The virus is reported to have disrupted the internal computer systems at Iran’s oil ministry and its national oil company.
Cyberwarfare is an internet-based conflict involving politically-motivated attacks on information and information systems.
“One of the key tenets of modern warfare is the principle that wars are won by destroying the enemy’s industrial production capabilities and, in particular, his armaments production capabilities,” Daniel said.
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr noted that during World War II this took the form, among other things, of masses of bombers dropping vast quantities of high explosives. But what do you do if it is technically and politically difficult, or untenable to bomb the living daylights out of your enemy?
In 2010, the Iranian uranium enrichment program was attacked by the sophisticated Stuxnet virus. “All evidence suggests that the virus was precisely targeted to only damage the Siemens controllers used by Iran in its uranium enrichment process, without causing any significant collateral ICT damage outside of Iran,” said Daniel.
“It appears to be almost certain that the virus was designed and targeted by the Israeli military, quite possibly with the assistance of the United States. Certainly, the sophistication of the virus and the attack was such that only an exceptionally well-resourced party with deep intelligence gathering capabilities could have engineered and delivered it to target,” he said.
Daniel continued, saying that, following a report of a highly directed virus attack by the Iranian petroleum ministry, “almost certainly, the intention is to cause economic damage to Iran by degrading its ability to export oil.”
“Cyber warfare is clearly a new front of ‘diplomacy by other means’. Expect to see ever-growing resources allocated to this new form of military-industrial aggression,” Daniel said.
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