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11. Cybersecurity and UN Peace Operations: Evolving Risks and Opportunities

Author:
Dirk Druet
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
This paper discusses the growing potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities of UN peace operations. Fast-moving changes in the cyber capabilities of state and non-state actors, the changing nature of asymmetric warfare, and the positioning of the UN in relation to global and regional geopolitics are increasingly placing peace operations in the crosshairs of complex cybersecurity threats. In parallel to these external trends, internal trends in missions’ intelligence, surveillance, and data management technologies also make them more vulnerable to cyber threats. At the same time, there are opportunities for missions to leverage cybersecurity infrastructure to support the implementation of their mandates, including in the areas of mediation and political settlements and the protection of civil society actors. The paper provides an overview of the cyber threats facing peace operations and opportunities to leverage cybersecurity tools for mandate implementation. It also documents the operational and policy challenges that have arisen and the Secretariat’s efforts to address them. It concludes with several recommendations for the UN as peace operations seek to operate in an increasingly fraught political and cybersecurity environment: The Secretariat should develop cross-cutting operational concepts and guidance for cyber threat assessments. The Secretariat should articulate its understanding of its duty of care for staff privacy and develop operational guidance and expertise for mitigating threats to privacy. When facilitating political processes, peace operations should consider whether cybersecurity measures will be equally effective in deterring hacking attempts by all parties to ensure they do not exacerbate “information asymmetries.” The UN should explore the boundaries around missions evading or obstructing surveillance or intrusion activities by host states to secure their operations. The Secretariat should mitigate the volume of data exposed to external systems, including by deploying UN-owned and UN-operated intelligence and surveillance devices when possible.
Topic:
United Nations, Peacekeeping, Cybersecurity, Risk, and Asymmetric Warfare
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. Arms Control Tomorrow: Strategies to Mitigate the Risks of New and Emerging Technologies

Author:
Shannon Bugos
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Arms Control Association
Abstract:
Over recent years, the topic of new and emerging technologies with military applications has ignited a dynamic debate among defense officials, political leaders, diplomats, policy experts, and technical experts. This report provides an overview of the potentially destabilizing effects of several new and emerging technologies and their respective military applications. It aims to provide decision-makers with a better understanding of how to mitigate the risks and reduce the chances that a major power conflict or confrontation escalates to the nuclear level through a range of arms control and risk reduction measures. This report focuses on six significant, distinct emerging military capabilities: hypersonic weapons systems, direct offensive cyberoperations, offensive counterspace capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled capabilities, drones, and lethal autonomous weapons systems. This report distills information and ideas from a series of workshops, involving dozens of technical and policy experts in each technology area, that the Arms Control Association conducted in 2021 and 2022. It identifies four overarching themes that highlight the greatest concerns over how the military employment of new and emerging technologies might increase the risk of nuclear weapons use. Increasing the pace of conflict. Increasing uncertainty. Reducing the human role. Incentivizing arms racing. This report identifies near-term risk mitigation measures that are likely achievable now or within the next five years: crisis communications systems, definition establishment, norms, unilateral declarations and actions, and confidence-building measures. This report also outlines long-term measures that are achievable within the next 10 years or beyond: arms control and risk reduction arrangements (e.g., treaties, agreements) that involve more than one country and are more formal than confidence-building measures, although not necessarily legally binding.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. Why Does the Global Spyware Industry Continue to Thrive? Trends, Explanations, and Responses

Author:
Steven Feldstein and Brian (Chun Hey) Kot
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The global spyware and digital forensics industry continues to grow despite public backlash following an array of surveillance scandals, many linked to NSO Group’s Pegasus program. This paper explores the resilience of the commercial spyware market and offers ideas about how to limit the spread of invasive cyber surveillance tools. It highlights several factors driving the industry, including elevated demand for intrusion technology from government clients and private customers, as well as inconsistent political will from democratic governments to crack down on these technologies.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Democracy, Surveillance, Industry, Forensic Science, and Autocracy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. Grayzone Aggression: The Need for Deterrence by Denia

