IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014 - 17

Table II
History of Cyberattacks as Reported by the Center For the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) [1]
Year

Perpetrator

Target

Incident

1982

United States

(then) Soviet
Union

Embedded logic bombs caused malfunctions in
pump speeds and valve settings in oil pipelines
[note: The CIA "permitted" the software to be
stolen by the Soviets in Canada].

1991

United States

Iraq (first Iraq
War)

Airstrikes against Iraq's command and control
systems, telecommunications systems, and
portions of its national infrastructure; supported
by communication and satellite systems.

1994

Pro-Chechen separatist movement and proRussian forces

Both sides engaged in a virtual Internet war
simultaneously with a kinetic ground war.

1997 - 2001

(breakaway region of) Chechnya and the
Russian Federation

Simultaneous with a kinetic war - use of
Internet for propaganda by both sides.
Russia also accused of hacking into Chechen
websites.

2002

Russian Federation
(alleged)

The Russian Federal Security System allegedly
knocked out two Chechen websites hosted in the
U.S. immediately prior to the Russian Spetsnaz
Special Forces storming a Moscow theater that
was under siege by Chechen terrorists.

1999 - 2002

Israeli and Palestinian cyberconflict

Israeli teen hackers launching a sustained
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack
that successfully jammed six websites operated
by the Hezbollah and Hamas organizations in
Lebanon and the Palestinian National Authority.
In response, hackers attacked sites belonging to the
Israeli Parliament, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and the Israeli Defense Force information site; later
striking the Israeli Prime Minister's Office, the Bank
of Israel, and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

April - May,
2007

Russian Federation
(alleged)

Estonia

Series of DDoS attacks first against Estonian
government agencies, and then private sites and
servers. Some attacks lasted weeks. The botnet
utilized in the DDoS attacks employed up to
100 000 zombie PCs.

August 2007

The People's Republic of
China (alleged)

England
France
Germany

Intrusions into government networks.

September 6,
2007

Israel

Syria

Israeli airstrike destroyed a nuclear reactor
under construction to process plutonium. It
is alleged that prior to the airstrike Syria's air
defense network was deactivated by Israel
activating a secret built-in switch.

June - July,
2008

Russian nationalist
hackers

Lithuania

Hacking of hundreds of Lithuanian government
and corporate websites some of which were
covered in digital Soviet-era graffiti.

August 2008

Russian Federation
(attacks also launched
from Lithuania)

Georgia

Cyberattack directly coordinated with a kinetic
land, sea and air attack.
Main attack vectors: Botnets attacked Georgian
media, DDoS attacks targeted command and
control systems. DDoS, Structured Query
Language (SQL) injection, and cross-site
scripting (XSS).
Main targets: Government websites, financial
and educational institutions, business
associations, news media websites (including
the BBC and CNN).

January 2009

Russian Federation
(alleged)

Kyrgyzstan

DDoS attacks focused on three of the four
Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Kyrgyzstan
disrupting all internet traffic. Russia was the
source of most of the DDoS attacks.

Chechnya

(Continued)
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

fALL 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2014