A cybernitic attack is any type of offensive manoeuver employed by individuals or organizations that targets computer information systems infrastrucures, computer networks or /and personal devices using hacking in order to steal or destroy the information located in those devices.
They are usually labelled as a cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism attacks.
Nowadays cybernetic attacks are more and more common, and their negative consequences can be major. First of all there can be political impacts like chaos into the governement but also financial losses.
In Ukraine, the tensions are increasing . On the first side, there is the European Union who wants that Ukraine joins it, and on the second side we have Russia who would like to control the country. This main facts divided the ukrainian population in pro russians and pro europeans. But there is also the problem of the Crimea region, who wants to be an independent state.
Since a few days the war begun in Ukraine : this war is like no other war. The soldiers don’t have uniforms ; they are in front of their computers. The cybernetic war begun in Ukraine when the voting offices openned in Crimea. A group of ukrainian hackers blocked for over one hour the website created by the crimeans, in order to follow the votes. This group, called ‘CyberBerkout’ also attacked the website of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). In consequence, the acces was denied for a couple of hours. The websites of the Russian Central bank and the Kremlin’s website were also attacked. The problem is that we don’t know who exactly are the attackers and we can’t be sure If they are acting on their own purposes or If they follow somebody’s else orders.
The virus called ‘Snake’ exists since 2006 and it has spread all over Ukraine since the beginnig of the crisis. Some people says that russians created it because they have the power to erase their tracks and the financial ressources to do it. Eugene Kasperky, the CEO of the Kaspersky firm, specialised in computer science technology thinks the ‘Snake’ virus is more a spy-virus than a cyber-weapon.
A cybernetic attack can also affect the economy of a country that is economically stable. Last year the index number of the American stock exchange crushed with over 136 billions dollars in last than 6 minutes. The reason was a message posted by a hacker on the Tweeter page of the news agency ‘Associated Press’ announcing that the White House will be the target of a terrorist attack. We can see that the social networks are used by the most intelligent hackers in order to create chaos and a lot of financial losses.
 
Amina ZAOUECHE
Etudiante en Master 2 Commerce Electronique à l’Université de Strasbourg
 

A propos de Amina Zaoueche