Category:Information Warfare
From SecurityForest
Defining Information Warfare
Information Warfare may be somewhat like the weather: everyone knows what it is, but nobody can actually describe it. The lack of precision thus implied means that careful definition is essential to the task.
As a useful starting point, we have to distinguish between Information Warfare as a means and as an end. In the former case, Information Warfare represents attacks on communication systems, including but not limited to jamming, spoofing, decryption, and theft -- this is often the warfare equivalent of a "soft kill". In the latter case, Information Warfare represents attacks on the information itself, rather than the communication system which carries the information, and represents a potential which is both more subtile and more powerful than communication systems attacks.
Consider, as one example, if someone could access the USA Constitution and forge one word in the original document -- this would be a direct attack on information itself, and would, moreover, represent the alteration of the master (most definitive) copy.