Author:
Elisabeth Braw
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Cyber deterrence needs to rely on a combination of deterrence by punishment of select attacks and deterrence by denial. By definition, punishment means that deterrence has failed, but given that it’s impossible to deter all cyber attacks and intrusions, Western governments with offensive cyber capabilities could retaliate against specific cyber attackers. The harm done to targets of such retaliation and the arbitrary nature of how they’re selected for punishment would increase the cost in most cyber attackers’ cost-benefit analysis. The public also expects the government to avenge, particularly egregious cyber attacks.
Topic:
Security, Cybersecurity, Deterrence, and Non-Traditional Threats
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Cyber-Nuclear Weapons: Impact on the Modern Warfare Landscape

Author:
Shabana Fayyaz and Baqir Malik
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
The popular trends of information technologies have created a virtual world around the globe with the domain of cyberspace, which offers plenty of opportunities and challenges. In the last few years, several events have been described in terms of cyber warfare or the use of cyber weapons, leading to critical international security concerns. At the same time, there is little research on the definitions and power of what constitutes a cyber weapon and how it can be profiled. In the age of globalization and with the dynamic digital environment a new way of strategy and thinking is developing to introduce the new weapons, which has challenged the strategic environment around the globe and changing the concept of warfare in 21st century. The present article is to develop a preliminary hypothesis for to identifying the power of cyber weapon and how it relates with the nuclear weapon to examining the changing landscape of modern warfare. The comparative analysis of cyber weapons and nuclear weapons will help to understand the exact nature of cyber weapons with comparison of nuclear weapons to conclude which one is more preferable and dangerous in modern warfare techniques. The paper is divided into three sections. First part is brief introduction of genesis of cyber weapons, nature, evolution and its different types. The second part is comparison of cyber weapons to the nuclear weapons based on diverse characteristics (developing of weapons, security, arsenal, uses, target etc.). The third part is an analysis cyber weapon vis-a-vis nuclear weapon on the impact level. The paper conclude that the development of cyber-nuclear weapons has significantly altered the nature of contemporary warfare techniques. As technology continues to advance, the use of a cyber weapons has becomes increasingly likely, which could result in devastating consequences. It is important for nations to develop effective cybersecurity measures and maintain a strong nuclear deterrence strategy to prevent such scenarios from occurring.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Cybersecurity, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Security Paradigm in the Age of Mass Surveillance

Author:
Gulshan Majeed and Muhammad Naveed Sial
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Political Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
In this age of social media and technological advancement, people are more connected than ever. People are connected to each other, to their physician, grocery and clothing store. They are shopping online and sending personal and intimate messages. People are being tracked wherever they go simply from their phones. These are the foot prints which they are leaving. The foot prints through CCTV cameras, their social media and their internet searches. Spy agencies use these foot prints for profiling and to keep citizens safe from antisocial elements. There is a draw back of these measures as they cost citizens of their fundamental right of privacy and most importantly, the breach of trust. Analytical approach has been employed to identify the risks involved into mass surveillance and data breach of the citizens. Right activists believe that this data is at risk and it might go into the hands of terrorists, populist far-right or authoritarian governments who in turn might use this data to target political opponents. In this fast-changing environment, national security paradigm is shifting in these recent times.
Topic:
National Security, Cybersecurity, Social Media, Populism, Surveillance, Data, Civil Liberties, and Edward Snowden
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Managing the financial impact of cybersecurity incidents

