A Brief History of Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 398

exceed its capacities so that it no longer functions for its true and legitimate pur-
poses.
In general, denial of service attacks are illegal in most countries, and they
also violate the operating rules of essentially every internet host. Government-
sponsored attacks are another matter.
Denial of service attacks require the coordination of a number of computers be-
cause a single computer or server is not fast enough to saturate a normal website or
server farm. Therefore, botnets are a common adjunct to denial of service attacks.
However, some groups or collections of cybercriminals can create denial of ser-
vice attacks by means of voluntary cooperation. Some hacker groups have more
than 100 members and if they cooperate, they can do significant harm.
There are many different forms of denial of service attacks. In fact, there are
too many to discuss in this topic. They range from relatively minor annoyances to
severe attacks that can actually damage servers and computers.
In today's world of instant communication, it sometimes happens that a website
has some new and exciting topic that causes millions of individuals to try and ac-
cess it at about the same time. The impact on the site being accessed is the same
as a denial of service attack, but it is not an attack but rather a spontaneous burst
of users all trying to get to the same site at the same time.
This same situation can occur in reverse. An offensive internet posting may re-
ceive millions of indignant complaints at about the same time. As this is written,
an actual offensive event, the publication of a video that mocked Mohammad
and the Islam religion on YouTube, is absorbing millions of emails and computer
cycles.
Electromagnetic Pulses (EMPs)
When an atomic bomb explodes at high altitudes above about 50 miles, an EMP
is released that can shut down or damage unshielded electrical devices, including
computers, cell phones, televisions, power transmission, automobile electronics,
and many more.
The EMP was predicted by Enrico Fermi when atomic bombs were first
being developed in 1941, so military electronics are now shielded in most cases.
However, civilians are both unprepared and unprotected.
The first recorded civilian damages due to EMPs occurred in July 1962 when
the United States detonated a 1.44-megaton atomic bomb about 250 miles above
the Pacific. This test was called Starfish Prime .