FUTURE CYBER WEAPONS By Zahri Yunos and Ahmad Nasir Mohd Zin National ICT Security and Emergency Response Centre (NISER) (This article was published in The Star InTech on 13 … … 2003) The computer virus is generically defined as malicious mobile codes, which includes viruses, Trojan horses, worms, script attacks and rogue Internet code. Roger A. Grimes defined malicious mobile code as any software program designed to move from computer to computer and network to network, in order to intentionally modify computer …

Looking at the incidents above, there is a high potential that computer virus will be utilised as a more resilient cyber weapon. Dr Myron L Cramer and Stephen L Pratt (1996) (Computer Viruses in Electronic Warfare) outlined the characteristics of virus as such: a) Size - The size of the program code required for computer viruses is small. This has enhanced the ability of these programs to attach themselves to other applications and escape detection for long periods of time. b) Versatility - This is the ability to generically attack a wide variety of applications. Most of them do not even require information about the programme they are infecting. c) Propagation - Once a computer virus has affected a program - while this affected program is running - the virus is able to spread to other programs and files accessible to the computer system. d) Effectiveness - The many incidents of reported virus attacks have shown that they have far-reaching and catastrophic effect on their victims, which includes total loss of data, programs and even operating systems. e) Functionality - Virus programmes have shown a wide variety of functions. f) Persistence - After detection, the recovery of data, programmes and even system operation has been difficult and time consuming Weapon of Precision The characteristics of computer virus might make it a preferred choice as a weapon of precision disruption. Computer virus is called weapon of precision disruption because of its ability to damage a set of a selected target at a chosen time. E. Anders Eriksson ( Information Warfare: Hype or Reality ) has given a detailed explanation on this concept. The computer virus can sustain a prolonged low-impact attack without leaving any trace, but in the long run will result in critical damage to the target. An adversary can mount an attack on a precise target in a controlled manner, without any collateral damage to the target.

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