Cyber Warfare, By J. Davis - 1536 Words

John Mariotti, a well-known information-security author once said, â€Å"We worried for dec-ades about WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now, it is time to worry about a new kind of WMDs – Weapons of Mass Disruption† (Relia, 2016, 18). In this quote, Mariotti is stating that it is time for society to shift focus from worrying about, and defending, ourselves from nuclear warfare, to focusing on cyber warfare, a type of attack that is defined by J. Davis as â€Å"an attempt to damage another nation s computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks (n.d.).† On a smaller scale, hackers are attempting to damage other users’ computer systems, or information networks, using the same methods. One of†¦show more content†¦The user will install the software they intentionally downloaded, and the spyware will use the intended installation process to install itself, or piggy-back on the installatio n process of the other software. All of this happens without the user know-ing that the actual spyware is being installed. Spyware works without the user’s knowledge to â€Å"spy† on the user’s information and computer use, sometimes even recording information includ-ing a user’s keystrokes, internet interactions, and passwords. Doing this can make a clueless user extremely vulnerable to having their personal information stolen, such as important credit card information, or personal addresses. Slowing down your wireless network connection, causing unwanted pop- ups, and causing your computer to behave slower as a whole are a few examples of the pesky disturbances that spyware causes (Sheta, Zaki, El Salam, Hadad, 2015). Spyware first became a risk to information security in the late 1990’s. One specific case of an early detection of spyware sparked the first anti- spyware programs around 1999 when a man named Steve Gibson found a software on his computer for advertising. Gibson first suspect-ed the advertising software of false pretenses because he did not install it. The software was very difficult to uninstall, and he came to realize that the suspicious software was stealing the personal information that he had on his computer. As a response, Gibson developed the first