Cyber Warfare: Reality or Box Office Hit? - Excercises

Pre-reading excercises

  1. what does the threat of cyber terrorism mean to you?
    • dangerous financial transactions
    • theft data from hard disk
    • eavesdrop traffic in network
  2. Where, in your opinion, does the main threat of cyber terrorism come from?
    • nowadays - hackers acted individually, usually want to prove their skills
    • in the future – very good organised teams of specialists, supported by government institutions
  3. Have you thought about the threat of cyber terrorism?

Comprehension questions

  1. Using the information in the text about the first DDoS attack and your own knowledge, try to explain how DDoS works?
    • A distributed denial of service attack occurs when multiple compromised systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. It uses two methods: forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, consume its resources such that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
  2. Can you name the large-scale attacks and who they were directed against?
    • Solar Sunrise: Solar Sunrise is the name given to a series of attacks against the Pentagon and MIT in February 1998.
    • Moonlight Maze: Moonlight Maze refers to an incident in which U.S. officials accidentally discovered a pattern of probing of computer systems at the Pentagon, NASA, Energy Department, private universities, and research labs that began in March 1998 and went on for nearly two years.
    • Titan Rain: Titan Rain is the name given to a well-organized Chinese military hacking effort against the U.S. military.

Further exercises

In groups, explain the meaning of these words: Compare your answers with other groups.

Possible topics for discussion

  1. Do you know of any other kinds of cyber attacks or threats? Which do you think, are the most dangerous for you?
  2. Are you afraid of this kind of threat? Do you think you might lose something in a cyber attack?

Possible difficulties

The article contains a lot of factual information, but that should make it easier to read.

See also: