Essay on Cyberwar

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June 6th, 2007

A great essay on cyberwar by Bruce Schneier .

The first problem with any discussion about cyberwar is definitional. Ive been reading about cyberwar for years now, and there seem to be as many definitions of the term as there are people who write about the topic. Some people try to limit cyberwar to military actions taken during wartime, while others are so inclusive that they include the script kiddies who deface websites for fun.

I think the restrictive definition is more useful, and would like to define four different terms as follows:

Cyberwar — Warfare in cyberspace. This includes warfare attacks against a nations military — forcing critical communications channels to fail, for example — and attacks against the civilian population.

Cyberterrorism — The use of cyberspace to commit terrorist acts. An example might be hacking into a computer system to cause a nuclear power plant to melt down, a dam to open, or two airplanes to collide. In a previous Crypto-Gram essay, I discussed how realistic the cyberterrorism threat is.

Cybercrime — Crime in cyberspace. This includes much of what weve already experienced: theft of intellectual property, extortion based on the threat of DDOS attacks, fraud based on identity theft, and so on.

Cybervandalism — The script kiddies who deface websites for fun are technically criminals, but I think of them more as vandals or hooligans. Theyre like the kids who spray paint buses: in it more for the thrill than anything else.

At first glance, theres nothing new about these terms except the “cyber” prefix. War, terrorism, crime, even vandalism are old concepts. Thats correct, the only thing new is the domain; its the same old stuff occurring in a new arena. But because the arena of cyberspace is different from other arenas, there are differences worth considering.

Link: Essay on Cyberwar