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Information warfare

Information warfare is a new kind of warfare where information and attacks on information and its system are used as a tool of warfare. Information warfare may include giving the enemy propaganda to convince them to give up, and denying them information that might lead to their resistance. Information warfare may also include feeding propaganda or even disinformation to one's own population, either to build support for the war effort or to counter enemy propaganda.

Information warfare may also mean a strategy for undermining an enemy's data and information systems, while defending and leveraging one's own information edge. This type of war has no front line; potential battlefields are anywhere networked systems can be accessed --oil and gas pipelines, electric power grids, telephone switching networks, etc.

Information warfare can take countless forms: trains and planes can be misrouted and caused to collide, stock exchanges can be sabotaged by electronic "sniffers" which disrupt international fund-transfer networks, and the signals of television and radio stations can be jammed and taken over and used for a misinformation campaign.

During the Gulf War, Dutch crackers stole information about U.S. troop movements from U.S. Defense Department computers and tried to sell it to the Iraqis, who thought it was a hoax and turned it down. In January 1999, U.S. Air Intelligence computers were hit by a coordinated attack, part of which appeared to come from Russian cracking.

Source: http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/science_war/iwar.html

The following public domain text is written from a U.S. Armed Forces point of view -- please edit for NPOV

Cornerstones of information warfare

The competition for information is as old as human conflict. it is virtually a defining characteristic of humanity. Nations, corporations, and individuals each seek to increase and protect their own store of information while trying to limit and penetrate the adversary's. Since around 1970, there have been extraordinary improvements in the technical means of collecting, storing, analyzing, and transmitting information.

Why are we talking about information now?

Because there is a technological revolution sweeping through information systems and their integration into our daily lives leading to the term 'Information Age.' information-related technologies concentrate data, vastly increase the rate at which we process and transmit data, and intimately couple the results into virtually every aspect of our lives. The Information Age is also transforming all military operations by providing commanders with information unprecedented in quantity and quality (2). The commander with the advantage in observing the battlespace, analyzing events, and distributing information possesses a powerful, if not decisive, lever over the adversary.

We must distinguish between information age warfare and information warfare. We make this distinction because much of the literature treats information warfare and advances in information technology synonymously. Information age warfare uses information technology as a tool to impart our combat operations with unprecedented economies of time and force (3). Ultimately, information age warfare will affect all combat operations. In contrast, information warfare views information itself as a separate realm, potent weapon, and lucrative target. Information, as we will show below, is technology independent. However, information age technology is turning a theoretical possibility into fact: directly (4) manipulating the adversary's information.

What is information ?

This question is elementary, but pivotal. It is impossible to discuss information warfare meaningfully without rigorously defining the central concept: information.

Information derives from phenomena. Phenomena, observable facts or events, are everything that happens around us. Phenomena must be perceived and interpreted to become information. Information, then, is the result of two things: perceived phenomena (data) and the instructions required to interpret that data and give it meaning.

This distinction is important, and easily encompassed by a familiar paradox: If a tree falls, but no one was around to hear it, did it make a noise? The falling tree caused pressure waves in the atmosphere, a phenomenon. Noise, the information denoting a falling tree, occurs when someone's ear detects the pressure waves, creating data, and the brain's instructions manipulate that data into the sound recognizable as a falling tree. Within that person's context, there is no falling tree until the person hears (or sees) it.

Phenomena become information through observation and analysis. Therefore, information is an abstraction of phenomena. Information is the result of our perceptions and interpretations, regardless of the means. As falling trees make clear, to define information requires only two characteristics:

• Information consists of data and instructions.

Note that the definition for information is absolutely distinct from technology. However, what we can do with information, and how fast we can do it, is very dependent on technology. Technology dramatically enhances our observational means, expands and concentrates data storage, and accelerates instruction processing.

• An Information Function is any activity involving the acquisition, transmission, storage, or transformation of information.

For example, the system that tells a machine to stamp eighty hubcaps is performing an information function. The sheet metal press stamping those hubcaps is not.

What are some military information functions ?

Quality information is the counter to the fog of war. As mentioned earlier, the commander with better information holds a powerful advantage over his adversary. Military operations make special demands on information functions in seeking to give the commander an information advantage.

Surveillance and reconnaissance are our powers of observation. Intelligence and weather analysis are the bases for orienting observations. Some militaries use those bases to form an Air Tasking Order, which command and control operations execute and monitor in directing the conflict. Precision navigation enhances mission performance. Together, these are the kinds of military information functions that enhance all military operations. Collectively, some militaries use the term military information functions to describe force enhancing information functions.

• A Military Information Function is any information function supporting and enhancing the employment of military forces.

This definition serves to delineate militarily important information functions from the total universe of information functions.

What is information warfare ?

At the grand strategy level, nations seek to acquire, exploit, and protect information in support of their objectives. This exploitation and protection can occur in the economic, political, or military arenas. Knowledge of the adversary's information is a means to enhance our own capabilities, degrade or counteract enemy capabilities, and protect our own assets, including our own information. This is not new. The struggle to discover and exploit information started the first time one group of people tried to gain advantage over another.

Information warfare consists of targeting the enemy's information and information functions, while protecting our own, with the intent of degrading his will or capability to fight (5). Drawing on the definitions of information and information functions, information warfare may be defined as:

• Information Warfare is any action to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy the enemy's information and its functions; protecting ourselves against those actions; and exploiting our own military information functions (6).

This definition is the basis for the following assertions:

• Information warfare is any attack against an information function, regardless of the means. Bombing a telephone switching facility is information warfare. So is destroying the switching facility's software.
• Information warfare is any action to protect our information functions, regardless of the means. Hardening and defending the switching facility against air attack is information warfare. So is using an anti-virus program to protect the facility's software.
• Information warfare is a means, not an end, in precisely the same manner that air warfare is a means, not an end. Information warfare may be used as a means to conduct strategic attack and interdiction, for example, just as air warfare may be used to conduct strategic attack and interdiction.

Militaries have always tried to gain or affect the information required for an adversary to effectively employ forces. Past strategies typically relied on measures such as feints and deception to influence decisions by affecting the decision maker's perceptions. Because these strategies influenced information through the perception process, they attacked the enemy's information indirectly. That is, for deception to be effective, the enemy had to do three things:

• observe the deception,
• analyze the deception as reality, and,
• act upon the deception according to the deceiver's goals.

However, modern means of performing information functions give information added vulnerability: direct access and manipulation (7). Modern technology now permits an adversary to change or create information without relying on observation and interpretation. Here is a short list of modern information system characteristics creating this vulnerability: concentrated storage, access speed, widespread information transmission, and the increased capacity for information systems to direct actions autonomously. Intelligent security measures can reduce, but not eliminate, this vulnerability; their absence makes it glaring.

What comprises information warfare ?

Recalling the definition, information warfare consists of activities that deny, exploit, corrupt, destroy, or protect information. Traditional means of conducting information warfare include psychological operations, electronic warfare, military deception, physical attack, and various security measures.

• Psychological operations use information to affect the enemy's reasoning. (aka propaganda)

• Electronic warfare denies accurate information to the enemy (8).

• Military deception misleads the enemy about our capabilities or intentions (9).

• Physical destruction can do information warfare by affecting information system elements through the conversion of stored energy to destructive power. The means of physical attack range from conventional bombs to electromagnetic pulse weapons.