Cyber Warfare is the act of a hostile group or nation to inflict harm, or malicious intent, on another group or nation. The potential targets for an attacker are numerous, and depend on the targets accessibility to networks, and its defense capability. For example, a juicy target for an attacker if they wanted to damage a nation would be its military, potentially crippling its ability to communicate within, however those targets most likely have good defense capabilities, resulting in a potential tradeoff between target payoff and potential for success.

There are various ways an attacking entity can do this; ultimately however, the goal is to penetrate a targets network by finding vulnerabilities, which could include weaknesses in physical hardware, software, or protocols. A common technique discussed in this class to exploit these weaknesses is the use of a trojan, which allows the attacker to trick the user into thinking its a standard action, however it has the potential to inflict harm on the network or send information back to the attacker.

There are ways to limit the effects of an attack however, but the most efficient way to do so is by keeping the software of a network up to date, specifically the defense software that identifies infiltration, and protects the network. Often, infiltrations happen because the software was not up to date, allowing old infiltration types to still work.

The future of Cyber Warfare, in my opinion, is one of the most important types of warfare, just like Air Warfare was during WWI and beyond. As our society becomes more attached to networks, and militaries rely on those networks, countries and groups will fight to gain Cyber Superiority. Where in the past attacks where physical and could be easily tied to a culprit, even now, cyber warfare makes that very difficult to do. HOW CAN YOU RESPOND TO THIS AND STATE YOUR REFERENCE TO SUPPORT YOUR ANSWER