Published manual on cyber war

The US military is actively preparing for cyber war, the generals have published a specialized manual on hacker operations. The instruction tells about "anonymous enemies", "every second encroachments on democracy" and gives a definition of "military operations in cyberspace".

The manual, already called some sensational specialists, for the first time refers to the possibility of retaliatory actions by the military. It is reported that the army can and will attack the networks of other countries if necessary. For this, there is already the first special unit. More than a year ago, a special "cyber command" started its work, located in Texas. Its main task is to ensure the protection of key computing centers of the Pentagon.

However, after the appearance of this instruction, many experts started talking about the fact that a cyber command can perform not only defensive functions. From the text of the manual it is clear that the army is ready precisely for "operations in cyberspace", and this implies a response to the attacks.

An expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, James Lewis, said: "The primary task of an online army is defense, and offensive operations are usually not advertised. Therefore, I was puzzled by the almost open statement of readiness to attack a network enemy."

A similar opinion is shared by Noah Shakhtman, a researcher at the Brookings Intellectual Institute, writing editor for Wired: "The document explains examples of actions of our military. So they say they are ready to turn off the electricity in the power systems of the countries of the opponents. I have no doubt about such opportunities, but I shocked by the openness of the statements. I don’t understand how such a realistic cyberwar plan burst from the secret neck. "

Intentionally exaggerating, the authors of the military instructions write that the American networks, home and office, are subjected to millions of hacker attacks every second. Some of them are just hooliganism, but acts of real terrorists are also involved in this stream. And for the US Army, cyber threats are not hypothetical. For example, one of the brightest episodes occurred in 2005, when, through simple spam, hackers were able to gain access to personal secret data of more than 37 thousands of American military personnel.

“That egregious incident showed how low the level of computer literacy in our army. Military personnel should be trained in basic things” - these words of Shakhtman are valid for most countries. So, in 2009, dozens of computers belonging to the German army were infected with one of the most dangerous Conficker network worms. Some machines kept secret data.

Many countries are also focused on threats of a new type, and therefore they are actively creating their own military cyber divisions. According to some reports, there are already those in 30 states, including Russia. And one of the leaders of the direction is Israel, which even managed to try its online army in action. Three years ago, the IDF hackers introduced a virus into the computer control system of an enemy's air defense, as a result, Syrian radars overlooked the invasion of Israeli combat bomber.