Information Warfare: February 25, 2003

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A major military use of the Internet is for collecting intelligence on current, or potential, enemies. To do this, the Department of Defense has developed some powerful snooping tools. There are search tools that will quickly look at files no matter what their format (plain text, various word processor format, spreadsheet, Power Point, graphic, music and video) and look for specific bits of information. While this sort of tool can be used for Internet searches, it can also be used if military hackers break into a server belonging to another nation. This is an electronic version of the old "black bag jobs" (breaking and entering followed by searching through file cabinets.) Like the old fashioned break ins, you have to be careful not to get caught.