With the recent flare-up of Russian-Ukrainian tensions, and Russia's start of its military operations in Ukraine, talk dominated the US cyber weapon as one of the most important options proposed to be used against Russia, in order to influence it regarding its military intervention in Ukraine.
So what is a cyber weapon? And what harm did he achieve in the country to which he is directed?
A cyber weapon is defined as a destructive program that serves military, paramilitary or intelligence objectives. It is an electronic system developed by countries or major entities as part of the fourth generation wars.
The cyber weapon violates the privacy of the targeted countries, as it can penetrate their electronic systems, obtain sensitive information from it, steal data and confidential information about the government and the army, with the possibility of damaging devices and systems in the target country, which can disrupt service networks and destroy their systems, such as Communication networks, the Internet, water and electricity.
In addition, computer networks in the target country can be damaged, and control operations and services managed electronically, leading to serious accidents, loss of life and property, and significant economic damage.
Among the tools of cyber weapons are viruses and computer worms. For example, the malicious program “Flame”, which means flame in Arabic, targets countries in the Middle East, such as Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, Egypt and Palestine, as it attacks computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, through for electronic espionage.
The Flame virus was discovered in May 2012 in Iran, where the malicious program affected about a thousand computers, and experts said that the virus had spread in the computer network since March 2010.
There is also the Stuxnet worm, a malicious computer worm targeting Windows systems, and its development began in 2005 as a cooperation between the United States and Israel, and it was discovered by chance in Belarus in June 2010, and it also caused great damage to the Iranian nuclear program, as it is a worm Basically destructive.
Just as the United States possesses cyber weapons, Russia also possesses similar software and weapons. Russia is one of the first countries to develop offensive electronic weapons. The United States also prohibits the use of Russian software on its government agencies and employees’ devices, including Kaspersky anti-virus. accused of using it as a gateway to Russian espionage.
The use of cyber weapons tools is not absent from our Arab region. For example, in August 2012, an Iranian group claimed that it had targeted the Saudi oil giant Aramco with a spy virus called Shamoon, and Saudi Arabia confirmed, in November 2016, that it had monitored the virus attack in 4 government institutions. .
