Cyberconflict at the digital era: All citizens, all soldier !

Posted by stephanekoch on 20 octobre 2008
Posted in: articles.

War is very close to us. Tumults of the current economic crisis are covering the noise of boots of armies of cybersoldiers spreading within the Internet connections of our own homes… Invading our virtual spaces, ready to strike strongly our hearts and minds…

Only on Facebook, the extremists of Hezbollah recruited more than 6800 cyberjihadists within a group of activists preaching the destruction of Israel.… On the other side, a group of 1350 Israeli extremists are recommending the ousting of Arabs from the territories of Judaea and Samaria. Or take this other group of activists who are supporting Russia in the Georgian conflict by recruiting 6500 cyberfighters.

Their weapons : videos, photographs, petitions, and all other means of content diffusion… Like the "Jewish Internet Defense Force" or the "Russian Business Network", these armies of the digital age deploy their forces on all grounds of the infosphere: Youtube, Twitter, myspace, Del.icio.us, and also within the Internet infrastructures as such.

These citizens-soldiers are disseminated among us… Everywhere where a connection Internet makes it possible to communicate correctly with the Network of networks. This type of war, without soldiers, uniforms, hierarchy and borders, has only in common the ideologies which unite these militia fighters… An army whose soldiers are spread over all countries and do not have links between them…

The recent attacks on the Internet infrastructures of Estonia, and on both sides of the Russian-Georgian cyberspace, have shown the intervention capacity of these indirect actors, and their real impact on the course and perception of conflicts. For media representatives and diplomats, it is therefore essential to take into account the extension of the conflict perimeter to this type of actors…

Update : 17,08.09: The Wall Street Journal: Hackers Stole IDs for Attacks (2008’s Geogian cyberconflict)

Related to the topic