Cyber-warfare has known a rapid growth as a theme in security debates and practices. It relates to all forms of hacking or interference with websites aimed at promoting a particular political or military agenda. It may be practiced by governments wishing to protect their key websites while being able to shurt down those of enemies. It is sometimes extended to include forms of cyber direct action performed by non-governmental actors such as anti-capitalist movements.
The recent Russian parliamentary and presidential elections were notable for the wide use of cyber attacks on the websites of the liberal media, as well as opposition hackers accessing officials’ intranet email exchanges. But was this a question of large-scale collusion between the Kremlin and professional hackers, or an altogether more amateur effort by political activists? In the latest article in their ‘Project ID’ series, Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov investigate the destructive forces targeting the Russian internet.iWar: pirates, states and the internet
On 27 April 2007 a blizzard of distributed
"denial-of-service" attacks hit important websites in Estonia and continued
until at least as late as mid-June. The targets included the website of the
president, parliament, leading ministries, political parties, major news
outlets, and Estonia's two dominant banks, which were rendered unable to interact with customers.
The China model
As Chinese companies “go global”, NGO campaigners are increasingly concerned about Beijing’s model of international development.
Angola’s government, in need of reconstruction funds after the country’s long civil war, was in the process of negotiating a new loan with the International Monetary Fund in 2004. The IMF, aware of Angola’s long history of corruption and poor governance since independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, was keen to include measures to cut corruption and tighten the country’s economic management.
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Shock and Awe
Lest we forget
Syria's peace: what, how, when?
Cities in Conflict
openSecurity looks in the Iraq archive
M23 in Goma: who's resourcing the conflict?
Pakistan and Afghanistan into 2014
openSecurity analysis
Security and the far right
Following the publication of the winning recommendations of a “Your ideas, your NATO” policy workshop on the Arab Spring, openSecurity hosts a debate on NATO.
G4S: securing whose world?
