Throughout time, warfare has changed.  From swords to guns, and wooden ships to warships, the technology and battlefield is constantly changing.  With the invention of computers and the internet, and how commonplace they are now, cyber warfare and cyber attacks are becoming a more and more prominent issue.  Computers have taken the battlefield from a physical conflict to a conflict that is focused on informational and economical gains and damages.  Cyber attacks can be committed through the government, individuals acting alone, or even through a government-hired third party.  Impact of warfare on civilians has always been an issue but cyber warfare presents a different way that civilians can get impacted through war.  Cyber warfare has changed the battleground of warfare, involving more civilians and non-battle personnel than ever before

To understand the basics, TIME Magazine cites five main points about the evolution of cyber warfare: government threats, business threats, social media threats, Russia, and China (time.com).  Each of these five have played an important role in the evolution of cyber warfare and cyber attacks in general.

Washington D.C. is no stranger to cyber attacks.  In 2014 the United States federal government endured an enormous amount of attacks, with 61,000 cyber-security breaches last year.  Much information was compromised, including but not limited to: Social Security numbers, job assignments and performance evaluations of government employees (time.com).  All of this is important information and has the potential to cause great harm to individuals employed by the US government or to government as a whole.  The danger is real, and the United States Director of National Intelligence affirms that by ranking cyber crime as the country's number one security threat - even in front of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and treason (time.com).

Hackers can do more than just find information on government officials and civilians.  Robbery is nothing new to cyber criminals and they have been doing this since hacking was created.  2013 saw a very high number of attacks, with over 3,000 United States companies officially being informed by the FBI that the company was a victim of a cyber security breach (time.com).  Hackers will attack anything that has money because the risk of getting caught or recognized is greatly diminished.  Instead of going into a store and robbing it, they can just go online and get what they want.  The victims of these few thousand attacks ranged from smaller banks, to large defense contractors, and even mega retail stores.  Astoundingly, 7% of United States organizations lost at least $1 million or even more due to the cyber crime recorded in 2013.  19% of American entities have claimed their losses between half a million dollars and one million over the same timespan.  Hacking is estimated to cost the United States over a staggering $300 billion per year.  This figure is magnified on a world scale, being somewhere around $445 billion which is 1% of global income.  Gartner research firm projects that in 2018, the world will spend as a whole $101 billion on information security (time.com).

Seemingly non harmful, even social media can serve as a threat - especially in today's world.  In 2014, social media spam increased an incredible 650% from 2013.  This number is astounding, and about 30% of American adults claim that one of their personal social media accounts has been hacked before (time.com).  With technology only growing more accessible, this number is set to increase.  The fact that social media accounts are being regularly hacked poses a huge concern.  Globally, it is estimated that 10-15% of home computers are currently infected with botnet crimeware, along with over 30,000 new websites compromised daily (time.com).  Today's world and culture places such focus on the internet and social media presence that damaging someone's account could have an impact on both the user's personal and professional life.  Facebook is a prime example of a large company being targeted.  In 2011, Facebook admitted to being the target of 600,000 individual cyber attacks every single day.  Since then, the social media giant has not made any figures public (time.com).

Russia has an interesting strategy when it comes to the online world, operating more defensively than offensively.  Known as a "troll army" arranged under the Internet Research Agency, its intention upon establishment was to provide readers with disinformation (time.com).  They used this strategy heavily during the invasion of Ukraine but also operate on a regular basis.  Each "troll" puts out approximately 135 comments in an hour over a twelve hour shift.  Additionally, each is reportedly required to fifty news articles every single day, and even running six individual Facebook accounts and ten different Twitter accounts each (time.com).  Russia is so determined with this strategy that they employ 400 full-time staffers and are funded with a $400,000 monthly budget (time.com).

The only country comparable to Russia's prominence in the cyber world is China.  Not only do they rival Russia, but they exceed them.  China is the single largest threat to America.  An overwhelming 70% of the United States corporate intellectual property is believed by officials to be coming from China (time.com).  This is not just a sloppily thrown together group of hackers - this is a large organized group even housed by China's government in Beijing (time.com).  China does not attempt to rival the US with military power, but rather with information and technology.  Beijing's focus is on commercial and government espionage.  Hard figures are rare about this subject, but in May of 2013 two former unnamed Pentagon officials came out stating, "Chinese computer spies raided the databanks of almost every major defense contractor and made off with some of the country's most closely guarded technological secrets," (time.com).  

Cyber warfare is truly a revolution in warfare itself.  Not only has it been revolutionary, but it will continue to be.  Boeing's Battlefield Integration Centre (BIC) is like a preview of what warfare in the future could look like.  Essentially, it is like a large cinema for war, with three large screens and three consoles  beneath (economist.com).  One screen includes an image of Korea with triangles and circles representing different threats including fighter jets, bombers, and spy planes.  Another has close-up of trucks moving and the third contains a feed from a camera on a soldier's helmet (economist.com).  While this is not a direct attack through cyber warfare, it is using Internet and connections through different systems to coordinate efforts.  It can help provide efficient strategies and allow for split-second decisions as well.  

The UAVs in Afghanistan also point to a huge revolution in warfare.  Northropp Grumman's Global Hawk proved the ability of drones to fly long range through its flight from California to Australia before being deployed for use in Afghanistan (economist.com).  The Global Hawk is a "high-altitude long-endurance aircraft" (HALE) was built to the scale of a mid-sized corporate jet with a large nose for carrying its antennae.  Unlike the UAVs, they are not a drone but flown autonomously.  It is used for surveillance, and is meant to fly at a height of 65,000 feet for 24 hours up to thousands of miles away (economist.com).  This Global Hawk is also made to stay out of the flight paths of other UAVs, fighters, bombers, and out of range of missiles.  UAV development is picking up as well, with over $1.5 billion invested in the development each year (economist.com).  

UAVs and UCAVs may only cost one third as much as a manned fighter to manufacture.  Projections show that by 2055 90% of fighters will be unmanned (economist.com).  A challenge that arises with unmanned UAVs is that since there will be so many in use at one time, flight patterns would have to be accounted for.  Also, the bandwidth would be an issue since there would be so many flights on so many different networks (economist.com).

Chris Domas is currently involved in the field as a cybersecurity researcher.  He is an expert in pattern recognition and reverse engineering and shows how researchers use these to understand binary code.  This is important because it is the basis on how cyber criminals operate.  They need to understand what the hackers are looking for to provide efficient security for their systems.  Domas explains how through these two concepts, cyber security can be better understood and executed.

Domas provides personal examples on how these techniques can even be used to carry out physical attacks.  He points to the terrorist threat of mobile batteries exploding against protesters.  This cyber attack shows how terrorist and other organizations can use cyber attacks to not only carry out virtual damage, but physical damage and human casualties as well.  Domas provides this example because it broadens the scope of the cyber attacks.  Not many would think that cyber attacks could lead to people actually dying, but linking these devices with explosives has proven to be a way that this can be done. 
