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In an age of rapidly expanding technology the world of Internet hacking is becoming increasingly serious. The most recent attacks concern attacks against corporations such as Visa, Sony and Apple. The perpetrators of such attacks often seize information that violates the privacy of individuals owning their products and subsequently, in some cases, their credit card information. Some of the hacks are done as protests against companies' actions, such as; when Visa and Mastercard froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks. Other hacks are mere vandalism. The growing issue is, however, that states are using the Internet as a tool of warfare against other nations.
Iran is no stranger to this issue. They have been the recipient of numerous cyber attacks on their nuclear power projects. Although these hacks have not claimed by nations, they are certainly not condemned (nor should they be). An article from Aljazeera, written by Sangwon Yoon, details a North Korean expansion of Internet related security. This includes over 3000 hackers serving the state at home and abroad. Yoon claims this is to combat the potential for South Korean dominance over the region's Internet. Canada has also been hacked by Chinese hackers on a few occasions over the past few years.
Iran's solution as of yet is to invent an entirely new concept. Their idea is to make the Internet smaller. The project is underway to create a new Internet that would only be accessible from Iran and would be tightly regulated. The primary reason for this is to prevent against cyber attacks and to destroy social media like Facebook and Twitter in Iran that had helped organize uprisings across the Middle East. This would certainly help Iran enforce restrictions on freedom to speech and expression; to the detriment of their citizens.
It seems that nothing on the Internet is safe these days. Will there come a time when the aspect of privacy on the Internet, however fake, is completely gone?
