A factual cyber atack - Essay Example

No: A Factual Cyber Attack With the increase in the utilization of internet-based applications including financial and control applications, online crimes are also increasing in number. A cyber crime may corrupt a certain set of commands of an internet-based program or alter an HTML code. A criminal may tend to steal financial assets of a person, disturb supply or production of a business, or may utilize other strategies to benefit or to harm others. However, it is also utilized to access secure information of military or governmental agencies.

The simplest type of cyber crime is to spread the virus online (“What is Cyber Crime?”). Some of the cyber crimes are much related to the actual crimes: frauds, thefts, etc. However, modern theory suggests that keeping illegal data on a computer is also a type of cyber crime (“What is Cyber Crime?”).As per the FBI reports, the United States military networks were penetrated by the Chinese hackers in 2004. The attackers accessed the US military networks and breached the security systems (Thornburgh).

The set of codes assembled by the attackers was named the “Titan rain” (Thornburgh). The attack was discovered by “Shawn Carpenter”, who was on a secret job at that time. He discovered the set of codes while going through the network codes. The attackers tried to access the sensitive networks as those at Lockheed (Thornburgh). These attacks were supposed to be supported by the Chinese government but no particular evidence showed the fact, and Chinese government neglected the charge. On the other hand, there is a need to respond immediately to stop any more infiltration.

The important concern is finding the severity of the attack and how much damage it did to the networks. The attackers could access the information, could make alteration in the information and the associated networks and could prevent certain permitted users to access the network. On the other hand, the important concern was that the corrupt programs might attack the certain hardware and might so influence the system that it will work improperly a great while (Thornburgh).The attackers made a silent escape all the time.

The secret information was first converted to ZIP format and then sent immediately to China. The person who discovered the attackers, ‘Carpenter’, thinks that no such planned and rapid attack has happened in the past. In the US Time magazine, Carpenter says, “Most hackers, if they actually get into a government network, get excited and make mistakes, not these guys. They never hit a wrong key” (Thornburgh). However, these attacks enabled the US troops to be ready for such attacks and to maintain networks with more stealth (Thornburgh).

Cyber attacks were considered as fatal, as these attacks were kept secret and were planned diligently and intelligently; sometimes, government networks were their targets. In most of the attacks, the criminals corrupt systems for their purposes. Other types of attacks include the alteration in the information and secret access to the information. However, a system with higher stealth detection abilities may prevent the attackers from hacking it.Works CitedThornburgh, Nathan. “The Invasion of Chinese Cyberspace”.

Time Magazine US. 29 August 2005. Web. 6 September 2012. “What is Cyber Crime?” cybercitizenship.org. n.d. Web. 6 September 2012.