The ever-increasing role of technology in every aspect of our society has turned cybersecurity into a major sovereignty issue for all states. Due to their asymmetrical nature, offensive cyber-capabilities have been embraced by many countries that wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to compete on a military or economic level with the most powerful nations of the world. Most modern inter-state conflicts and tensions today also take place in so-called cyberspace and we strongly believe that this trend will persist.
Such conflicts can take a vast number of forms, based on the objectives an attacker might pursue to undermine a competitor. In the context of this article, we will only focus on two of them: (1) Cyber-warfare for intelligence purposes, and (2) sabotage and interference with strategic systems in order to hinder a state’s ability to govern or project power.
Cyberspace and intelligence
Attempts to collect intelligence through technical means have been documented for years. The earliest example dates all the way back to 1996’s infamous Moonlight Maze campaign, where attackers stole so many documents a printout would have stood “thrice as high as the Washington monument”. Twenty-five years later, Kaspersky tracks over a hundred groups who perform similar operations. Here are a few reasons why they are so widespread:
Offensive security tools are readily available.
Intrusion software just as sophisticated as the frameworks developed by APT actors is gradually released to the public for free. This includes widely available proofs of concepts for software vulnerabilities to gain access to target machines, open-source malware im ..
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