The Privacy Mission

CHAPTER 8Cyber Warfare

What Is Cyber Warfare?

I would define cyber warfare as the use of a cyber weapon for political means, rather than just criminal. Cyber warfare is not just about trying to make money, it is about trying to make a political point or win a political position.

Therefore, a cyber attack is not, by definition, an act of war. However, a cyber weapon or a tool being used by either countries or people thinking they are acting in the best interests of their country can potentially become warfare. When this happens, it has the potential to get hot very quickly. We have seen this evidenced in the attacks going back and forth between Russia and Ukraine since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

There are also two strands to cyber warfare, one being the information warfare that is happening between countries and the other being weaponised cyber tools that have been used to attack critical infrastructure, such as energy or transport networks, in other countries. These are targeted cyber attacks on the infrastructure that is necessary to keep a country functioning. This is not dissimilar to the approach the Provisional IRA took in the UK in the 1990s. They wanted to attack military and infrastructure targets, but they did not want to attack and harm civilians, both because it was not the right thing to do and because it was counterproductive from a reputational perspective. Cyber warfare takes a similar approach in that it goes after a country's infrastructure while causing ...