INSTRUMENTAL CORRECTIONS FOR A DEFINITION OF CYBERWAR - Cyberwar-Netwar: Security in the Information Age - page 22

always use cyberwar methods within a time of peace by means of cyber-oriented ICT and
the support of a policy of cyberwar-oriented R&D.
The latent cyberwar is oriented to achieving the deterrence mission and can be
considered as the main factor in the reduction of threats of real warfare within a period
from peace to crisis. That is why latent cyberwar as the information operations oriented
to demonstration of control superiority, i.e., as potentiality of the interception of
management within the adversary information infrastructure, should not be considered as
cybercrime but should be under jurisdiction of international law.
In any case, latent cyberwar cannot be applied against civil information infrastructures
and civilians, otherwise these actions would be regarded as asymmetric war or
cyberterrorism, and this fact justifies use of any form of armed counteraction.
Latent cyberwar includes computer-oriented and human-oriented information
operations which are connected with distant control of any kind of enemy military data
bases and knowledge bases, information resources and flows by means of software,
hardware and psycho-technologies for direct or indirect influencing of decision-makers
and operators. There is a very understandable distinction between a latent cyberwar and a
limited cyberwar, which uses information operations openly, and can be considered as a
form of asymmetric war.
Latent cyberwar allows the use of cyber-reconnaissance within any form of
information resources, of purposeful deliberate services for obtaining of circumstantial
evidence, and of undetectable passive interception of data and management for the
possible providing of active control interception in the future; it has, however, to exclude
the influence on objects of a civil information infrastructure as well.
Beyond good and evil………
8. CONCLUSIONS
In spite of a variety of papers, projects and R&D devoted to a concept of cyberwar, we
think that we are only at the beginning of the second period of the S-curve of a basic
tendency of cyberwar, i.e., still in a period of development of this multidimensional
concept. That is why the authors do not presume that their arguments are indisputable
and final, but rather rely on further discussions. At the same time we believe that we can
offer the following conclusions:
x The S-curve to some degree proves that the problem of information superiority in
Internet conditions is not a issue of decision in some countries, and the only
problem is in achieving control superiority as a threat of a control interception
within an adversary's information infrastructure. The demonstration of control
superiority plays the role of the deterrence mission. The stable deterrence mission
can be achieved by recognition of a notion of a latent war
x The latent cyberwar should be constantly re-specified instrumentally by
international organizations (for instance by NATO), inasmuch as using control
interception and obtaining information from open sources by means of updated
technologies can lead to armed conflicts
x The cyberwar threat is incomprehensible and elusive to the populations of
developing countries and makes preparation for cyberwar very difficult for
national governments