Cyber Warfare: The Disruptive Application of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence, no doubt is the responsible entity for the changing dynamics of everyday chores.

The expedition can be seen from the automated experience of listening to music through some mere commands to accessing help from an AI-based call center.

Witnessing the constant emergence of technology, Gartner predicted that, ‘By the end of the year 2021, 80% of evolving technologies will mark their foundation on Artificial Intelligence’.

Although the technology is wrapped up with a significant number of benefits. The modern approach of artificial intelligence never fails to surprise the exemplary crowd, luminaries in their specific domain like education, business, healthcare, military and many more…

AI in Real World– Good or Bad?

The staunch ‘All good comes with bad’, here can be calculated as true.

The race to rank maiden has blinded the mass with the impulsive reasons to neglect the drastic impact on the lives of the people, which is catered along with the major unexpected strategies.

Reports of the PWC CEO Pulse Survey suggest that ‘AI holds the potential to disrupt societal activities by 67%, in comparison to other holding back parameters of artificial intelligence’.

The disruptive application of AI has set the tough ground for the government bodies, continuing to affect the way of living, specifically of the common man either through Cyber Security Breach, Cyber Attack and Cyberwarfare.

What is Cyber Warfare?

Cyber Warfare can be defined as the medium to employ the cyber attack to “destroy the data, computer, infrastructure” of a nation or state– as a resultant of the warlike situation and digital attack without using traditional weapons and tools to varnish the competitor through vulnerable damage, loss and even death in the case of cyberwar.

What are the Projected Areas to Face the Wrath of Cyber Warfare?

Cyber Warfare is an emerging term getting recognized as a substantial risk in today’s world.

According to Centre for Strategic and International Studies 2019, ‘There are the numbers of high-level attacks registered against the set of sectors on the pandemic range, either too sensitive or inactive to be detected by the defense systems of the nation.’.

Till the time, there are number of sectors grounded in the category suffering from the worse outcome of cyber warfare, such as:

• Government Bodies
• Corporate Organization
• Educational Firm
• Non-Profitable Organization

Cyber Warfare– Cyber Conflict & Cyber Attack:

With the advent of technology, the man is much more acknowledged to intervene in the eye-raising means in the curriculum of the cyber world.

Cyber Conflict and Cyber Attack are the sub-divisional categories of Cyber Warfare. It involves the medium to target the data and computer of the standing party with some sort of virus and hacking with the motive to harm and damage the infrastructure and human assets, which may also add-on the toll of death rate as a resultant.

What Cyber Warfare Actually Looks Like?

Most of the western countries take the astriction to safeguard their territory from cyber warfare, that holds the power to erase the human race by the bits of inputs and codes, initiated from the remote area.

According to Google sites, ‘US tops in the number of attempted cyber-attacks in comparison to other countries, which encapsulates the computer networks along with the White House, New York stock exchange and NASDAQ’.

Reports also limelight the fact that ‘The USA is one of the most scanned countries when it comes to the number of attempted cyber attacks, while India ranks lowest in the terms of an attempted cyber-attack’.

Objectives of Cyber Warfare:

The main objective of cyberwarfare lies around sabotage and espionage, which targets to harm and steal the data causing the incapability to access the data.

Here, the traditional means of attacks are replaced by computers and codes along with AI-based unarmed aerial vehicles that smartly distinguish between the target posed for the vulnerable situations.

According to DigitalMunition, ‘Unauthorised access (34.2%) and Ransomware & malware (17.3%) are the most common methods employed for the purpose of a cyber attack’.

These attacks are further carried out by the application of artificial intelligence, that allows replication of malicious agents at a multiple rates and faster pace, as in comparison to human practices of attacking the network.

Examples of Cyber Warfare:

The term cyber warfare when heard gives the quick image of damage to data, phishing, denial of service attack and data breaches. There are a certain set of examples revolving around cyberwarfare and its deadly consequences, such as:

·US Presidential Elections:

Based on the number of various reports and sources, it is found that in the year 2016, US Presidential Election was scandalously influenced by the interference of Russians which further resulted in the spread of fake news and misinformation regarding the electoral sets.

·China-Linked Espionage Hacking:

In December 2019, the group of Chinese hackers targeted the Cambodian Government and organizations with malware infused in their network.

·Cyber Attacks Against Iranian Government:

In June 2019, US Military launched the series of cyber attacks against the Iranian missile and control systems along with the spy network, after Tehran put down the attempts of the American Surveillance Drone.

Continuing the trend of cyber warfare, Iran responses back to the US with prediction to launch the series of cyber attack as a response of death of Qassem Suleimani, Iranian Major General in Jan 2020.

·Red October

In October 2012, the malware was spread through email following the phishing techniques. The operation was projected to steal the confidential secrets from government bodies, which as a result affected 55,000 computers across the dozen of the countries including the US and Russia.

How Artificial Intelligence Get Fixed in the Whole Scenario?

Humans till the time are the most dangerous elements responsible for disrupting the routine of the nation’s growth. The probable reason for such issues is hacking, which gleams more with the intrusion of an automated technology.

If the manual course of automation can do so much worse to the economy and infrastructure to nation and state, imagine what artificial intelligence can bring into it.

According to Michelle Cantos, Strategic Intelligence Analyst at FireEye believes that ‘AI is surely a helping hand to despicable sources in increasing the number of cyber attacks’.

Cantos also explain the fact that ‘Based on the behaviour of locals, AI can predict better target along with the recommendations to be acted upon’.

·Precise Target Allocation:

Artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning are already bringing too much to space. The technology is designed on the back frame of algorithms, which is capable enough to understand the emotions of a person, pattern recognition and decision making possibilities to hit right on the spot. Also, AI can successfully understand the image and take further action, by analyzing the complete sense for future attack scenarios.

According to the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Index 2018 Annual Index, ‘The detection and object segmentation bolsters in gaining the success rate in image processing at a precise rate which is further helpful in target allocation’.

· Access to Remote Launch:

Artificial intelligence is the replica of the human brain that is efficient enough in taking a smart decision.

Thus, based on the precise target allocation, the government bodies and defence in western countries are advocating the use of Unmanned Ariel Vehicle (UAV), which the predator can operate from a remote location, without making an actual presence on the real ground.

·       Attacks on the Algorithm of Opponent:

Artificial intelligence is growing its working arenas with the span of time. The number of hackers in rivalry nations are progressing the certain malware and ransomware, so as to disrupt the clear functionality of economy and organization.

According to the reports of Dogtownmedia, ‘Social Network Automated Phishing with Reconnaissance system (SNAP_R) has successfully generated 400% more spear-phishing tweets than the capabilities of human activity by targeting the victims to get the hands-on the confidential and sensitive information’.

Thus, including artificial intelligence in cyber warfare helps in finding new methods and means to target the websites for attacking their data and algorithms.

In Conclusion:

Artificial intelligence is one of the disruptive applications, creating a negative impact on the pandemic world. The nations involved in strategic competition tends to overuse the technology to damage and cause destruction to the targeted area, with the crafted rate of precision and accuracy, without any sort of human interference.

Thus, all we can conclude is the artificial intelligence can alter the lives of the man in any way possible, it merely depends on what purpose the technology is being served.