Cyberspace Warfare Attacks & Non State Actors.

Humanities and Social Sciences, 2023

This article presents the results of research on the theoretical paradigm of information warfare. The research methodology is based on political realism in international relations and observations of the war in Ukraine since 2014. It assumes that the main feature of the international system is the distribution of power and intersections between rival power centers. The principal roles are now played by states and groups of states as basic political units. From a broader perspective, in the future, the importance of non-state actors will also increase. The research produces a general outline of the theoretical concept of information warfare. According to the accepted terminology, information warfare is a process of achieving the strategic goals (interests) of any organization by offensive and defensive activities in the information space (infosphere), inspired and carried out against other organizations for self-protection and self-defense. The research indicates three key interconnected structures (components) of the concept of information warfare: participants (actors), tools (operators), and the information domination subprocess.

Information has always been at the core of conflicts. When Napoleon planned to invade Italy, he duly upgraded the first telegraph network in the world, the French "semaphore". He famously remarked that "an army marches on its stomach," but he also knew that the same army acted on information. As Von Clausewitz once stated "by the word 'information' we denote all the knowledge which we have of the enemy and his country; therefore, in fact, the foundation of all our ideas of actions [in war]." 1 This is why the radar, the computer, the satellite, the GPS system, and the Internet were initially developed as military technologies, while unmanned vehicles are becoming a reality thanks to DARPA. The difference between then and now is that information warfare is acquiring kinetic aspects unknown to past generations. Information has become a weapon because the targets too have become informational. The phenomenon is well known. Today, those who live by the digit may die by the digit. This much is clear. The question is how we should understand such a macroscopic transformation. 2

Writing a brief history of cyberconflict of the last decade and speculating on the future of warfare is by no means an easy task. The reasons are plenty and it is worth mentioning a few here, as they do tend to get lost in colleagues’ specialised debates in the fields of international relations and global politics, global and national security, internet security, new media political communication, international governance, internet governance, information warfare, critical security and the geopolitics of new technologies. Information communication technologies (ICTs) have unsettled in an unprecedented way the majority of academic fields, all of which are currently required to negotiate multi-level conflicts transferring from the real world to cyberspace or being created originally through cyberspace and spilling over to real life. Equally, as correctly pointed out by one of the reviewers of this chapter, this is a very fast-moving field. It is also a field, which is not solely dominated by states and traditional wars, but by movements, civil society organizations, protest events, insurgencies, network resistances, and ad hoc assemblages. These groups and their use of ICTs are the subject of this work, as these players are using social media technologies to punch above their weight, to challenge the supremacy of the state, as having the monopoly of violence and propaganda, through using ICTs as a weapon or as a tool for mobilization, organization and recruitment, and providing instant access to the global public sphere to influence the strategy, tactics and justification of wars, and resist the violent oppression of citizens by totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. The relevance of these actors and their use of technological innovation is currently more than critical with social media networking utilised to accelerate the regime changes in the Middle East region and elsewhere, and the military interventions the international community had to respond with due to the undeniable publicization of their plight in the virtual public sphere to protect the citizens of these states, point to the need to examine the history of the use of ICTs by these actors.

Since Russian annexation of Crimea, in March 2014, international community experiences massive use of information warfare in international affairs. In last 3 years, informational warfare became one of the most challenging issues not only for Europe and European Union, but also for the United States. Information warfare can be considered now as a very powerful tool, by which political integrity of states and alliances can be influenced. It is used by not only state actors (national states), but also non-state actors, such as ISIS to achieve various goals.

