PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms. Low-level cyberwarfare Public and corporate perceptions of a nation-State driven, large-scale cyber-attack, revolve primarily around a singular hostile attack which would collapse the underpinnings of our modern society. There are myriad complex reasons why nation-States have yet to deploy their singularly destructive offensive cyber capabilities – even Russia within the current phase of the Ukrainian conflict. But the challenge remains that the Hollywood-esque cyber-attack mental imagery still remains the easiest, but also laziest tool—particularly in a world driven by short sound-bites—for policymakers to keep necessary cyber security consciousness high. However, this leads to the inevitable risk that while such an event never happens as envisaged by the imagery, complacency or threat-weariness emerges, which provides the operating space for the State actor to execute the much more pernicious ‘lower-level’ digital threats (which have always comprised a State’s offensive cyber strategy) through other more permissive vectors. This trend can be particularly observed in the ongoing Iranian-Israeli conflict in which private businesses and ordinary citizens have found themselves increasingly caught in the State-on-State cyber-crossfire.
Digital Threat Digest - 8 September 2022
Digital Threat Digest - 8 September 2022
Digital Threat Digest - 8 September 2022
PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms. Low-level cyberwarfare Public and corporate perceptions of a nation-State driven, large-scale cyber-attack, revolve primarily around a singular hostile attack which would collapse the underpinnings of our modern society. There are myriad complex reasons why nation-States have yet to deploy their singularly destructive offensive cyber capabilities – even Russia within the current phase of the Ukrainian conflict. But the challenge remains that the Hollywood-esque cyber-attack mental imagery still remains the easiest, but also laziest tool—particularly in a world driven by short sound-bites—for policymakers to keep necessary cyber security consciousness high. However, this leads to the inevitable risk that while such an event never happens as envisaged by the imagery, complacency or threat-weariness emerges, which provides the operating space for the State actor to execute the much more pernicious ‘lower-level’ digital threats (which have always comprised a State’s offensive cyber strategy) through other more permissive vectors. This trend can be particularly observed in the ongoing Iranian-Israeli conflict in which private businesses and ordinary citizens have found themselves increasingly caught in the State-on-State cyber-crossfire.