"The Best offense is a superior Defense."

What is Cybercrime? We read about it in newspapers all the time. The term “cybercrime” refers to criminal activity committed on the internet. This is a broad term that describes everything from electronic cracking to denial of service attacks that cause electronic commerce sites to lose money. Cybercrimes can be basically divided into 3 major categories: cybercrimes against persons, cybercrimes against property, and cybercrimes against government. In a cyber-war fought in an Internet-driven, over connected world, things can get turned upside down.

Throughout the article “Is Obama Planning to Lose World War III?”(http://blogs.forbes.com/billdavidow/2011/05/24/is-obama-planning-to-lose-world-war-iii/) this editorial discusses the issues such as If President Obama and the rest of our nation’s leaders aren't actively implementing our cyber-defenses, they are implicitly planning to lose what the article commonly refers cyber-crime to as World War III. The fear of losing “World War III” is discussed that we as a nation are unwilling to aggressively confront the cyber-defense issue.  Confronting it is inconvenient, costly, involves regulation, and gives the government a potential window into our private lives.

Here’s the problem… The Internet was never designed to be secure.  It was designed by academics to serve the needs of trusted colleagues.  While no matter how carefully conceived or entirely secure, it is impossible to make any system inconceivable that the existing Internet and systems based on it can be made more than slightly secure.  This is not to say that the security of these systems cannot be improved. There are two general ways that these attacks can take place, according to the article. The first way, is usually taken in the form of DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.  Unauthorized remote user seizes control of thousands of computers and orders these “zombies” to flood websites with millions of messages.  The overloaded systems become saturated and can no longer carry out routine operations. The second form of attack is far more dangerous. The attacker gets inside the system and seizes control of the system operation or disables the system.  Next a “logic bomb “may be planted that will wake up on command or at some time in the future and might erase or perform some function that will injure the system under its own control.

As the threat of cyber-attack grows, the United States will need to continue and re-evaluate its security measures. Cyber war-fare is a very real and ever increasing threat to the modernized society that we enjoy. Increased public knowledge and funding regarding the dangers of cyber- attacks will serve to further protect U.S. interest. “The best offense is a superior defense.”