What is cyber warfare? Here are some scenarios the U.S. Air Force uses to paint the picture:
• Right now a finance technician is moving U.S. dollars via laptop to support terrorist operations while sipping coffee in an internet cafe.
• Right now a foreign government engineer is on the Net using stolen American technology to build radar and navigational jammers to counter American air superiority.
• Right now a foreign hacker is crashing an American server that holds a Web site with data he does not like.
Lt. Col. David Fahrenkrug, Chief of the Strategic Studies Group for the U.S. Air Force’s new cyber command, will speak at SMU on the nature of cyber warfare and its potential threats to the United States. His presentation, which is open to the public, is scheduled for 3:45 p.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 5, in the Huitt-Zollars Pavilion in the Embrey Engineering Building.
The 8th Air Force, based in Shreveport, was announced in early November as the new cyber command, underscoring an expanded Air Force commitment to air, space and cyberspace power. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has referred to attempts to degrade U.S. fighting networks by hackers, cyber-vigilantes, terrorists and hostile nations as the issue he spends “more time thinking abut in the middle of the night than any other.”
Here is Fahrenkrug’s definition of cyberspace and its role in modern warfare:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aunews/archive/0209/Articles/CyberspaceDefined.html
