In the age of the internet, the small-scale incidents of what we know as cyberattacks would affect us and our devices. Imagine if they were to happen on a grand scale and at an international level, sponsored by governments.
While chatting to a friend recently, he showed me an email he had again received from Jessie Duarte. The former deputy secretary-general of the ANC passed away last July.
“I’m still getting these emails”, he said. The DSG had been alerted some time before her passing that her emails had been hacked.
My response was to show him an email I had received earlier in the day, from “appel.com”, requesting me to update my mail or my account would be shutdown. The infamous link was just below it.
By now, all of us should know of the phishing emails. Often, institutions, such as our banks and Sars, would send us reminders about how we should be careful about being scammed.
In the age of the internet, the small-scale incidents of what we know as cyberattacks would affect us and our devices. Imagine if they were to happen on a grand scale and at an international level, sponsored by governments.
While we, as South Africans, are familiar with regulated load shedding, imagine if our grid was switched off as a deliberate act of sabotage by foreign agencies.
Or imagine our traffic lights were manipulated to deliberately create traffic chaos and accidents.
Cyber security, or anything cyber, is not my field of expertise but it has become important in recent global affairs because countries, especially developed ones, are engaging more in unconventional than conventional warfare.
Like other unconventional war methods, such as terrorism and subversion, the source or instigators of cyberattacks are difficult to prove. As a result, it is not easy to hold those responsible for the loss of life and the devastating impact of the unconventional methods responsible.
We must make no mistake that even when countries do not use bombs, missiles or other artillery when attacking another country, the devastation of such covert attacks can be equally disastrous.
In fact, cyber combatants do not even need to be in the targeted country in order to carry out such attacks.
Last month, the China Cybersecurity Industry Alliance (CCIA) released a report, titled “Review of Cyberattacks from US Intelligence Agencies”.
The 97-page report details various cyberattacks executed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the instruction of the American government.
Whereas the developing world is all too familiar with CIA missions to assassinate and destabilise our countries and economies, the US government has become a bit more sophisticated when partnering with allies in attacking countries that pose a defensive or retaliatory threat.
While Africans know that the CIA was behind the deaths of leaders such as Patrice Lumumba and Latin-Americans know that the CIA was behind the deaths of leaders such as Salvador Allende, the US remains cautious, for example, when partnering with countries such as Israel, in attacking Iran.
For example, the CCIA report details a Stuxnet computer worm attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the external analysis, Stuxnet is said to have destroyed two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges and infected more than 200 000 computers and the abnormal operations of 1 000 machines.
The report also details how the US-government sponsored software was being used by hackers and Project CAMBERDADA.
Therefore, while Africa and the rest of the developing world may continue to see the outbreak of conventional conflicts, such as in Sudan, Cameroon, Central African Republic and Chad, we must now also be open to new forms of war through unconventional means pursued especially by powers such as the US.
Seale has a PhD in international relations.
The Mercury
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