Cyberwarfare

[23] In 2017, Oxford academic Lucas Kello proposed a new term, "Unpeace", to denote highly damaging cyber actions whose non-violent effects do not rise to the level of traditional war.

According to Clarke, the civilian realm is also at risk, noting that the security breaches have already gone beyond stolen credit card numbers, and that potential targets can also include the electric power grid, trains, or the stock market.

Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

[54] In April 2009, reports surfaced that China and Russia had infiltrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national security officials.

The New York Times reported that American hackers from the United States Cyber Command planted malware potentially capable of disrupting the Russian electrical grid.

[64] Jowell and O'Donnell (2006) state that "propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist" (p. 7).

[65] In 2017, the WannaCry and Petya (NotPetya) cyber attacks, masquerading as ransomware, caused large-scale disruptions in Ukraine as well as to the U.K.'s National Health Service, pharmaceutical giant Merck, Maersk shipping company and other organizations around the world.

[75] In the U.S., General Keith B. Alexander, first head of USCYBERCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that computer network warfare is evolving so rapidly that there is a "mismatch between our technical capabilities to conduct operations and the governing laws and policies.

"[76] One cyber warfare scenario, Cyber-ShockWave, which was wargamed on the cabinet level by former administration officials, raised issues ranging from the National Guard to the power grid to the limits of statutory authority.

Anonymous and other hacktivist groups are often portrayed in the media as cyber-terrorists, wreaking havoc by hacking websites, posting sensitive information about their victims, and threatening further attacks if their demands are not met.

The war game involved a fictional country, Berylia, which was "experiencing a deteriorating security situation, where a number of hostile events coincide with coordinated cyber attacks against a major civilian internet service provider and maritime surveillance system.

The attacks caused severe disruptions in the power generation and distribution, 4G communication systems, maritime surveillance, water purification plant and other critical infrastructure components".

[108] Diplomatic cables highlight US concerns that China is using access to Microsoft source code and 'harvesting the talents of its private sector' to boost its offensive and defensive capabilities.

[109] While China continues to be held responsible for a string of cyber-attacks on a number of public and private institutions in the United States, India, Russia, Canada, and France, the Chinese government denies any involvement in cyber-spying campaigns.

That year, the government created a new subdivision, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) to thwart attacks against energy, transport, banking, telecom, defense, space and other sensitive areas.

[130] In July 2016, Cymmetria researchers discovered and revealed the cyber attack dubbed 'Patchwork', which compromised an estimated 2500 corporate and government agencies using code stolen from GitHub and the dark web.

Cisco's Talos Security Department revealed that "Sea Turtle" hackers carried out a broad piracy campaign in the DNS countries, hitting 40 different organizations, including Cyprus.

In March 2013, BND president Gerhard Schindler announced that his agency had observed up to five attacks a day on government authorities, thought mainly to originate in China.

Security firms warned that Iranian hackers were sending emails containing malware to diplomats who work in the foreign affairs offices of US allies and employees at telecommunications companies, trying to infiltrate their computer systems.

However a Middle Eastern journalist leaked photographs taken on 1 September 2012 showing kilometers of petrol trucks unable to be loaded due to backed business systems still inoperable.

[208] In September 2021, three of the former American intelligence officers, Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke, admitted to assisting the UAE in hacking crimes by providing them with advanced technology and violating US laws.

[211] U.S. government security expert Richard A. Clarke, in his book Cyber War (May 2010), had defined "cyberwarfare" as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.

"[213] When Russia was still a part of the Soviet Union in 1982, a portion of a Trans-Siberia pipeline within its territory exploded,[214] allegedly due to a Trojan Horse computer malware implanted in the pirated Canadian software by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The "Farewell Dossier" provided information on this attack, and wrote that compromised computer chips would become a part of Soviet military equipment, flawed turbines would be placed in the gas pipeline, and defective plans would disrupt the output of chemical plants and a tractor factory.

[217] In August 2010, the U.S. for the first time warned publicly about the Chinese military's use of civilian computer experts in clandestine cyber attacks aimed at American companies and government agencies.

[218][219] On 6 October 2011, it was announced that Creech AFB's drone and Predator fleet's command and control data stream had been keylogged, resisting all attempts to reverse the exploit, for the past two weeks.

[225] According to a 2013 Foreign Policy magazine article, NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit "has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China.

[239] In June 2019, the New York Times reported that American hackers from the United States Cyber Command planted malware potentially capable of disrupting the Russian electrical grid.

For example, the German civil rights panel FIfF runs a campaign for cyberpeace − for the control of cyberweapons and surveillance technology and against the militarization of cyberspace and the development and stockpiling of offensive exploits and malware.

[263] On the February 2017 RSA Conference Microsoft president Brad Smith suggested global rules – a "Digital Geneva Convention" – for cyber attacks that "ban the nation-state hacking of all the civilian aspects of our economic and political infrastructures".