Cyberwar typically called cyber warfare is using cyber attacks against an enemy.
The goal can vary from simple information gathering to disrupting vital computer systems, causing chaos, and more.
Cyber warfare is used as sabotage, espionage, propaganda, and even economic warfare.
There are countless different ways cyber warfare can be used to harm the victim of the attacks.
In each case, the strategies and goals of the attacks are different.
The countries mentioned above have active units of experts in the field dealing with offensive and defensive operations.
Tip:Despite the name cyber war, cyber warfare isnt generally considered a real act of war.
It can cause real damage, and people can and have died because of it.
The concept is usually viewed somewhat ambiguously by experts and not considered proper warfare.
They also dont usually last as long nor take up as many resources.
Contents
The Threat Actors
To engage in cyber warfare, cybersecurity experts are needed.
Cyber attacks by skilled cyber criminals can be just as devastating and triumphant.
As such, operations are usually only revealed after the fact and often not at all.
This leads to relatively little generally available information on the subject.
This is often to the detriment of the security of systems used by civilians.
A nation only discloses vulnerabilities they know once another unfriendly actor has discovered them.
Often these issues are only fixed because a cyber security firm detects the intrusion.
Motivations
Many nation-states have some cyber operations departments, even relatively small ones.
Israel and Iran often primarily focus on attacks against each other or against the various groups they object to.
Russia often wields disinformation or propaganda-oriented attacks, though it, too, performs a lot of espionage.
The US and the UK have strong and broad capabilities, including highly targeted attacks and extensive information-gathering techniques.
Non-nation-state threat actors may or may not be aligned with a nation-state.
They may be actively directed by some form of a handler or may be given carte blanche.
However, this policy has been shown to have limits.
Completely independent threat actors are typically significantly less advanced.
They are also much more likely to be either criminal or ideologically driven.
This can make their actions less predictable from a geopolitical standpoint.
Techniques
The specific techniques behind each attack vary.
Most sabotage-oriented attacks specifically look for software or hardware vulnerabilities in critical systems.
This attack may even aim to introduce system vulnerabilities for later exploitation.
Espionage actions typically revolve around compromising devices or communication systems.
Typically, this involves targeting high-value targets or seeking a way to access high-value systems.
Economic cyber acts aim to benefit the attacker monetarily and are primarily criminal in origin.
Propaganda acts tend to be either overt counter-propaganda or more subtle disinformation campaigns.
Most cyber warfare actions tend to be subtle, up until a point.
In the digital realm, there is very little value in bringing in the cyber equivalent of door kickers.
As systems can be disconnected from the Internet or even power if needed.
Outside of DDoS attacks, there arent very many classes of loud cyber attacks.
Most attacks involve exploiting a weakness youve already found that the adversary doesnt know about.
This means that most cyber war options are rare, valuable and easily lost if wasted.
Many attacks still, unfortunately, take the form of publicly known vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
A cyber war is the concept of war or war-like actions taken in cyberspace.
Cyber actions certainly have their place within traditional warfare.
Youll unlikely see any instances of a war purely fought in cyberspace outside esports.
Many of the cyber weapons are heavily tailored to target specific adversaries.
Cyber weapons need to exploit specific vulnerabilities.
Either subtly inject those vulnerabilities yourself into a supply chain attack or use ones you find opportunistically.
This means that cyber war is a constant cyber arms race.
The concept is even more difficult because threat actors must not necessarily be nation-states.
Even worse, its often quite challenging to determine precisely who is responsible.
