Cyberwar: United States, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea… the first world cyberwar has…

SERIES “CYBER WAR”. After the land, sea, and air, a new battlefield has emerged: the digital world. Cyberattacks, disinformation, espionage, sabotage… Conflicts are transforming and now invade our networks and infrastructures. BFM Tech collected testimonies from experts and military personnel to understand this new front line.

We are in the summer of 1982, in the heart of Siberia. While the Cold War has heated up a bit, tensions between the East and the West remain palpable. In the vast Siberian plains, a massive explosion of a gas pipeline will disrupt the apparent calm. Former US Air Force Secretary Thomas Reed, a member of Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council, described in his memoirs “a non-nuclear explosion and fire among the largest ever seen from space.” And it was neither a missile nor a bomb that hit this massive Soviet gas pipeline… but a software.

This software, designed to adjust pump speeds and valve settings to generate excess pressure, was planted by the CIA with the help of Canadian engineers and a French company. The spectacular operation, captured from space, caused no casualties. It was based on information from a KGB double agent, Vladimir Vetrov, codenamed “Farewell,” who revealed Moscow’s technologies, enabling the US to carry out a significant cyber sabotage, foreshadowing modern cyberattacks.

This was neither the first cyber attack in history, nor the last. However, it was essential that it opened this series because it perfectly illustrates a striking fact: it is possible, from hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away, to cause an explosion simply from a computer.

A new digital front line?
Over forty years later, cyberspace has evolved significantly. The threat landscape, as well as the methods used, has changed dramatically, as have the actors involved. Attacks are no longer exclusive to a few state intelligence services: the digital world is now open to a multitude of actors, from independent hackers to organized criminal groups, and politically motivated collectives.

However, a question remains: what is “cyber war”? Far from reaching a consensus, its definition still divides researchers, military personnel, and policymakers, with each proposing a different interpretation.

In 1993, in an article provocatively titled “Cyber War is coming!,” American analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt explained that future conflicts would be profoundly transformed by the digital revolution. According to them, mastering information would become a decisive advantage on the battlefield.

The “cyber war” they predicted would pit actors capable of maximizing information to guide their operations and amplify their effects, while seeking to deprive their adversaries of this essential asset.

Later, in 2010, Richard A. Clarke, a member of the US National Security Council from 1992 to 2003, and co-author with Robert Knake of the book “Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It,” proposed a more concrete definition of cyber war. He described it as the set of actions taken by a state to infiltrate another’s computer systems to cause damage or destruction.

This approach clearly emphasizes tangible effects, similar to those of a conventional war, such as infrastructure destruction or the paralysis of essential systems.

This year is also crucial in the history of cyber threats. Let’s turn to Iran. In 2010, “Stuxnet” emerged on the international scene. This malware gained notoriety for targeting the Iranian nuclear program, notably the Natanz site.

Destructive capacities
Its aim was to sabotage the centrifuges used to enrich uranium by causing malfunctions while hiding the damage from operators. This operation marked a turning point. While not the first cyber attack, it was the first of this magnitude and complexity – it exploited several zero-day vulnerabilities, not yet known at the time. It was a long-term effort with strategic implications. Moreover, it showed that a cyber weapon could escape its creator, making this malware a global wake-up call to cyber risks. Stuxnet infected about 45,000 systems worldwide, mainly in Iran but also in Europe and Asia through Siemens industrial equipment.

Michael Hayden, CIA director from 2006 to 2009, considered this operation tactically a “good idea.” He explained in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview in 2012 that a “new type of conflict where a cyber weapon was used to cause physical destruction” had begun.

Camille François, a researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, argued in an article titled “Thinking about Cyber Peace” that the term “cyber war” is probably inaccurate, at least because “no act of cyber violence has triggered a physical conflict yet.”

Perhaps it is because, for now, cyber attacks have either not been deadly enough or have not been definitively attributed. Marie-Gabrielle Bertran, a researcher at the interdisciplinary center on strategic issues, explained that the example of Stuxnet illustrates these different views and definitions of cyber war.

“In the 2010s, there weren’t many examples of cyber operations with lethal effects. These mainly involved espionage, cyber intelligence, sabotage to some extent, and subversion,” she detailed.

“If we take the example of Stuxnet, carried out by Israel and the US, it didn’t have any lethal effect either. They could have caused them, but they didn’t, they didn’t use it in that way… For example, they didn’t blow up the Natanz plant. So, from that perspective, according to some definitions, cyber war does not exist,” Bertran elaborated.

The researcher also shared insights on how the cyber war definitions have expanded over time, encompassing intentional prejudices, attacks on individuals, companies, and digital information operations.

Continued in Next Episode