Considerable attention is paid by the media to information warfare, even though at times this coverage is rather superficial. What's more, it reveals very little as far as its actual role and effectiveness. At present, high on the agenda is namely the Russian information campaign, which has taken on gargantuan dimensions, mainly in the region of the Baltic states and Central Europe. To grasp its effectiveness, it is first useful to understand what information warfare is. By far, information warfare is not new to conflicts, with some of its elements employed already during antiquity, still new ones appearing with the advent of the information age. Even though the notion of today's information warfare is hard to define, it has several dimensions – information, psychological and cyber. What's more, information warfare is part of hybrid war, a complicated and complex phenomenon in its own right. Information first and foremost Information is of key importance in information warfare, and can be used in several ways, such as manipulation, i.e. provision of erroneous information to the enemy with an aim to confound or to affect the decision-making. A good example of this strategy is the Normandy landings during WWII, when the allies employed manipulation with information to make Nazi Germany believe that the landings will take place elsewhere than expected. The second way to use information to one's advantage is to induce fear and thus dissuade the enemy from action. This example refers to classic deterrence, characteristic of the Cold War period. Third, the information can be used to influence public opinion at home or abroad. When used on the home front, it can be employed for in uencing public opinion with an aim of gaining the support of the popula on in key poli cal decisions or convincing them of the necessity of certain steps. The same goes for in uencing public opinion on the territory of another country with exactly the opposite aim of undermining the peoples' con dence vis-vis the state and thus in uencing the decisions of its top leadership. The last and the most widespread way to use informa on is in cyberspace. Cyberspace allows individuals to manipulate, use, gather and input information at will on a massive scale.

Dramatic developments in technologies pertaining to information systems have made profound impact on developed and developing nations and societies. Besides the changes in the social dialectic, the concept and conduct of war fighting have also changed. Information as a resource has now become a strategic weapon. Information dominance has now become the principle goal of war fighting. However technological capabilities and societal dependence on IT of developed nations is vastly superior to those of the developing countries. Here in lies the need for identifying the developing countries' perspective on information warfare (IW) and to look into an emerging paradigm. An attempt has been made to figure out a road map for developing countries to gain sufficient defensive and offensive capabilities. The study was carried out in three phases which concluded IW as an effective warfare in technological asymmetric situations and a deterrent in different levels of conflict spectrum.

Science For All Publications, 2023

The rise of technology has revolutionized warfare, giving birth to a new form of conflict known as cyber warfare. This article examines the use of cyber warfare and its profound implications for international security. Cyber warfare encompasses various activities, including cyber espionage, terrorism, and state-sponsored cyber attacks. These tactics pose significant challenges to governments, economies, critical infrastructures, and individuals. Additionally, attributing cyber attacks remains a complex issue, impacting international norms and regulations. Therefore, fostering international cooperation, strengthening defense mechanisms, and establishing comprehensive cybersecurity frameworks to mitigate the risks and ensure global security is crucial.

International Relations theory has endured two failures in the last half century. No International Relations theorist foresaw the end of the Cold War. Likewise with the rise of Cyber War. Whilst the Internet is acknowledged as having the CIA as its parent, no one predicted that it would become a theatre for conflict. Cyber War is here and its impact on our lives will only increase in time. It is only a matter of time before a completely cyber conflict is waged. Yet no theory on Cyber War exists…until now.

Journal of Strategic Security, 2021

Much attention has been focused on the potential consequences of cyber attacks against critical infrastructure and the use of cyber weapons as an asymmetric equalizer. However, as a capability considered to be under the larger umbrella of an information operations (IO)/information warfare (IW) campaign, how significant a weapon is cyber for the strategist in an information environment? As observed in recent IO/IW campaigns targeting U.S. elections in 2016 and 2020, lack of any discernable disruptive cyber attacks may have provided an answer to this, as a cyber power purposefully elected not to implement attacks. Instead, cyber espionage was used, and even at that, played a minor complementary role in the larger effort. This calls into question the efficacy of cyber as an instrument of IO/IW, and the true nature of its role in more strategic soft-power operations. This paper argues that cyber is at best a supportive enabler of campaigns where information is the catalyst to achieve strategic results, reducing cyber attacks as tools best used for signaling, punishment, or implemented in first strike scenarios.

1997

: The development of "information warfare" presents international legal issues that will complicate nations' efforts both to execute and to respond to certain information warfare attacks, specifically those using computers, telecommunications, or networks to attack adversary information systems. Some legal constraints will certainly apply to information warfare, either because the constraints explicitly regulate particular actions, or because more general principles of international law govern the effects of those actions. Nevertheless, the novelty of certain information warfare techniques may remove them from application of established legal categories. Furthermore, the ability of signals to travel across international networks and affect systems in distant countries conflicts with the longstanding principle of national, territorial sovereignty. First, it has not been established that information attacks, particularly when they are not directly lethal or physically de...