Is The World Ready for a Cyber war?
Before we answer the question presented in the headline, it’s best to define what a cyberwar is so that we can spot it. A cyber war is when countries want to intentionally damage other countries through cyberinfrastructure. Recently, President Joe Biden warned that if the U.S. were to end up in a “real shooting war” with a “major power,” it would likely come as a result of cyber war attacks.
Only a few cyberattacks get classified as cyber war, while the rest are classified as cybercrime. It is usually decided by the actors in play and their intentions, along with the magnitude of an attack’s impact.
Below are some of the most common techniques used in cyber war:
• Spyware: Usually a phishing attack aimed at damaging national infrastructure to steal information from government agencies and large enterprises of importance.
• Sabotage: Coordinating with computers’ and satellites’ vulnerable components to lead to disruption of systems via a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
• Cyber propaganda: Disseminating false or misleading information to sway public opinion by way of social media, fake news websites and any other digital means.
• Economic disruption: Causing large-scale disruptions to negatively affect a company or group of importance for a country.
• Surprise cyberattacks: The nontraditional, asymmetric or irregular aspect of cyber action against a state.
Goals Of Cyber war
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) defines cyberwar to destabilizing a particular country or dismantling it by impacting critical infrastructure and issued advisories about both China and Russia. This means that entities looking to take part in a cyber war have the intention of damaging nation-state infrastructure and spying.
Cyber Espionage Vs. Cyber war
Since both are intermittently used in the universe of defense and military, there is always some confusion.
The simple difference is that cyberwar has larger goals than espionage.
The data gathered as a result of spying may be useful in order to carry out a cyberwar and destabilize an enemy state. Attackers will usually target transportation infrastructure, banks, power distribution agencies, water authorities, dams and hospitals.
The biggest threat for the public sector is social engineering with 3,236 named incidents, 885 with confirmed data disclosure. Social engineering, miscellaneous errors and system intrusion represent 92% of breaches. External actors make up 83% of all attacks. The primary motive is financial (96%). And the data compromised includes credentials (80%), personal (18%), other (6%) and medical data (4%).
Conflicts are rising every day in the cyber domain. The wargames in the defense and security communities are able to identify pitfalls with the help of cyber war gaming. The segmented knowledge on cyber war attack strategies and weapons are the negative impacting reasons people fail in the war games. Every country should have its own cyber war game that it tests regularly to prepare for large-scale, nation-backed attacks.