THE EFFECTS OF CYBER ATTACKS AND COUNTERMEASURES ON LOCAL DEVELOPMENT Zeydin PALA1 Abstract: Electronic information systems remain at the forefront in modern economies, especially in development economics. Economy gets defenseless in a sense when information flow is interrupted. Services such as vital public services, national defense industry, health services, transportation, telecommunication services, manufacturing, wholesale and retail commerce progress very slowly without computers. Protection and confidentiality of computer systems and their integrity, which is also known as information security, and usability of information are a fundamental and critical policy problem for each nation. While more and more computers are used for modern life, threats to information security and breach increase as well. The increase in bandwidth, which offers a more rapid connection to internet, lays ground for such attacks since plenty of computers are constantly online. In developing economies, number of people who commit cyber-crimes is higher compared to developed economies as a result of low prices and high unemployment rates. Each internet- Internet of Things (IoT) based technologic step taken to improve lives of people is actually a potential target for a cyber-attack. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are the leading ones among the most effective attacks in general sense. DDoS attacks basically target at financial, psychological and political effects. This study prepares a scenario of DDoS-based attack against information systems of an institution and assesses the results after the analysis of each stage of the attack through a simulation program. Keywords: Cyber-attacks, Information systems, Local development, Developing economies
INTRODUCTION In our era, knowledge and knowledge generation are used as raw materials for technologic jump in developed areas. In other words, the backbone of development and the foundation of the most powerful economies in our day is knowledge (Ağır:2011). Knowledge is of great importance for development, on the other hand, different consequences may emerge when the same knowledge is used for different purposes. Takeover of command and control centers, which protect a country, by cyber terrorists may lead to immeasurable great disasters (Weimann:2005). Cyber terrorists bring more harm via keyboards than a bomb today (Kshetri:2010). Uncontrolled opening of dam gates or firing a missile by unauthorized people may lead to irrevocable disasters for a country. An attack to stations which provide electricity, electrical transportation systems, hospital or bank accounts of a country not only discredits governments in the eyes of citizens, but also directly and adversely affects citizens (Nielsen:2016). In communication sector, independent desktop applications get a new shape and are replaced with web-based applications, which finally leads to new problems. Due to this transformation, protection of knowledge from dangerous people in current environments gets harder and harder. Considering information storage types, almost all valuable information of services is stored in cloud environment. The most handicapped aspect of cloud environment is the possibility to encounter a cyber-attack at any moment. Higher link speeds provided by bandwidth of today's connection technologies and opportunity to be online for almost 24 hours in a day lay ground for a better attack. More common and intense use of social networking sites brings more maneuver opportunity to cyber criminals (Pawlak:2014). Cyber terrorists may get use of weakness of related apps and target at the most important control mechanisms of country. Targets of cyber-attacks include various fields, particularly government systems and websites, military command and control systems, transportation systems, electricity plants, communication systems, manufacturing plants and e-commerce (Kundur et al.:2011). 1
Mus Alparslan University, Department of Computer Engineering, Mus, Turkey e‐mail:
[email protected]
