Cyber Warfare: General Information

Cyber Warfare: General Information Cyber warfare has been defined as the use of hacking by a nation or a state, to conduct attacks on the strategic or tactical resources of the nation or state’s target. Cyber warfare is going to target any sensitive industry in the opponent's infrastructure. This means that the military, defense and weapons manufacturers, the civilian factories that make weapons, mines, and the national power grid that gives all of the above its necessary electricity. In other words, cyber warfare is the actions of a nation or a state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks, with the result of causing damage. Most first world countries can defend themselves from basic cyber attacks. Hackers supported by

The process is the same as a regular hacking of a computer or system: the hacker collects information on the target’s system, he figures out its weaknesses and uses them against the target, in order to control or destroy it. A small country with a strong hacker team can easily wound a big country with inferior military.

There are two types of cyber warfare: espionage and sabotage.

Espionage: Simply put, espionage is when a nation or a state gets information about the target nation or state that weren’t meant for them. For example, the pieces of information could be referring to tactical and strategic information, information about troop movements, the strengths and weaknesses of weapon systems and anything else about sensitive matters that might be proven helpful for the conductors of cyber warfare.

Sabotage: This term is referred to when the conductor of cyber warfare takes an active role against its target, for example shutting down the target’s government

High level of complexity

It is hard to distinguish a glitch and an attack and to establish cause and effect.

Asymmetry

No investment needs to develop and operate the weaponry. Cyber defense includes all channels of attack and is updated frequently, at high costs.

Vague laws

There is no common definition of “cyber warfare” in the world.

Cyber weapons

There are three different kinds of cyber weapons that are being used. Firstly, the weaponry is used against physical infrastructure, such as computers, sources of electricity, communication cables, antennae and satellites. In addition, cyber weapons can be categorized as:

Unequivocally offensive weapons: different types of malware, such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses and more. The result is denial of service actions.

Dual use tools: network monitoring, vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, encryption, camouflage of content and communications.

Unequivocally defensive tools: firewall, disaster recovery systems. Finally, the characteristics of cyber threats, according to Table 2:

Type of Threat

Probability

Threat Effect

Harm to security forces’ ability to function

Rising(widespread technological possibilities)