WikiLeaks & DDOS: Threatening Security On & Offline

When looking at the ways in which the internet and it's use (or abuse) can have a real impact on the lives of whole societies of people, there is a big reason why I feel that WikiLeaks is invaluable to democracy and distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks are unfair ways to engage in "war."

For one, US government classified information should remain as that, classified. Even though WikiLeaks can be essential in exposing massive illegal activity done by the U.S. government, I feel that it threatens national security and could possibly cause panic by the U.S. people, and other nations.

Every piece of information is not meant to be revealed to the public. For example, what if WikiLeaks posted classified information that revealed North Korea was planning to bomb the United States in 2012? The result would be nation-wide panic as people prepared for the alleged disastrous day, ignoring the fact that this bombing could be completely fictional. My point is that WikiLeaks can be a detriment to the U.S. regarding classified information that may or may not be completely true, but because people tend to believe everything they read, this could create severe backlash.

Read this: Pros and Cons of WikiLeaks (http://russiamil.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/the-pros-and-cons-of-wikileaks-disclosures/)

Now, when discussing the topic of distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks, there is no doubt that cyberwar is a different ball game than traditional war. Traditional war was always predicated on knowing who your enemy was and DDOS is the complete opposite. DDOS floods a computer system with messages to the target, forcing it to essentially shut down, and thereby denying service to the system to legitimate users, and that's unethical and unjust. To me, that makes the fight unfair, especially when hackers can use this process to put you at a significant disadvantage when it comes to computer systems working fast and effectively. According to a recent report, organizations were hit by more distributed denial-of-service attacks in the second half of 2010, and their applications were knocked offline according to a Web hacking report.

All in all, while WikiLeaks 'may' be helpful in some ways, it is definitely not valuable to democracy. It can only hurt it. Likewise, DDOS attacks are not valuable to cyber 'justice' and is definitely not an equivalent of war. People need to stop with all their cyber antics thinking they can bring peace and order by revealing classified documents that can cause panic and DDOS that can shut down computer systems that companies need running to be effective.

The world is surrounded by competition, but soon the games will stop.