It is called a distributed denial of service attack. Prior to any attack, thousands or millions of computers are infected with malware that allows them to be turned into zombies. Malware will come in the usual places, such as e-mail attachments or in photos you look at on the internet. These infected computers, when commanded, will all send messages to targets sites, swamping them and bringing them down, effectively making it impossible for vital functions that rely on web browsers or internet connectivity to function. Conceivably one could crash systems that control vital societal and business functions.
As for the US military, all the vital functions are off line, and the stuff that is unclassified and uses web browsers is behind stout fire walls. There are literally thousands of attempts at hacking in each day, and thousands more attempts to infect DoD computers with malware. Nothing is allowed in a DoD computer, software or outboard memory, that has not been cleared through DoD specialists. The days of buying thumb drives at Staples are long gone for us.
