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| October 22, 1996 | Gunillas home page |
The contents on this site are based mainly on an article by USAF Capt Daniel Magsig: "Information Warfare in the Information Age," published on the web: "http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/dmagsig/infowar.html", but unfortunately no longer accessible at that site, but still recommended for reading as an introduction to the area!
There are many definitons of information warfare. One definition is:
"Actions taken to achieve information superiority in support of national military strategy by affecting adversary information and information systems while leveraging and defending our information and systems"
(Emmet Paige, assistant secretary of Defense for Command and Control, Communications and Computers, 1995)
Another is:
"Any action to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy the enemyís information and itís functions; protecting ourselves against those actions; exploiting our own military information functions"
(U.S. Air Force definition)
One approach is to view Information Warfare from a socio-technical perspective. The elements to consider include: people, technology (e.g. information systems), organisations, and culture. This complicates the issues that need to be looked at and it provides a richer basis for not only defining Information Warfare, but also in using different types of Information Warfare.
The term Information Warfare is by Dr Martin Libicki divided into seven kinds of warfare:
There are no sharp divisions between these categories: they are somewhat intertwined and IW measures can be used in an interrelated way.
"Information warfare operations can be highly inexpensive, highly effective, and executed by almost anyone anywhere" (Magsig, 1995)
Spectrum ranges over international political and economic competition, military operations other than war, crises, overt conflict, termination of conflict, and restoration of normal political and economic competion.
Arenas of conflict stretch all over society and include military, technological, economic, political, social, and ideological/religious issues.
Information warfare is both offensive and defensive. (Magsig, 1995)
The Persian Gulf war has been classified as the first information war by some researchers. Al Campenís book "The First Information War" (Campen, 1992) describes the elements of information warfare during the Gulf War.
Even though information warfare is not new, we now have the ability to transfer in a targeted manner more information, faster, to more people than ever before.
Rougly 2/3 of the U.S. population is today employed in jobs where the essential product is information, and is therefore vulnerable to information warfare.
Psychological operations include the human aspect of information warfare.
Actions taken by Aideedís forces in Somalia, like braoadcasting images of dead Americans dragged through the streets, succeded in eliminating most public US support for involvement in Somalia.
The book describes international espionage over the internet.
Economic information warfare includes crashing stock markets, attacking bank accounts, attacks on currency etc.
Cyberwarfare represents the elements of information warfare that may or may not be realistic at present. It is the science fiction part of information warfare. Cyberwarfare refers to information warfare in a military context while netwar refers to information warfare in a larger societal context.
Alger, J. I. (1995) . Information Warfare, Hackers, Crackers and the Projection of Power. Seminar Notes, GWU.
BBC. The i bomb. (1995) (video, 30 min, BBC Horizon).
Campen, A. D. (1992) . The First Information War: The Story of Communications, Computers, and Intelligence Systems in the Persian Gulf War. Fairfax, Va: AFCEA International Press.
Haeni, R (1996) An introduction to Information Warfare . http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/reto/infowar/info-war.html
Hoffman, L J (1995) . Building in Big Brother, the cryptographic policy debate.
Springer Verlag.
Institute for the Advanced Study of Information Warfare (IASIW) http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html
Magsig, D. (1995) . Information Warfare in the Information Age. ("http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/dmagsig/infowar.html"). No longer accessible at that site.
Peterson, A. Padgett. (1993) . "Tactical Computers Vulnerable to Malicious Software Attacks." Signal 48 (November): 74-5.
Russel, D., Gangemi, G. T. (1994) . Computer Security Basics. OíReilly & Associates.
Schwartau, W. (1994) . Information Warfare, Chaos on the electronic superhighway.
Thunder´s mounth press.
Sterling, B. (1993) . The Hacker Crackdown. Bantam Books.
Stoll, C. (1989) . The Cuckooís Egg. Tracking a spy through the maze of Computer Espionage. N.Y.: Doubleday, 1989. (Describes international espionage over the internet)
Szafranski, R. (1995) . A theory of Information Warfare. Preparing for 2020. Airpower Journal, Spring: 56-65. http://www.cdsar.af.mil/apj/szfran.html
Waller, D. (1995) . Onward Cyber Soldiers. Time, August 24:38-46.