Most Powerful Form of Cyber Espionage and how it can be Prevented

Answer

Most Powerful Form of Cyber Espionage and how it can be Prevented

Part 1

Most Powerful Form of Cyber Espionage and how it can be Prevented

Proliferation of the internet and related technologies has engendered dozens of security issues. Notable among them include cyber espionage, cyberattacks, computer network exploitation and cyber reconnaissance (Schmitt, 2013). The current essay focuses on cyber espionage with particular emphasis on politically-motivated cyber espionage as the most powerful form of cyber espionage.

Powerful Form of Cyber Espionage

Schmitt (2013) defines cyber espionage as an act of using ICT capabilities to clandestinely collect or attempt to collect classified or confidential information with the intention of communicating it to the rival – a competing company or nation. This definition of cyber espionage resonates strongly with Morag’ (2014): “the strategy of breaking [or attempting to break] into computer systems and networks” (p. 3) of a party to the conflict to in order to gain unauthorized access to sensitive corporate or governmental information. When perpetrated by governments, it involves using state-sponsored groups, government actors and other individuals acting on behalf of the government to illegally access computer systems and data with a view to gathering intelligence on the rival countries’ economic competitiveness, national security, capabilities and intentions, and military strength (UNODC, 2019). Libicki (2017) identifies three major forms of cyber espionage; namely, economically-motivated cyber espionage, politically-motivated cyber espionage (doxing attacks), and national security cyber espionage (cyber espionage against a rival country’s critical infrastructure).

Of the aforementioned forms of cyber espionage, politically-motivated cyber espionage is the most powerful. As the name implies, the motif behind this form of cyber espionage is to access intelligence on another country’s political matters, acts and intentions or agendas of its politicians, and accordingly use the information to advance and safeguard their (perpetrators’) own interests. The power or danger behind politically-motivated cyber espionage lies in its ability to influence voting, and hence political outcomes in the rival country through political doxing.

Like other forms of cyber espionage, intelligence from political cyber espionage can be used for criminal purposes or perpetration of malicious activities. One of such activities is vote-tampering. As Libicki (2017) vote-tempering, through use of results of cyber espionage for political doxing purposes, amounts to cyber attack as it can disrupt the voting exercise or corrupt the voting outcomes. This ability of politically-motivated cyber espionage to influence a country’s presidential election results means that it can give the perpetrator the power to shape the country’s political stand, and possibly influence its economic and diplomatic decisions. A perfect example of how powerful politically-motivated cyber espionage can be is the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) by Russian hackers, and subsequent publication of the hacked files on WikiLeaks during the U.S. 2016 presidential campaigns (Libicki, 2017). According to many political observers, the DNC hack, combined with the doxing of its presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton, played a leading role in influencing results of the presidential elections.

How Politically-Motivated Cyber Espionage can be Prevented

The fact that politically-motivated cyber espionage has the potential to jeopardize a country’s democracy, shape its political processes, and make it more vulnerable to external influence underpins the need for countries to come up with measures aimed at preventing this form of cyber espionage. One of the effective ways of doing this is by specifying, and ratifying into law, actions that will lead cyber espionage to be considered unacceptable; and then have the laws enforced by the international law to cybercrime. According to Libicki (2017), the resulting new laws would be referred to as cyber espionage norms, and will serve to regulate political cyber espionage among countries, and the use of information obtained through such acts. This way, it will be illegal for countries in conflict to obtain intelligence by cyber espionage, and release the information to the publish for purposes of political doxing or influencing political processes.

Part 2

        Kubiak’s argument that war rarely leaves the macropolitical agenda, or does so for short periods, still holds today. Indeed, since the second world war, the United States and like-minded countries have continued to fund military participation in cross-border or international war with the objective of not only enhancing their national security but also seeking to maintain their supremacy. For instance, the Vietnam War remained on the macropolitical agenda between 1965 and 1968, and only slipped from the agenda when it was overshadowed by a domestic crisis. In 1992, war again appeared as the top priority on the U.S. macropolitical agenda when the then presented George H. W, Bush deployed troops to assist the UN’s effort to combat the war that was waging in Somalia (Kubiak, 2014). Again, the country’s war policy in Somalia was left to the micropolitical agenda in 1993 before it reappeared again on the macropolitical agenda in 1994. Since then, war policies, such as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (2003 – 2008 and 2001 to date) have remained in the limelight of the U.S. micropolitical agenda, disappearing momentarily before returning on the agenda.