Home » Technology » Internet Security » Internet Warfare

Internet Warfare

© Mayur Kamat

In today's article, I will try to introduce you to different aspects of Internet warfare. Much like the term information warfare, the term Internet warfare is often misunderstood. To understand Internet warfare, you must know that there are different classifications of it. Let's start with those classifications. From there, we can discuss warfare at its most advanced levels. The classifications are

• Personal Internet warfare
• Public Internet warfare
• Corporate Internet warfare
• Government Internet warfare

More generally, Internet warfare is activity in which one or more participants utilize tools over the Internet to attack another or the information of another. The objective of the attack may be to damage information, hardware, or software, or to deny service. Internet warfare also involves any defensive action taken to repel such an attack.

I will restrict my discussion to the personal part only since it is what my target audience expects. The rest three aspects require quite deep understanding of the subject and will unnecessarily lengthen the discussion.

I will utilise today's session for discussing in detail the internet phenonmena dreaded most by both, private individuals as well as public organisations- E-mail Bomb.

The e-mail bomb is a simple and effective harassment tool. A bomb attack consists of nothing more than sending the same message to a targeted recipient over and over again. It is a not-so-subtle form of harassment that floods an individual's mailbox with junk.

Depending upon the target, a bomb attack could be totally unnoticeable or a major problem. Some people pay for their mail service (for example, after exceeding a certain number of messages per month, they must pay for additional e-mail service). To these individuals, an e-mail bomb could be costly. Other individuals maintain their own mail server at their house or office. Technically, if they lack storage, one could flood their mailbox and therefore prevent other messages from getting through. This would effectively result in a denial-of-service attack. (A denial-of-service attack is one that degrades or otherwise denies computer service to others. This subject is discussed in Chapter 14, "Destructive Devices.") In general, however, a bomb attack (which is, by the way, an irresponsible and childish act) is simply annoying. Various utilities available on the Internet will implement such an attack.

The copyright of the article Internet Warfare in Internet Security is owned by . Permission to republish Internet Warfare in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.