Published:December 18th, 2009 21:45 EST

Twitter Targetted by Iranian 'Cyber Army'

Twitter became a powerful form of communication for Iranian protestors back in June with the elections. The website specializes in broadcasting short 140 character text messages from its users all over the world. Twitter, like Facebook is a social networking tool, in the case of the dissidents within Iran it has been an invaluable form of communication.

Apparently the Iranian hackers took down Twitter for two hours on Thursday. They replaced the welcome screen with an Iranian flag, an Anti-American message and a tribute to Khomeini. Specialists have determined that the attack most likely did not come from the Iranian government itself, but rather a smaller group that the Government probably supported. Furthermore, the technology used to take down twitter has been speculated to have been sold to the Iranians by Nokia and other technological industries.

It is clear that the world is entering a new age of warfare. Computer hacking has now become a confirmed tactic amongst aggressive groups at war all across the world. From the virus that got implanted in the DoD mainframes a few months ago, and now to the Iranian hacking of twitter to disable the dissidents ability to communicate within Iran, computerized warfare is slowly becoming a greater threat than ever before.

With so much resources and power dependent on computers, forces that would not normally have the firepower to fight larger powers effectively, now have the ability to fight on a different front.