This may not seem like a huge deal, but these are the beginning punches in what is a new format of war. The US has been linked to an attack on Iran that involved a virus that spread through computer networks, but would only harm a certain configuration, which was a nuclear facility and it’s centerfuges. The worm was designed to make it look like nothing was awry, but to slowly spin the centerfuges a little bit slower and subly deley their project over time. This was one of the most widely know occurence of cyberwarfare, but I’m sure it’s just the beginning. It is known that China has hacked into many Fortune 500 compaies servers and has proprietary information. The question of when to use this, and if it is considered an act of war needs to be answered soon, and I’m sure it would be, it just appears the US doesn’t want to be the first to publicly use it.

 

U.S. Debated Cyberwarfare Against Libya – NYTimes.com

Last year, a Stuxnet computer worm apparently wiped out a part of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and delayed its ability to produce nuclear fuel. Although no entity has acknowledged being the source of the poisonous code, some evidence suggests that the virus was an American-Israeli project. And the Pentagon and military contractors regularly repel attacks on their computer networks — many coming from China and Russia. The Obama administration is revving up the nation’s digital capabilities, while publicly emphasizing only its efforts to defend vital government, military and public infrastructure networks. “We don’t want to be the ones who break the glass on this new kind of warfare,” said James Andrew Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he specializes in technology and national security.