Last month the Economist ran an article entitled Cyberwarfare: Newly nasty.

They describe the recent anonymous internet attack against Estonia which crippled the websites of many of its central services, including banks, newspapers, ministries and broadcasters. For a while even the emergency numbers for calling an ambulance or a fireman were out of action. This attack was much more devastating than any previous form of cyberwarfare, and it had a degree of sophistication also previously unseen.

There is a great array of exotic terms for the methods used: Particular ports in mission-critical computers were attacked. Packet bombs, DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks, and botnets were all part of the cyberaggression. (Some of these may warrent an item of their own on this blog.)

The already overused "cyber" prefix has spawned a few more (that are new to me) in this article, some with hyphens and some without: cybersecurity czar, cyber-attackers, cyberdefences, and the one I like best, cybergangsterdom.

One method of defence in this kind of war is the "mirroring" (i.e. copying) of content across a number of servers so that it is necessary for the cyber-attackers to simultaneously attack on a number of fronts. Little though I know about war that sounds like a rather familiar concept. (Maybe this blog will return to the concept of "mirroring" too one day.)

Dave Dittrich, an expert on Cybersecurity from the University of Washington, has an item on Cyberwafare which includes a glossary of Information Warfare Terms.

ETYM

Cyber - an overused prefix that I already referred to in my item on Cyburbia.

Warfare - (From yourdictionary.com) [Middle English : warre, war; see war + fare, journey (from Old English faru, from faran, to journey; see fare).]