The Kosovo conflict has begun to spread to the Internet, turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings and hacking attacks.
Just as television brought the Vietnam War into the living rooms of America, the Internet has brought a surprisingly intimate view of this conflict to computer users--but one that may or may not be true.
The conflict in Kosovo is, in many ways, the first Internet war. And even when the cyber battles stoop to juvenile antics, they bear the seeds of the future of information warfare.
"This is only the very, very beginning," said Winn Schwartau, a computer security consultant and author on the subject of information warfare. "It's going to grow exponentially, and eventually it will have a major impact on war."
This week, the NATO Web site, usually a sleepy spot on the Internet, was assaulted by hackers from Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, who inundated NATO's computer system with e-mail and computer queries that made accessing the site difficult.
At the same time, a group of hackers, working under the name MacroHard Group, attacked a site called World-Albania.com, replacing the site's information with a link to a banned Belgrade radio station.
"If you're looking for the truth, visit WWW.B92.NET," read the new version of the Web page. The hackers left a defiant message, in hacking vernacular, to boast of their exploit: "SAMURAI RULLEZ!"
As the battle by Serbian forces on the ground and NATO forces in the air continues in Kosovo, governments and private citizens have embraced the Internet as a way of waging their own propaganda war. Because of the ease of publishing on the Web and the anonymity allowed by electronic communications, the Internet has become a prime site not only for propaganda and news, but also to attack and harass the enemy.
The hacking attacks have occurred sporadically since the beginning of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia. The damage caused by the hacking has been minimal. In the case of NATO's computers, the worst appears to be that accessing the page has been more difficult.
"Since the 28th of March, the service from our Internet home page has been erratic, to say the least," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said at a news conference earlier this week.
