According to The Ney York Times, White House officials said that they had considered attacks on Libya’s government computer network to block the country’s early-warning data gathering and missile launches on NATO war planes during the American-lead strikes last spring, but they had decided against.
Though the cyber attacks would have lowered the risks to pilots, ultimately it was called off because they fear opening that door, and the precedent a cyber offensive would. Also there was a concern that there would not be enough time to find all of the holes in Libya’s networks and exploit them before the strikes. There were questions of whether Congress would need to be notified prior to the attacks.
Weeks later, there were talks among military strategists discussing smaller attacks to prevent alerting Pakistani radars from noticing the helicopters that carried the Seal commandos who would go on to kill Osama bin Laden in May. Instead, the operation deployed Black Hawk helicopters and a surveillance drone that were equipped with radar-evading technology.
One could speculate that there may be another reason given that the Pentagon is inching towards declaring cyber attacks launched by foreign nations an act of war, which merits a military response.
Also, there is some speculation that the U.S. may have played a role in the creation or spreading of Stuxnet, which according to researchers who have analyzed the code, say that it appeared that it was designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.
It’s easy to see articles like this in many different lights. One prone to conspiracies could assume that the statements given by Obama’s administration are flat out lies, that our government is in fact engaging in cyber warfare, and just like every other country on the planet, flatly denies it. But, this only makes sense, if our government (or ANY government for that matter) were to disclose that they were in fact involved in offensive cyber attacks, it opens Pandora’s Box. With all the reports of China performing offensive cyber attacks and data collection, but them acting ignorant to it in the news, is it any wonder that the US would do the same? People who can get past the conspiracies may see the logic in the government not using Libya or Pakistan as a test bed for cyber attacks, I mean let’s be honest, are these countries deploying countermeasures that are adequate enough to repel our airborne and cloaking technologies? I highly doubt it, and in this age of WikiLeaks, would America really want to risk being under the spotlight on the world stage for matter-of-factly employing cyber offensives? I think not.
That being said, it is almost certain that cyber warfare will be a part of the future of war. Strictly from an IT Security standpoint, it will be interesting to see how this new arm of warfare shapes the future faces of war.
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