Author:
Zsolt Bederna and Tamás Szádeczky
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
The complex relationships of economic actors and the high dependency on information and communication technologies make it necessary for all relevant entities to develop protection. This protection should include preventive and reactive controls in a risk-proportionate manner in relation to the business value protected. We aimed to develop a solution to support cybersecurity-related business decisions with financial analytics. The risk-based approach helps management find the optimum solution with minimal costs, where protection prevents some incidents from occurring, while the risks associated with other incidents are accepted in an informed way. The security industry developed a number of apparatuses to find the optimum security controls that enforced the fiscal aspects, which typically contain solutions used in planning. However, the actual expenditure often differs from the planned budget for several reasons, one of which is the occurrence of security incidents. We used the common methodology toolset for financial analysis (NPV, NFV, risk assessment). We developed novel metrics based on these that can be used in cybersecurity management. Within the framework thus defined, the article discusses the economic context of the effects of incidents involving Meta (previously Facebook) services from 2016 to 2020. This paper introduces the ‘Effect of incidents’ metric to measure the impact of unplanned incidents’ on actual expenditure compared to the planned budget and the ‘Incidence of incident recognition’ metric to measure deviations of an incident’s impact as perceived by owners relative to the effect on the value of the assets. The paper also proves the applicability of those metrics using the example of Meta.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Finance, and Economy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

18. Trojan spoofing: A threat to critical infrastructure

Author:
Tegg Westbrook
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
This article explores the phenomenon of location spoofing—where the spoofer is able to “teleport” systems in and out of defined locations, either for the purpose of infiltration into no-go zones or for the “teleportation” out of real, defined zones in the physical world. The research relied on a qualitative methodology, utilising academic research findings, media reports, hacker demonstrations, and secondary data from these sources, to situate the spoofing threat in the context of international security. This conceptual, argumentative essay finds that signal spoofing, the methods of which can be followed via online scripts, allows users the ability to overcome geographically defined territorial restrictions. This, as this article finds, allows violent actors to weaponise systems, such as unmanned aerial systems, potentially leading to the escalation of political tensions in extreme but unfortunately ever-frequent episodes. The article concludes that, while Trojan spoofing (in particular) poses a real and an existential threat to international security, it is only a sum-of-all parts in considering other threats to critical functions in society. If geofences are used as a single point of security to protect assets against hostile actors, managers need to be aware of the vulnerability of intrusion and the resulting geopolitical consequences.
Topic:
International Security, Cybersecurity, Information Warfare, Military, GPS, and Deception
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. The Strategic Nature of the Digital Age

Author:
Michael Fischerkeller and Richard Harknett
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
Cyber operations advance intelligence goals through their capacity to surveil populations at home and abroad, as well as propagate new forms of informa- tional manipulation and communication. But what if those outcomes are only a subset of cyberspace’s potential impact on the conduct of international relations? Political scientist James Rosenau posits that the role of academic theory is fun- damentally to ask and posit answers to the “what ifs” of complex phenomena.1 In our book, Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace, co-authored with Dr. Emily Goldman, we examine state activ- ity in and through cyberspace and conclude that it is strategic in potential and intent. There are two fundamental reasons why this focus on strategic potential is important. First, if the emerging field of cyber security studies is to mature, it needs to illuminate the underlying patterns emerging in modern international relations. Second, state policies should reinforce an overall stabilizing dynamic across international security relations as they increase their use of cyber and cyber-enabled operations and campaigns. In both cases, study and policy must be based on an accurate understanding of the logic of cyberspace security. States could focus on a narrow subset of cyber activity, such as traditionally framed propaganda, surveillance, and intelligence, in isolation of its capacity to shift power. However, such exclusion of the numerous other ways cyberspace can be leveraged effectively advances neither the academic nor policy objective.
Topic:
Security, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Cybersecurity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

20. The Anatomy of Cyber Risk

Author:
Rustam Jamilov, Hélène Rey, and Ahmed Tahoun
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
This paper employs computational linguistics to introduce a novel text-based measure of firm-level cyber risk exposure based on quarterly earnings conference calls of listed firms. Our quarterly measures are available for more than 13,000 firms from 85 countries over 2002-2021. We document that cyber risk exposure predicts cyber attacks, affects stock returns and profits, and is priced in the equity option market. The cost of option protection against price, variance, and tail risks is greater for more cyber-exposed firms. Cyber risks spill over across firms and persist at the sectoral level. The geography of cyber risk exposure is well approximated by a gravity model extended with cross-border portfolio flows. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the global cost of cyber risk is over $200 billion per year.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Cybersecurity, Business, and Risk
Political Geography:
Global Focus