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Cyberwar

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Destruction of the Internet? The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom — but it won't be the last battle of its kind. Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be ruined or lost.

Physical destruction A vast behemoth that can route around outages and self-heal, the Internet has grown physically invulnerable to destruction by bombs, fires or natural disasters — within countries, at least. It's "very richly interconnected," said David Clark, a computer scientist at MIT who was a leader in the development of the Internet during the 1970s. "You would have to work real hard to find a small number of places where you could seriously disrupt connectivity. " On 9/11, for example, the destruction of the major switching center in south Manhattan disrupted service locally. German National Cyber Defense Center. On June 16, 2011, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior officially opened a National Cyber Defense Center as part of the comprehensive cybersecurity strategy that was adopted by the German federal government on February 23, 2011.

The Cyber Defense Center is intended to serve as a common platform for rapid information exchange and better coordination of protective and defensive measures against information technology security incidents. The Cyber Defense Center was launched in April 2011 under the auspices of the German Federal Office for Information Security (the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik or “BSI”) and the direct involvement of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or “BfV”) and the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (the Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe or “BBK”). Stealthweb.

USA strategy. Overview Syrian Electronic Army. Update: See our latest report on the Syrian Electronic Army here The Emergence of Open and Organized Pro-Government Cyber Attacks in the Middle East: The Case of the Syrian Electronic Army By Helmi Noman Introduction Since the beginning of the popular uprisings and protests in the Middle East and North Africa, events in the region have been characterized by increased contestation in cyberspace among regime sympathizers, governments, and opposition movements. One component of this contestation is the tendency among governments and networks of citizens supportive of the state to use offensive computer network attacks.

Such tactics are supplements to legal, regulatory, and other controls, and technical forms of Internet censorship. For example, a group known as the Iranian Cyber Army has defaced Twitter and Iranian opposition websites. Overview Syria has become the first Arab country to have a public Internet Army hosted on its national networks to openly launch cyber attacks on its enemies. Bahrain government clamps down on Internet after protests. Internet traffic in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf kingdom wracked by a third day of protests, has declined by about 20%, likely as a result of more aggressive government filtering, a web security company said today.

Protesters in Manama, the country's capital, were fired on by police. The New York Times has reported that at least five died in the attacks. The Bahrain military has since moved into the city. Traffic down significantly According to Arbor Networks, a supplier of anti-DoS (denial-of-service) technology, the amount of data going into and out of Bahrain is down approximately 20% this week compared to the traffic of the previous three weeks. Arbor's traffic analysis was compiled using data from its ATLAS (Active Threat Level Analysis System) network, which collects Internet traffic information from approximately 120 carriers and providers worldwide. Craig Labovitz, Arbor's chief scientist, said it was impossible to tell what Bahrain was filtering or blocking. Web blocking spreads. Libya Cuts Internet Access for Several Hours. Internet access in Libya was severed for several hours this weekend, as protestors took to the streets to demand an end to the 40-year reign of Col.

Muammar el-Qaddafi. On Friday night, Internet monitoring firm Renesys said in a blog post that "Libya is off the Internet. " The same night, Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, tweeted that "queries from Libya to Google have dropped enormously. " He posted a link to Google's Transparency Report, which allows users to drill down and see whether Google services are blocked in certain countries. By Saturday morning, Renesys said that Internet access in Libya had been restored. "At the moment, spot checks of Libyan domains and traceroutes into affected networks indicate that connectivity has been restored, and Libya is back on the Internet," the company wrote. Arbor Networks also examined the issue, and found that Internet access was also affected in Bahrain, another country in which anti-government protestors have taken to the streets. Syrian Internet Shutdown and the Ongoing Militarization and Contestation of Cyberspace.

Today, it was reported by Renesys that beginning at 3:35 UTC and in the course of an hour and a half, two-thirds of Syrian networks had become disconnected from the global Internet. This latest Internet black out is an example of just-in-time blocking—a phenomenon in which access to content and information communication technologies are blocked in response to sensitive political situations when the technology and content may have the greatest potential impact. It is suspected that the severing of Syria’s Internet is in direct response to the intensification of revolts this week, sparked in part by the death and torture of 13 year old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, as well as in memory of at least 50 other children killed during the protests. This action follows other MENA states severing access in reaction to protest on ground with Egypt shutting down national connectivity on January 28, 2011 and access blockages in Libya and Bahrain in February.