12 November 2017

Enemy Cyber Campaigns Target Private Sector

David M. Katz

To say that the planning of the D-Day invasion by U.S., British, and other Allied forces was a complex endeavor would be an understatement, to say the least.

A U.S. army pamphlet on the Normandy invasion sketches the results of the planning succinctly: “A great invasion force stood off the Normandy coast of France as dawn broke on 6 June 1944: 9 battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, and 71 large landing craft of various descriptions as well as troop transports, mine sweepers, and merchantmen — in all, nearly 5,000 ships of every type, the largest armada ever assembled.”


The planning, some say, began as early as 1940, when a massive German onslaught forced British troops out of Germany. Look at a vintage map of the operation, and you’ll see arrows swooping, overlapping, and curling through various points of vulnerability, starting with the beaches of Northern France.

To attempt to map the threat posed today by cyberattacks against the United States and its allies by hackers deployed by enemy nations in the same way the Allied leaders did at the end of World War II might seem illogical. After all, the attacks aren’t on actual places but in cyberspace, and the weapons involve software rather than physical ammunition.

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